Waldorf Largo - Manual (Page 72)

Appendix
Largo User´s Manual 72
Additive components of the Triangle wave
The reason why the triangle wave is so popular in classic
synthesizers: It could act as a suboscillator wave, to
emphasize certain frequencies or to frequency modulate
other oscillators.
The triangle wave sounds like a woodwind instrument,
i.e. a clarinet. It can also be used for mallet instruments
like vibraphone, xylophone etc.
Wavetable Synthesis in the Largo
The sound generation of the wavetables in the Largo is
based on wavetable synthesis. Although wavetable
synthesis is not a form of "sample playback", you should
avoid this term because functionality, operation and
results are totally different.
Each of the wavetables contain
up to single 128 waves.
m
Please keep the terms "wavetable" and "wave" in
mind. Don´t confuse the two.
The following overview explains how the Wavetable
Synthesis works: A wavetable into the Largo is a table
consisting of up to 128 waveforms. Each waveform is
classified by its own special sound character. The main
difference of wavetable synthesis in comparison with
other sound generation principles is the facility not only to
play one waveform per oscillator, but also to walk
through the wavetable via different modulations.
Therefore you can create wavetable sweeps. The results
can be dramatic - much more so than those any sample
playback based system could ever produce. This is a
unique feature of wavetable synthesis.
1 3 5 7 9
Frequency
Magnitude
Time
Amplitude
+
=
1st Harmonic
Magnitude 1
5th Harmonic
Magnitude 1/25
7th Harmonic
Magnitude 1/49
Harmonics
+
+
+
.
.
11 13 15
3rd Harmonic
Magnitude 1/9