Korg Wavestate

wavestation was one of the 90s synth that I definitely wanted to own in the future. As others mentioned no user samples is a shame but still more waves than sine/triangle/saw/pulse :wink: Now I need to come up with some moniker under which I will publish new age music created using wavestate :smiley:
Also the separate sequencer per few most important parameters is a really nice idea.
And I will too miss aliasing, as always what was considered a cons for people at the time becomes a important nostalgic factor for next generations.

Definitely :slight_smile:

Analog synths, while certainly discernible, don’t scream their make. But I take your and @oscillateur point.

I just personally am not going to buy a sample player that only plays someone else’s (preset) samples.

I’m just a bit scared of the complexity here.

This is what I though. I watched the Loopop review/tutorial & thought it sounded nice, but looks very fiddly to program (although this is a general complaint of mine on these type of synths, I must be getting old :grinning:)

This sound… is really not for me. But the way people are responding to it is really positive and awesome, so I imagine a lot of people are going to be happy. Makes me realize that my preferences (subtractive, analogue) are for things before my time, and that I probably am not into this because it’s the synth sound from when I was a teenager. Our brains are ridiculous. Can’t wait to see some Lines folk use this in all the weird and interesting ways!

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I find it very hard to get to the topic of how a synth sounds when it comes out. Most of what we hear in the various videos is highly biased by the aesthetic decisions made by the manufacturing company and the people who designed the presets. You need to scrape away layers and layers of this to get to the aspects that really make up the bulk sound aesthetic of an instrument.
While you can just wipe/overwrite/ignore all presets and hence remove the upper layers, the core sound of the instrument is hard to avoid.
My guess here is: once you get rid of all the presets, this might actually sound really interesting. But again… it’s really hard to tell now.

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Unfortunately the minilogue xd microtuning functions aren’t present. There’s only a list of preset scales. I guess that since the Wavestate code was most likely adapted from the Kronos (which doesn’t have full microtuning IIRC) they decided that it wasn’t worth the development effort, or left it for after release.

on the other hand presets are something that defines wavestation for me. One of the appeal for me is that it was used in a lot of early CGI etc and is a part of a sound of my childhood. But having more controls to edit sounds is always welcome so I am happy that Korg in contrast to Roland hasn’t decide to keep original abysymal interface.

Can’t wait for this to be the new analog warmth of the 2020s, with marketers proclaiming a ā€œfull naively coded signal path to maintain aliasing for that vintage digital edgeā€

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for me the absence of user loadable waves (not even mentioning the user recordable ones! that would be a dream) is a show stopper. i downloaded the manual in hopes to find any reference to being able to upload my sounds into it — and thoroughly failed.
also, why it needs the ā€œmultisampleā€ mode? to play their, hmmm, ā€œromplesā€?

i also owned the wavestation a/d. it sure was interesting and the ability to include live input in the wave sequence was truly amazing given the time it was created but i sold it on the grounds of not being able to escape that overproduced, too-commercial-ish sound that i remember it have.

Waaaaay over on the other side of the affordable/practical spectrum… full-sized Korg ARP 2600 reissue. $3200 MSRP, limited to 500 units. (edit: link below has it at $3900, guess we’ll see when it’s officially announced tomorrow)

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Similar to what some people commented, I’m not really into the sound of the presets. But the engine sounds nice, and you don’t have to go all rhythmic with the wave sequences.

When I say I like the engine and the basic sound, I base it on what I heard in cuckoos sound design tutorial.

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The video made me realize that anything that has -insert acoustic instrument name- sounds, but isn’t a -insert acoustic instrument name- is not really for me.
Cuckoo always does a great job at making me understand some basic things about the instruments he demos I must say!

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Which has resulted in this glorious Marc Doty documentary:

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Yep. ROMplers are not for me either.

I suppose all of you who won’t play something without user loadable waves are consistent with your argument and don’t use any oscillators that are not sample-based like pulse, saw, sine, triangle, either, do you? :thinking:

I have zero interest in using a synthesizer or sampler to try and recreate the sound of an acoustic instrument, but I love having a collection of acoustic samples on hand to use as the basis for creating new sounds. There’s something satisfying about making a nice evolving pad sound with waveforms named something like ā€œHonky Tonkā€ and ā€œJazz Saxā€. :slight_smile:

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I have a deep affinity with ā€œcheesyā€ digital sounds and after watching FM offerings and AWM offerings from Yamaha for the last year or so, this is right up my alley.

I don’t have any experience with the wavestation, so I have no real knowledge of what it’s supposed to be able to do, but I do love the sounds I hear from it in these demos. This will probably be my next (and only) synth purchase this year.

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Why does ā€œconsistency of argumentā€ matter? I’m relatively certain that people who are expressing this aren’t looking for a way to provide basic waveforms. They’re looking for a flexible way to make their own sample based instruments. Not ā€œsine waveā€ but ā€œtrumpetā€ or ā€œgamelan genderā€.

That being said, I recognize that it’s an easier-said-than-done task. Making great sample-based instruments requires multi-sampling, key-mapping, etc and it’s a lot of work just to make a single patch. I sort of doubt tons of folks are doing that sort of thing (and those that do are likely using Kontakt to do it).

But I can see where having a keyboard, and interesting polymetric sequencing, could make this an interesting MPC alternative, if it had the ability to record audio input. I just don’t think that type of application is what this instrument is going for.

But maybe in v2.0.

It matters because there’s zero difference between a non-changeable source wave and a fixed-waveform oscillator. So for those expressing such an intense avoidance of synthesizers with non-changeable source waves, it’s ridiculous to throw out the entire concept if you’re perfectly happy with, e.g. saws and pulses. There’s zero difference - a source waveform is a source waveform. It’s one thing to say ā€œI’d like to be able to load my ownā€ and entirely another to say ā€œit’s completely unacceptableā€ when it’s literally the same thing as something else you might use and find totally worthwhile. So it has more waves than squares, saws, and sines. Yay! Why would adding extras be at all a turnoff for anyone unless that person used exclusively their own samples for oscillator raw material? It’s an inconsistent argument and therefore invalid, because clearly other fixed waveforms are not a problem for said person - tis only a mask to hide behind.

trumpet. gamelan.

not sin, saw, or square.

Was I unclear?