As a former Ensoniq owner, I'm enjoying your transwave experiments. Bill Mauchly of Ensoniq marketed some single-cycle wavetables under the third party Waveboy brand; in fact they are still being sold by Chicken Systems. These Ensoniq samplers can be made to do smoothly modulating single-cycle wavetables as Wolfgang Palm intended. I've made a few transwaves myself, so I'll reveal the "secrets" to anyone who might still be interested ... To make smoothly modulating single-cycle wavetables for Ensoniq EPS 16+ or ASR-10, I started with a table of all the available sampling frequencies generated from sampling at every available rate and examining the files on my computer to determine fractional sampling frequencies. Looking at samples I still have from those days, I see numbers like 32894.7368, 36764.7059, 39064.0259, etc. The 16+ supports many sampling rates, but not just any sampling rate. The ASR-10 supports playback at any rate supported by 16+, although it can natively sample at fewer rates. Then I compared the table of sampling rates to a table of A440 equal tempered frequencies and made a list of notes whose frequencies were subharmonics of the sampling frequency, to within about one cent accuracy. In other words, at those notes and sampling frequencies, a single period of a waveform would be an exact number of samples, making it possible to create a series of waveforms that could modulate smoothly in the way originally conceived by Wolfgang Palm. The key was to conform the waveforms to exact sample number periodicity, and let the Ensoniq sample playback transposition algorithm compensate for playback not necessarily being at the original pitch or sample rate of the wavetable. I wish I still had that list of the "magic" notes and sampling rates; I'd just paste it in if I did! One could reproduce my work quickly by the above methods if interested. (You also need a synthesis system that can synthesize tones at arbitrary sampling frequencies. In the 90s I used the Amiga program Synthia Pro for that.) Alternatively, you can make any series of smoothly crossfaded single-cycle waveforms work as long as the waveform period is uniformly a whole number of samples, without caring about the frequencies of either notes or sampling rates. Just tune it with the sampler! The "magic" notes and sample frequencies are simply those that require the least transposition by the sample playback engine to compensate for tuning, thereby optimizing sound quality near the root pitch of the sample.
I've really wanted to get more into this with the Mirage. I'm pretty quick with programming it but dealing with the "Pages" always confused me. I could seemingly make very simple wavetable-like sounds, but it wasn't really what I wanted. I have an S612 and if you set the sample rate at the perfect point, and record an F note, it produces a perfectly looped sample, considering the source was steady enough pitchwise. No crossfading involved. I've created amazing single cycle waveforms of my own voice within seconds using this technique.
If only there was an Ensoniq ASR-10 demoscene just like the Amiga tracker demoscene back in the day. It would be interesting to have an archive of 2MB Ensoniq ASR-10 module files and to see what the ASR-10 was truly capable of.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently, too. I still have my TS-10 but it's mostly being used as a 61 key poly-AT controller, and occasionally twiddling with the built-in waves. Sadly, I lost the ability to transfer samples to it a while ago when I stupidly sold my ASR-10 🤦♂️; but I'm finding the Korg Kronos to be a very capable alternative with its wave sequences, fwiw. A bit expensive but so are second-hand ASR's, so... Anyways, I 100% agree. It would be amazing to see what Ensoniq would be producing today if they had survived.
@@whenvioletsturngrey9597 They really are monstrous, and if you can snag one at that price I highly recommend it. If you're the type to replace studio equipment at all, it might be the bit that has you selling most of your other gear 😆. And my apologies for sort of derailing the topic from the original Ensoniq discussion, I've just been pining for some good transwaves, hyperwaves, and wavetables in general. ✌️
I owned the TS10 and did a lot of reverse engineering about TW and in the end it's just WAVETABLE with a fancy name. :-p I added this to my Wusik Station plugin.
Very much, and the best part is/was that you get to bring your own wavetables to the party! That and the modulation capabilities on the EPS/16+ and ASR-10 (also TS-10, which you could load earlier Ensoniq sample formats into up to 8MB or RAM) made it a very formidable synthesizer, far more powerful than just a simple sampler-plus-effects.
The rack extension GRAIN from reason studio, have this granular sample synth approach, it's litteraly fucked up every sample you put inside, but you can also adding another module that also add freezer and repeat with filtrer.
Great demonstration and it's really nice to see another perspective picking up where Robin left off! 😀 Interestingly enough, RU-vid sent me over here after watching his TS-10 videos, and I'm glad to see the Ensoniq community still thriving together. (Also interestingly enough, I'm seeing a fair number of new comments about 2 1/2 years after the original video post- another good sign for the Ensoniq community 🙂) Thanks for sharing and thanks for breaking it down!
Sounds right to me. You can also think of it as a wavetable synth, with the restriction that all rows in the table have to be made from a section of the same sample. The rows can, however, be really long. With a long sample and careful offsets, you can get close to a general wavetable. (Glue your waves together into a long sample then chop it up with careful modulation of the loop offsets. Learned trick from Robin Bausewein on here. Tends to end up with its own character which can be difficult to tame and hard to create)
I'm not enough of a technical expert to answer conclusively, but I can tell you that I consider wavetable and transwave to be "functionally" very similar, to the point of being interchangeable in many cases. In both cases you are using a mod source to scan though a sample to create complex and evolving sounds.
@@crominion6045 I also tend to agree that they're essentially performing the same task. Ensoniq definitely offered a far more open and accessible approach as far as being able to use your own samples; which is a double-edged sword: flexibility at the expense of ease of wavetable creation. But the spirit was always more about the synthesis and exploration than about re-treading PPG's (et al) path, so you could end up in some pretty uncharted waters pretty quickly with very interesting and pleasing results 😀
@@fabbrismidnight I definitely agree that the EPS-16+ (and by extension ASR and TS series) have their own character. I'm kicking myself lately for not having leaned into the wavetable aspect when I had my ASR-10 keyboard years ago- mostly using it as a sampler and effects, albeit for some rather interesting, Ensoniq-tinged sonic mangling. I'm really appreciating your video breakdown as well as Robin's video series- and I have to say I'm extremely impressed by your continued attribution- it's a huge asset to the community 🙂
You can simulate a wavetable using one transwave sample - just “assemble” your smaller waves in necessary order and make them same size (let’s say 128 samples each). Can be done on computer and then sent to sampler using MIDI SDS. This will create ability to scan thru waves as simple wavetable (with corresponding parameters specified in sampler).
