A wavetable is a collection of single-cycle waveforms that can be scanned sequentially to animate a sound's timbre

A wavetable stores a series of single-cycle waveforms (‘frames’), each capturing a distinct harmonic snapshot of a sound at a moment in time. Playing back one frame continuously produces a static timbre; moving the wavetable position knob (or modulating it) scans through frames in sequence, morphing the timbre over time. A full wavetable in Serum 2 contains up to 256 frames; if the source provides fewer, the synth interpolates between them. The wavetable metaphor is a ‘flip book’: each page is a still, but flipping quickly creates motion. This is what distinguishes wavetable synthesis from subtractive or FM synthesis: the timbral complexity is pre-encoded in the table rather than generated by routing or math at playback time.

Examples

A ‘10-frame’ wavetable of a violin bow attack interpolated to 256 frames lets you sweep from the scratchy onset to the sustain body with one knob turn. In Serum 2: select a wavetable, then move the WT Position knob to hear the scan.

Assessment

Given a wavetable with 8 frames, describe what you would hear at position 0, position 4, and position 7; then explain what ‘interpolation’ means in this context.