Tech Preview: Hive Wavetables

[pdxindy]

But Serum and Icarus are now the most mentioned wavetable synths for some reason, and I bet that fact they can edit and create wavetables has something to do.

Seems like it would have some influence... but being able to resynthesis audio is likely more influence. I basically never go into the actual editor in Icarus.

What Hive has is the Uhm scripts (a unique in the practical sense and freshly conceived function)... the ability to import Wavetables... plus with Zebra you can draw and export Zebra wavetables for Hive.

That seems like enough to me for the actual wavetable.

[Sound Author]

Welp, it looks like this is a very real problem for me now. When using wavetables, I've noticed that oscillator phase modulations via LFO will not only crash Hive, but Ableton Live as well. It happened before on another patch I was working on, but I wasn't sure if it was just me or a bug. I had also combined the phase modulated wavetable oscillator with an inverted (saw) sub oscillator (within the same oscillator). I've noticed that Hive crashes and burns every time when I create this scenario. Has anyone else had this problem?

[pdxindy]

Welp, it looks like this is a very real problem for me now. When using wavetables, I've noticed that oscillator phase modulations via LFO will not only crash Hive, but Ableton Live as well. It happened before on another patch I was working on, but I wasn't sure if it was just me or a bug. I had also combined the phase modulated wavetable oscillator with an inverted (saw) sub oscillator (within the same oscillator). I've noticed that Hive crashes and burns every time when I create this scenario. Has anyone else had this problem?

I just tried it in Bitwig, OSX and played some notes for a few minutes... no crash.

[Sound Author]

Hive 1.2 in Live 10 on Windows 10 ... Bites the dust @ 2:54 ...

Use a Wavetable for Osc1.
Route anything to WT position and have that going.
Set Sub1 to anything other than "Like Osc" (=) i.e. sine, saw etc.
Make sure both Osc1 and Sub1 are active in the Filter section.
Route LFO1 to Osc1 Phase.
Play for a few minutes. It should crash...EVENTUALLY. It takes a few minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fi_8dPh5-o

[Sound Author]

^ I'll delete the video. Just wanted y'all to know.

[spunkmuffin]

^ Sounds like drunk mosquitoes singing.
Don't delete it!

[Sound Author]

LOL, well the drunk mosquitoes need to learn how to hold their liquor and stop crashing my DAW.

[Urs]

it's fixed... just not yet seeded...

[fmr]

OK, here are some recordings I did with seven wavetable synths (not all of them “synths” actually, since I don’t consider HALion and Falcon as mere “synths”). All files are WAV format with 24-bit and 44.1kHz resolution.

Take into consideration that HALion and Nave don’t read WAV wavetable files directly, they analyze and resynthesize the audio file into a wavetable in their own format. Sometimes, the translation doesn’t go though as smoothly as we would expect (for example, the wavetable ARR was translated very differently in NAVE, although the sound doesn’t differ much). Also, the wavetable “TOMita”, which was created in Icarus, wasn’t read directly bu Serum, so I had to import the audio and create a new one. This led to a somehow different wavetable. I had to go into extensively tests and reading to be able to faithfully translate the wavetables in HALion, but now I think I finally got it.

The “synths” in these recordings are Falcon, HALion, Hive, Icarus, Nave, New (an unreleased new wavetable synth, which I don’t say more due to NDA), and Serum. I recorded three wavetables: PPG Wavetable #01 (purely synthetic), ARR (a wavetable created from a recording of the famous ARR sound of the Fairlight), and TOMita (from a very small audio fragment of Tomita’s “Pictures at an Exhibition").

I tuned the preset so that all synths play the PPG wavetable more or less at the same speed. I was convinced that would make the other two wavetables to also play at the same speed. It happened it wasn’t quite so. I could go on, and create a new preset in each of the synths for each wavetable, but I had already spent too much time with this already. Anyway, I think this is enough to give a rough idea of the similarities and differences between the synths. These are almost unnoticeable in the PPG wavetable (naturally) but are more noticeable in the ARR one, and even more in the TOMita one. I also have to say that Hive didn't perform as "synthetic" as I recalled from previous approaches

I leave to you the comments and judgments. I have my own, of course, but I will not go further right now, except to reinforce what I already said twice: There is no “right way” to do wavetable, and that’s why all wavetable synths are slightly different. This isn’t bad, IMO, quite the contrary.

First, the PPG wavetable in all the seven synths:

Falcon WT PPG

HALion WT PPG

Hive WT PPG

Icarus WT PPG

Nave WT PPG

New WT PPG

Serum WT PPG

Now the ARR wavetable in all the seven synths:

Falcon WT ARR

HALion WT ARR

Hive WT ARR

Icarus WT ARR

Nave WT ARR

New WT ARR

Serum WT ARR

And finally, the TOMita wavetable in all seven synths:

Falcon WT TOMita

HALion WT TOMita

Hive WT TOMita

Icarus WT TOMita

Nave WT TOMita

New WT TOMita

Serum WT TOMita

[Viktor [TUC]]

Hi fmr,
many of the wavetable synths you used offer various different interpolation methods (or sometimes no interpolation) too, could you maybe also say which ones you've used in each example?

[fmr]

Hi fmr,
many of the wavetable synths you used offer various different interpolation methods (or sometimes no interpolation) too, could you maybe also say which ones you've used in each example?

Hi:

I always tried to use the default options. For example, in Hive, I used "crossfade". In HALion, I also used crossfade (10%). Mode of building wavetables is equal distance, with fixed length (but that is only meaningful for the resynthesis process). In Icarus, the oscillator mode is None/Partial (obviously), and in mono. Actually, in all synths that offered mono or stereo options to read the wavetable, I always chose mono. Also, for all that have Unison option, that option was turned off, of course. In Serum, the warp is set to 0. LFO (the modulator I chose to travel de WT), was set to a smooth of 50%. In Falcon, all options were set to 0 or their default options. In Nave, all modulations were set to 0 also. The only modulation used (in all of them) was the one needed to make the wavetable "travel" (except for amplitude envelopes, of course).

Only one oscillator was used. No duplication of wavetables. As I said, I did my best to keep the wavetable reading as neutral as I could.

[Urs]

Are you sure that the "ARR wavetable" is an actual wavetable file? It sounds pretty broken in Hive.

[Viktor [TUC]]

[EDIT: fmr fixed the ARR wavetable error for his Hive example, thanks!]

I always tried to use the default options.

Hi fmr,
thanks for the info.
Could you maybe post the wavetables that you used in your examples? Like Urs says, I also get the impression that the ARR wavetable sounds odd in Hive, as if something's wrong with loop points.
I'd like to try it myself if I may.

Cheers!

[fmr]

Sure, no problem. As I said, it is a "real" wavetable in the sense that it was created after the sample used for the famous ARR sound. So, it isn't a synthetic wavetable, but a resynthesized wavetable. It was done in Serum, if I remember well (not sure anymore).

EDIT: Correction: It was created in Audio-Term

EDIT 2: I was checking, and I may have used the wrong wavetable in Hive. I had to create a special one for Falcon, because, for some reason, Falcon didn't recognize the original wavetable created in Audio-Term. I may have copied that one into the Hive folder, instead of the original. I was checking, and with the Falcon wavetable, the preset sounds a little "grainy" (as it also sounds in Falcon) and I have to transpose down like two octaves to get the correct sound, while with the correct one it sounds cleaner and at the correct pitch.

Was that what you referred?

Link: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AlYyQJYLETH8iXHRYnLUcfgK0a2m

[Viktor [TUC]]

I was checking, and I may have used the wrong wavetable in Hive.

Yes, thanks for that. Could you fix the Hive example in your above comparison post and use the correct wavetable please?
I tried it myself in Hive and it's clean with the correct wavetable.