The Sound of Massive

[Ledger]

I had a great idea: Let's have a thread, where we discuss NI Massive. Such as the wavetables, the inserts, the FX, etc.

I thought I'd start it, so here goes.

Crude wavetable: What is it? How did they make it? How is it so metallic?

[mthrfnk]

Crude wavetable: What is it? How did they make it? How is it so metallic?

WT POS L > R

[Hostile Invasion]

There's some picture floating around of an oscilloscope pics of all of Massive's wave tables. With each "panned" hard left or right, just like mthrfnk posted.

[mthrfnk]

http://quadrophone.com/massive-wavetable-images/

[Ledger]

Those pictures are very helpful, but tell me remotely nothing other than potential distortion.

[mthrfnk]

Those pictures are very helpful, but tell me remotely nothing other than potential distortion.

I don't want to sound like a dick but if you understand anything about waveforms and their application in synthesis (which hopefully you should ) then those waveforms should explain, at least in part, why some sounds sound how they do. A lot of the basic 1st WT POS waveforms are based around basic waveforms that have been skewed in certain ways (e.g. phase shifts) with the 2nd WT POS being sometimes similar with a lot of preintroduced harmonics.

For example you asked about Crude, look at the initial WT POS - it's a skewed triangle, perhaps blended with a saw idk, now what does a triangle wave sound like... now think about the other WT POS waveform, it's a heavily crushed/distorted style wave. Think what would happen when you blend these two, travelling from WT POS L-R Crude does indeed sounds like a triangle wave with perhaps a little more grit due to the fact it's skewed (you could use an Oscilloscope vst ater Massive to confirm this) now start blending the other waveform... you start to get some very aggresive higher harmonics introduced into your sound (which to put simply are the spikes in the 2nd Crude waveform) until you push it all the way to the right and you have a sound that is very rich in upper harmonics but lacks the lower end sound that the 1st waveform provides. If you use a spectrum analyser you can see that at the 1st WT POS you have some well defined low end harmonics (I'm playing C5 btw) with a large attentuation on the upper frequencies, the 2nd WT POS is the opposite with a large prescence of higher harmonics but attentuation on the lower end.

Now take some of the waveforms used to do vocally/yoi sounds - if you look at their waveforms you'll notice that their are some formant-like waveforms integrated in the spectrum (either Google for some pics of these or if you have FM8 I think it has the basic formant waveforms)... that at least explains in part why they sound how they do, these waveforms also have a lot of harmonics which presumably help emphasise these vocal characteristics. Actually take a look at Formant Saw, it'll give you an idea of the sort of waveforms I mean, FS is based around 2 saw waves that have been added construcitvely to some formant waves.

A lot of the names describe whats happening in the waveforms: Reducer is a bit-reduced square wave - now think what does a square wave sound like (and why) and what does bit reduction do, now try to think why that waveform sounds like it does... again similarly with stuff like Polysaw II - it literally is a translation between 2 polyphonic Saw waveforms (Polysaw I appears to transition from a polysaw to a polysquare(?) weirdly). There are however some waveforms that look ridiculous and to me at least don't relate to their names (Strontium for example). Waveforms in groups (i.e. where there;s I, II, III etc) obviously relate to each other too.

Again you could keep going on... in a lot of cases, to me at least, it seems the 1st waveform is often a more basic waveform (a starting point) that you can then blend into the 2nd waveform to generally add more harmonics/grit to shape and skew the sound further.

Sorry if all of this is redundant information or badly explained, you were correct about the levels of potential distortion - it's easy to pick up on why some waveforms sound like they do when you can visibly see the amount of pre-introduced harmonics.

[Mason]

Those pictures are very helpful, but tell me remotely nothing other than potential distortion.

lol you want to discuss wavetables and then a site showing you every wavetable is posted and it tells you 'remotely nothing'. It tells you everything you need to know about the wavetables imo.

[Dahneboy]

Umm.. really helpfull stuff when you look into what your really working and studying your waves. massive has a sine shaper that really can make your sounds sound metalic if you know how to use it with a phaser or filters, its really nice. also get to learn your routing it comes in handy Soundcloud i did all the basses in massive, if youd like i can go into detail on making it

[JaxxP]

Umm.. really helpfull stuff when you look into what your really working and studying your waves. massive has a sine shaper that really can make your sounds sound metalic if you know how to use it with a phaser or filters, its really nice. also get to learn your routing it comes in handy Soundcloud i did all the basses in massive, if youd like i can go into detail on making it

That's fucking wicked. Please do go into detail!

[DJens]

Umm.. really helpfull stuff when you look into what your really working and studying your waves. massive has a sine shaper that really can make your sounds sound metalic if you know how to use it with a phaser or filters, its really nice. also get to learn your routing it comes in handy Soundcloud i did all the basses in massive, if youd like i can go into detail on making it

Would love to see some details on how you achieved the distorted main patch in the drop!

[Dahneboy]

Its really easy once you get to know how to use massive, i used square waves on massive -12 second wavetable was bend + and the bottom one was bend -/+ or something , sent it through bandreject and comb filter, for modulation i added a tiny bit of phase, no feedback or whitenoise and sineshaper, you automate the band reject and the volume knobs and you get some wicked stuff, i bounced the audio down and seperated the frequencies and compressed my mids with camelphat and added i think was flanger and automated that

[mthrfnk]

I like how this thread went from a technical discussion, to someone posting an over-distorted midrange then people being like "omg bro how u make filthy baz0rz" :9:

[ehbes]

Jungle is massive

[Dahneboy]

I like how this thread went from a technical discussion, to someone posting an over-distorted midrange then people being like "omg bro how u make filthy baz0rz" :9:

[Tordal]

ok, so let's get back to technical issues to discuss...

i've got a basic question about oscilloscopes and waveforms:
i know that waveforms a the time based signals, whereas the spectrum is the frequency related signal and that these two are related to each other by the Fourier-transformation.
but how do i tell by the waveform if i have low-end frequency present or high-end frequency? like mothrfnk said about the 2 waveforms in the post above. is it that heavily distorted waveforms (with much harmonics) in general have more high-end and waveforms with less distortion ("softer waveforms") have more low-end regardless of the actual waveform, i.e. if it's more shaped like a sine or a saw or a square?

i can make good use of spectrum analyzer as i know what they actual tell me; i cannot make any use of oscilloscopes or waveform editors because i have little to no knowledge what those tell me.

[mthrfnk]

ok, so let's get back to technical issues to discuss...

i've got a basic question about oscilloscopes and waveforms:
i know that waveforms a the time based signals, whereas the spectrum is the frequency related signal and that these two are related to each other by the Fourier-transformation.
but how do i tell by the waveform if i have low-end frequency present or high-end frequency? like mothrfnk said about the 2 waveforms in the post above. is it that heavily distorted waveforms (with much harmonics) in general have more high-end and waveforms with less distortion ("softer waveforms") have more low-end regardless of the actual waveform, i.e. if it's more shaped like a sine or a saw or a square?

i can make good use of spectrum analyzer as i know what they actual tell me; i cannot make any use of oscilloscopes or waveform editors because i have little to no knowledge what those tell me.

The pitch of a sound, i.e. whether it's got low or high frequency content, is related to the frequency at which the wave oscillates - a sine at 20Hz is oscillating 20 times/second, a sine at 20kHz is oscillating 20,000 times a second. Now if you saw these two waveforms on an oscilloscope in a single trace (i.e. a one second pulse) the one at 20kHz would have 1000 more peaks and troughs than the 20Hz one, in fact depending how you viewed it it may just look like a solid block as the wave may not be distiguishable. So by picking out sharp frequency changes in a waveform trace or image you can generally assume that when you hear the sound, these sharp changes will relate to high frequency noises or in the case of instruments - harmonics, all this is dependant on the scale of the trace though, obviously you could stretch out a 20kHz pulse to make it look like a 20Hz pulse just by changing the scale on your plot. Also of note, the amplitude (i.e. the "height") of a waveform on a scope dictates how loud it is.

This is why a square wave has many more harmonics that a sine wave, in terms of Fourier synthesis a square wave is the sum of many sine waves:

Harmonics (the faster oscillating waves) are added to the base sine wave, and through constructive/destructive interferance you start to build up your square wave. In terms of audio these harmonics are audible, which is why when you play a note in a sine you'll hear only one frequency but when you use a square you'll hear multiple - making it seem louder or in the case of bass, "warmer".

Edit: I should make it clear waveforms by themselves technically tell you nothing about how "low or high" they will sound, you need a scale on the plot to discerne that properly like I said above, but if you're comparing waveforms (like the Massive plots I posted above) then yes, you can generally assume the ones with more spikes i.e. distortion artifacts/harmonics will have more high frequency content and potentially have a less dominant low end due to the fact that the amplitude of the low end waves used to construct the waveform are diminished through destructive addition of harmonics.

[Tordal]

thx mate. much appreciated