difficulty understanding wavetable

[Smag]

I've got a Microwave XT, I hope I can help.

A wavetable is a list of digital waves that the user compiles. I think my microwave allows you to choose from 500 waves but each wavetable only allows up to 60 waves to be compiled.

You can have 2 waves in a wavetable or 10, or whatever, I think my microwave allows up to 60 waves per table.

say you have 2 waves, a square and a saw and in the table they are positioned at locations 1 and 60 respectively.

You can then turn a knob and "mix" from the sound of your square wave into the saw. Not massively exciting but it gets good when you have several different waves in the table and set LFOs to sweep them. When people say "wavetable sweep" they just mean to cycle through these different waves.

Add filters, fm, LFO's and FX and you're laughing. Wavetable synthesis has got quite a glassy, crystal sound because of the digital waves.