Ableton live 10 software#

One downside of classic hardware wavetable synths was the usually tiny display – with the PPG Wave or Korg Wavestation, for example, musicians were left to navigate wavetables on sound alone. Inspired by the goals of accessibility and control, Wavetable’s user interface provides a “snapshot” view of what’s going on with the sound - the selected wavetables (including the current lookup position of each one), modulators and modulation routings, filter slopes, and more. I learned a lot from the PPG Wave in this regard.”

“You play with it, adjust the wavetable, the envelopes and the filter till it is right, and that's it. “It has a very large sweet spot sonically.” “You can get lost, but in the sound, not in tons of parameters,” adds Robert Henke. “ fairly easy for people to understand, given a good set of tables,” adds Hobson’s sound team colleague Matt Jackson. “A goal we had in mind with Wavetable was for it to be accessible to people who aren’t synth or sound design experts, but to still offer expert-level control when needed.”

Ableton live 10 software#

With so many classic bits of wavetable hardware and software for inspiration, what was the core goal of the designers behind Wavetable? “We spent a lot of time exploring the balance between simplicity and control,” explains Ian Hobson of Ableton’s sound team. As you’ll learn when playing with the Wavetable synth, it’s precisely this flexibility that makes it so useful. One thing you might have noticed by now is that wavetable synthesis is pretty chameleon-like – unlike, say, the oscillator drift and traditional waveforms of an analog synth or the bell-like tones of an FM synth, there’s no giveaway wavetable sound. Native Instruments’ Massive, Xfer Records’ Serum, Future Audio Workshop’s Circle, and Waldorf’s Nave are just a few of the diverse options that became available in the last decade for exploring wavetables. With the advent of more advanced plugins in the 00s and 10s, wavetable synthesis has matured and evolved to conquer new frontiers. There are too many great hardware wavetable synths to do justice in one article, so we’ve focused on a few legends - but if you’re interested in learning more about the history (or doing some auction hunting), don’t miss the Ensoniq Fizmo and Access Virus series. If you want to go further down this rabbit hole, this article from Sound on Sound is recommended. While sampled synthesis involves the use of a static digital sample, wavetable synthesis allows for the (optional) evolution of a waveform this is to say, while wavetable synths can sound like sampled synthesis, the evolving option (which is enabled by default on most classic wavetable sounds) differentiates it.

Wait, so isn’t this just sampled synthesis? Let’s pause here to address a common confusion. The waveforms are stored in a table and a section of the wave is “scanned” to make the sound at any given moment – the segment is sometimes referred to as the “table lookup”.

First conceived by musician and technologist Wolfgang Palm, wavetable synthesis involves the use of a digitally sampled waveform, which often then evolves as it is played. Part 1: Evolving SoundsĪt the risk of drilling the pun into the ground early, wavetable synthesis first emerged in the early 80s and quickly became a core component of the New Wave sound. David Abravanel took a deep dive into the history of wavetable synthesis, and got some insider info from the Ableton sound team, for this primer on everything you need to know to get wavey. As you can see and hear from the video above, Wavetable is capable of angelic pads, analog-style squelch, eerie sci-fi effects, and all sorts of evolving sounds, and at its heart is a new approach to wavetable synthesis. Wavetable is a brand new instrument native to Ableton Live 10.