It’s a little sad that the original wavetable creators PPG and Waldorf are mostly forgotten, for wavetables now mean XferRecords’ Serum (and the tributes that desperate software houses have made since). When you work with Serum you appreciate how much effort has gone into the interface. It is a wavetable synthesiser that isn’t a pain in the ass – sorry Waldorf!
The key feature is that you can see what you are doing. Everything is right there, real time, in an interface designed for computer screens. The wavetables are animated. Knobs appear where they make sense. A set of warping tools make complex and exciting transformations of the wavetables. The filters are varied and excellent, and you can see exactly what’s happening on the frequency graph. Effects are extensive and useful. Automation is mostly drag and drop. (When I say ‘everything’ – well the controls for detuning and stacking oscillators have ended up on a general settings page, where they look unfinished and afterthought.)
The second key feature is it sounds really good out of the box. Boom!
Its dominance is made clear by the number of synthesisers that now rely on Serum wavetables – from Kontakt to Ableton. Even if you already have a wavetable player, you may still need Serum just make your own sounds. Or look online where you will find many done for you, including those converted from Massive, Animoog … and yes Waldorf.
Uh Oh Trouble on the Horizon
Since the first version of this page a threat to Serum has arrived called Vital. This is free to use, paid by the waveforms you can buy. It loads up anything that Serum can, and does anything that Serum can, and looks awfully like it’s going to spoil the fun for XferRecords big time. This is a good thing, because it should inspire them to strive for difference.
Wavetables ain’t easy
Even though Serum has excellent wavetable construction tools you might be disappointed with your first efforts. Wavetables don’t include pitch information; they simply divide up larger waveforms into a grid. If you don’t match the pitch of note and sample, it sounds horrible. If there’s too many inharmonics – horrible. If you have a sound that varies in pitch – horribly horrible. In these cases, you should either switch to an additive synthesiser like Padshop 2, or scale back your expectations to simpler source material. Serum is not a sampler.