Differences between Wavestate and Modwave?

[Dniss]

Does anyone knows the major differences between Wavestate and Modwave?

[danatkorg]

Does anyone knows the major differences between Wavestate and Modwave?

The wavestate and modwave are pretty different - in both the underlying technology and the sonic results.

The wavestate is fundamentally a samples + subtractive synthesis architecture. Wave Sequences play lists of samples, and can also modify synthesis parameters, like a complex step sequencer. The wavestate's Wave Sequencing 2.0 brings this to a new level through its modulatable Lanes and per-step probability, for organic, ever-changing sounds that respond to realtime control.

Wave Sequencing is great for leveraging the richness of sampled sources and combining them in unique and interesting ways. The flip side of this is that, since Wave Sequencing is based on samples, there are limited options for altering the fundamental timbres.

The modwave is primarily a wavetable synthesizer. (It can play samples too, but not wave sequences.) Its oscillators play single-cycle waveforms. These waveforms are grouped into sets called "wavetables," which let you smoothly transform from one single-cycle waveform to another.

Wavetables, when played without any modulation, are pretty static - just like analog waveforms. But, compared to samples, there are many more options for altering wavetables in real-time. Since the wavetables are all phase-synchronous, you can combine them together in ways that create a single new timbre instead of something that sounds like a layer (through Position, as well as the modwave's A/B Blend and associated B Position Offset). For the same reason, crossfaded sweeps through wavetables create a continuous evolution in timbre.

(In comparison, if you use the wavestate's Wave Sequencing 2.0 to crossfade between a set of single-cycle samples - such as the VS waves - they will not be phase-synchronous, and you'll hear each sound fade out as the next fades in. It's an interesting effect, but different from the modwave.)

Since the output of a wavetable is a single-cycle waveform - even if it's one that keeps changing - you can manipulate it with a selection of "Morph" processes in real-time. Some of these are similar to features found in analog oscillators; others are digital-only. Each oscillator has a dedicated LFO for controlling Morph in real-time (of course, you can also use a large number of other modulation sources!).

The Morph types include a few different takes on pulse-width modulation/time distortion (Narrow, Stretch, and variations thereof), inverting the waveform at a modulatable midpoint (Flip), reflecting it around a center point (Mirror), etc. Even processes which make some sense with samples (Sync, AM, FM, Ring Mod) become more generally useful with single-cycle waveforms, since their effects are much more predictable and controllable.

Since the wavetables are rendered at load-time, there's an opportunity to change the rendering methods. The modwave takes advantage of this with "Modifiers," which do all sorts of things including additive-style manipulations (isolating odd or even harmonics, or every third harmonic, or emphasizing drawbar organ harmonics), anti-aliased quantization, saturation, and clipping to add high harmonic content, etc. Finally, combining these rendering options with phase-synchronous playback and A/B Blend, the modwave lets you load both altered and original wavetables in a single oscillator, and modulate the amount of rendered processing in realtime via envelopes, LFOs, sequencer lanes etc. Sometimes this has a kind of filter-ish sound, sometimes it's like additive synthesis, and sometimes it's just its own thing!

[Dniss]

Hi Dan! Hope you're doing well.
Thanks for such a great explanation!

Den

[Sharp]

Thanks Dan, that’s very good reading.
Seems to be a super flexible machine. I’m really looking forward to pairing a Modwave to my Wavestate. I would imagine for motion based synth sounds alone, linking both together would produce a mighty powerful sound.

Seems we are a good few weeks off seeing any shipping to us mere mortals though? Thomann here in the EU are saying 13 to 17 weeks away. Ouch...!!!!

Kind regards
Sharp.

[RC-IA]

Does the modwave share the samples material with wavestate?

[Sharp]

According to KORG’s own live stream Yes, it has all the multisamples of the wavestate, plus additional content, specifically DWGS multisamples. Beyond that, there may or may not be more but I don't know.
Check out 11:40 of the live stream and watch about 1 minutes worth to see some very specific details about this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LuGHcVvZZw

Plus you can load your own wavetables, but that’s something different from multisamples. Probably single cycle waves to be used as the carrier and then I guess sequenced into a string?

Personally, I would like to know more about this because it sounds like this could be very powerful feature that really opens this up to being, i guess “wide open” for some very interesting sound design.

Kind regards
Sharp.

[RC-IA]

Thanx

[Mellontikos]

Oh wow.

So essentially a Wavestate is a Wavestation on massive steroids, and a ModWave is a DW8000 on massive steroids?