I have a feeling that wavetable synthesis only became popular recently with Serum, is this true?

weren't any wavetable synths before that, that did same thing?

thanks

 

Massive was pretty popular, did much the same. I kinda wonder why also, WT is garbage technology; low bit-rate samples FTW.

Spoiler

edit: I rly don't understand why WT is still being used, kinda bizarre to me! Let's use a load of crappy lores samples and cycle thru as many as 128 (!) of em.. for reasons that prolly made some sense in the 80s. Yay. Metallic tinnitus af!

@Trurl The D50 is something like early S&S stuff, is there maybe something liek a weird WT for attacks? I think it was old-school subtractive for the synthesis part tho? Kind of a monster. Of Frankenstein, rly. Bit like the unheard-of, shy, modest guy who did the presets, who isn't into self-promotion, and has never mentioned it evah.

 

Last edited: Nov 18, 2019

Because Its capable of complex movement that is fucking sexy?

 

Don't forget about Massive!

Wavetable synthesis is popular, particularly among electronic music producers, simply because the ability to scan through a wavetable creates the "WUB-WUB" and similar vowel movements that were only possible with filter modulation or fm synthesis (FM8) beforehand. So it's a must have for dubstep and other heavy bass genres. Makes all the growls and wubs and womps a whole lot easier. ;)

 

Because of PPG

Love the german wikipedia article about it https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wavetable-Synthese

Last Point Pros and Cons is great

It's easy, cheap with it's own sound . (Hardware Synths)

So same thing with Software, its relatively easy to program a Wavetable VST. (Physical Modeling is hardest in my Opinion (Some tough maths behind that))

And by the Way
Wavetable are very versatile

 

Technically wavetable has been popular (maybe even more popular if you value hardware sales more than current software sales) since the early to mid 80s. I suspect that the reason current software iterations are popular is because of the lack of other competitive options that already have active communities and resources available. Like how sylenth1 rose to hyper-popularity starting around 2010. My personal criticism of wavetable synths is that they always sound cold to me, dune2 was very impressive and serum is an incredible tool for the adderall addicted teens out there.

 

cause pulsar train was not so

it was massive not serum...serum brought more mod and visuals and stuff

 

Last edited: Nov 17, 2019

Because of the Roland D-50. The PPG may have come first but the D-50 and its ability to combine traditional waveforms with samples was a game changer. After years of the DX7 it dropped like a ton of bricks.

 

Ever heard of Depeche Mode?
They first used the PPG Wave 2 in 1982. I would say that's when the distinctive wavetable sound became really popular.
Of course, Wolfgang Palm had developed wavetable synths way before (the 360 back in 1978), and he still does today!

 

Last edited: Nov 18, 2019

the modulation option in wavetable synthesis and sound quality got better recently due to processing power, also the type of sound is in fashion too

 

I can vouch for this statement

 

I think that Wolfgang Palm is the best name evah, not even just for a synth maker. He should defo sponsor the German national football team, the Mannschaft.

(they say Germans have no sense of humor. Those people are idiots!)

 

Because it's really easy to make dubstep growls. It's super easy to make sounds reminiscent of human vocals.

 

same reasons 808's are so popular.. just its time rite now. Who knows what next popular thing will come up.
Modular Snthesis replication seems to be coming up to.

 

Growls, risers (basically noise), etc....Whole lot of sounds that aren't actually very "musical" are very pleasant to the human ear, probably because they are reminiscents of stuffs of everyday life, so they end up having a role in music, it triggers stuff in our brain.

It's like some aspects of analogue....Yes it's noise, but our brain craves for it.

 

Can you please explain why wavetable synthesis became so popular?

Nope. Beats me.

 

No its been popular for a long time but Massive made it hip because by using wavetables preprogrammed into it that allowed it all those extra yummy modulation possibilities but at the expense of sound clarity (massive makes cool sounds but it doesnt make sounds with amazing clarity like a fm synth or an acutual analog). The closest thing to serum before that IMO would have been Waves Codex and for a while there were some Linplug (if i am remembering their name correctly) that allowed you to import your own single cycle wave forms that were pretty sweet.

 

For me, wavetable synthesis has been popular since PPG 2.3, Prophet VS, and Korg Wavestation times. These were one of my first synths, I always liked to be able to tweak the waves directly, on top of normal synthesis. Samplers like ASR-10 were great for that, too - "transwaves". It is absolutely nothing new, but it became popular because the market is saturated with [boring] old analogue emulations of simple subtractive synths.

 

Modulation options you probably are talking about have nothing to do with wavetable synthesis itself (aside from wavetable scanning itself, but that was an option even back in the day). You can apply them to any sound. For example Phase Plant has (or had, I have not checked, if they updated it) no wavetable transform modes, but you can recreate any of them with FM/PM/AM/pitch modulation!