u-he

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Fri Sep 14, 2018 3:06 pm

Hi,

To prepare the world for Hive's upcoming wavetable scanning feature, we have decided to unleash a preliminary version (UI and all is subject to change).

First off, these versions are not polished and they are not considered production level. Use at your own risk. These Hive and Zebra2 releases are WIP versions solely for the purpose of testing the wavetable feature and starting the process of wavetable generation. The XY feature in particular is not yet final.

The wavetable feature is pretty mature though. The work done there will be valid in the final Hive 1.2 version.

Note: All of this is designed under the premise to incur the least change possible to Hive. For most end users, all that changes is the addition of a gazillion waveforms. We did not want to add elaborate wavetable editors or anything. We leave wavetable generation up to those who want to dive in. They can use the scripting feature as well as Zebra2 or Serum, or even WaveEdit and other tools. We will furthermore not discuss other feature wishes at this stage.

How To:

What's new is, Hive.data (Win) and App Support/u-he/Hive/ now have a Wavetable folder. We have added a few examples, but you can use any Serum-format .wav files for this. Here's a little graphic illustrating how to access those wavetables from within Hive (open in separate window to enlarge):

Wavetable browser with Fwd/Bwd buttons for directory and file. Click anywhere to browse via menu or rescan for new entries
Pos: Scan through Wavetable (use ModMatrix to animate)
Auto: Scan through Wavetable without ModMatrix
Auto Mode: Scan once, looped forward or back and forth
Reverse: Flip Wavetable back to front
Cyclic: Use if the wavetable cycles seamlessly, i.e. the first frame follows after the last and so on
Interpolator: Different interpolation methods applied in realtime (!)

Multi Table Feature:

This feature splits the wavetable into 2-16 parts. So a wavetable with 30 frames can be split into 3 wavetables with 10 frames each by setting the number of SubTables to 3. The Subtable Position knob then scans through those 3 tables. This opens up a second dimension of wavetable scanning, example for velocity crossfades or some kind of multisample support.

Pos: Crossfrade through Sub Tables
Tables: Number of Subtables to split the wavetable into

Working with uhm-files:

Apart from .wav files, this version also reads and processes .uhm files. These are text files saved with .uhm ending. They contain scripts in some kind of wavetable generation and manipulation language we came up with. A preliminary guide is linked below.

start by duplicating any of the example scripts (make sure it ends with ".uhm", not ".txt" or ".uhm 2" whatsoever)
in Hive's WT browser, right-click & "rescan", then load the new script file
Open the script file ina text editor, e.g. BBEdit, Coda or UltraEdit
Edit away
Save when ready
Hive will automatically load the freshly saved file within a second or two
In case of errors (very likely at the beginning), the info field in Hive will tell you what went wrong
Keep editing, saving and playing!

Using Zebra2 as WT Editor for Hive

Also, we have build a special version of Zebra2 (Dot8-Skin only) which has wavetable export for Hive:

double-click "Z2 Wavetable Export" to set the file name
set Max to the maximum number of frames you wish to export
press Rec to enable recording, then play a note to actually record frames
while you record, a progress bar gives feedback
Note: Without modulation of Warp or OscFX, only single frmaes get recorded, i.e. recording depends on change of waveform
press Save to save the wavetable into Zebra2.data/Wavetables (Win) or App Support/u-he/Zebra2/Wavetables
press clr to start over

This way Zebra2's Osc1 can be used as wavetable editor, including OscFX and Normalization (but not unison, phase, mix, sync or pwm)

Grab:

Hive 7742 Mac: https://uhedownloads-heckmannaudiogmb.n ... 42_Mac.zip
Hive 7742 Win: https://uhedownloads-heckmannaudiogmb.n ... 42_Win.zip
WT Scriping Language: https://uhedownloads-heckmannaudiogmb.n ... ge_WIP.pdf

Zebra2 7730 Mac: https://uhedownloads-heckmannaudiogmb.n ... 30_Mac.zip
Zebra2 7730 Win: https://uhedownloads-heckmannaudiogmb.n ... 30_Win.zip

Enjoy,

- Urs

Hint: If you're using WaveEdit, it only emits wavetables with a length of 256 samples per frame. Add -WT256 into the filename and Hive will interpret the .wav accordingly.

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Fri Sep 14, 2018 3:15 pm

Sorry, I didn't record any voice over, but this video might help getting things started:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGACzaFMnvE

(synth audio lags a bit... but d'oh)

The script explained:

Code: Select all

Info "morphing two waveforms"

Sets the info text for the Info field. This can be a short tweet about using this wavetable.

Code: Select all

Import "2 waves from zebra -WT2048 x2.wav"

Loads the wavetable "2 waves from zebra -WT2048 x2.wav" which was generated in Zebra.

Code: Select all

NumFrames=101

This particular wavetable from Zebra2 had only 2 frames. So we're blowing things up to 101 frames. They're numbered 0 ... 100, which is useful because this way they correspond to the knob position (0-100) of Hive's Wavetable position parameter. The two original frames from Zebra remain frames 0 and 1, while 2-100 contain silence.

Code: Select all

Move start=1 end=1 to=100

We need to move the second frame to the last frame...

Code: Select all

Interpolate start=0 end=100 type=morph1

... because now we can morph between frame 0 and frame 100, filling 1-99 with a seamless morph!

Code: Select all

Normalize db=0 base=each

Now, make it all nice and loud enough

Sound Author · Post by **Sound Author** » Fri Sep 14, 2018 5:02 pm

WOW! Amazing work Urs and Team u-he! This is like Christmas!

Even though it's still a WIP, I'm happy as a clown just to fiddle with the new controls. I do have one FR: A looping Auto Mode that is free-running. I have some really cool Zebra wavetables I am dying to export now!

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Fri Sep 14, 2018 5:05 pm

Sound Author wrote:A looping Auto Mode that is free-running.

Gotta keep it simple for now... use free running LFO from the ModMatrix...

I have some really cool Zebra wavetables I am dying to export now!

I'm sure you do!

Sound Author · Post by **Sound Author** » Fri Sep 14, 2018 5:14 pm

Also, kudos on that XY section. Having all four XY controls on one screen is a huge time saver.

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Fri Sep 14, 2018 5:18 pm

Sound Author wrote:Also, kudos on that XY section. Having all four XY controls on one screen is a huge time saver.

The actual time save is, you - the sound designer - don't need to do much. It'll auto-assign something useful. Hopefully

Btw. scroll-wheel sorts through the XYs, in case you want to access one that is hidden.

AnX · Post by **AnX** » Fri Sep 14, 2018 5:41 pm

so what is the wav format hive imports?

does one "wave table" have a specific amount on slots?

ie 16/44 mono 64 slots etc?

tbh im not really that interested, wt stuff just kinda all sounds metallic to me, pads with wt sweeps are a bit naff imo, and there are so many good emulations around (uhe stuff included of course) that using a wt to get an osc waveform seems pointless. Maybe other ppl have diff uses for it... i know i cant be arsed to go thru 20,000 waveforms to find a sound

anyway, just curious about the format, no offence meant

btw · Post by **btw** » Fri Sep 14, 2018 5:51 pm

Urs wrote:WT Scriping Language: https://uhedownloads-heckmannaudiogmb.n ... ge_WIP.pdf

This is WT nerd heaven! Thank you!!! Germane to my grateful enthusiasm(!): the word for (x!) in mathematical English is factorial. Faculty, a cognate with the German Fakultät, was used historically, but that bit of trivia will be unfamiliar to most native English speakers, as it was to me until I read about it just now!

Funkybot's Evil Twin · Fri Sep 14, 2018 6:25 pm

Possibly a dumb question, but is the wavetable morphing in Hive any different than the morphing in Zebra? Is it a higher resolution?

lunardigs · Post by **lunardigs** » Fri Sep 14, 2018 6:42 pm

Very cool!
I'm excited to see Linux builds for this eventually.

surreal · Post by **surreal** » Fri Sep 14, 2018 6:51 pm

Cool Urs will check this out.

Hope there is that nice Tx bass, Sweep and Choir in there!

clangorous · Post by **clangorous** » Fri Sep 14, 2018 7:14 pm

Very cool stuff! I'm wanting to try it, but will the installs of these test versions impact my existing instances of Hive and Zebra 2.8?

Sound Author · Post by **Sound Author** » Fri Sep 14, 2018 7:35 pm

Does anyone know of a nifty trick to take advantage of all 256 frames when recording wavetables in Zebra? Like a unipolar saw wave LFO (modulating the WaveWarp parameter) set to a specific time in milliseconds? I'm sure it all depends on your sample rate. I'm using 44100. So, if each cycle is 2048 samples, how long would 256 cycles be in milliseconds?

daily patcher · Post by **daily patcher** » Fri Sep 14, 2018 7:35 pm

Note this is for the original Hive skin only, you must switch from Honeycomb to see the wavetable buttons.

pdxindy · Post by **pdxindy** » Fri Sep 14, 2018 7:38 pm

Sound Author wrote:Does anyone know of a nifty trick to take advantage of all 256 frames when recording wavetables in Zebra? Like a saw wave LFO set to a specific time in milliseconds? I'm sure it all depends on your sample rate. I'm using 44100. So, if each cycle is 2048 samples, how long would 256 cycles be in milliseconds?

The resolution knob also changes the speed of recording...

u-he

KVR Audio

Tech Preview: Hive Wavetables