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So, as we all know the sine and parabolic shaper in massive sound sweet, both of them.
We also know they are waveshapers.
Logic doesn't have a built in waveshaper (that I know of).
Does anyone know of an AU waveshaper that, in some way can make sines?
Like, the ones i've tried, you have to 'draw' yourself, which is cool as shit but you can't get sines or parabols exactly because it will never be perfect. So I guess a waveshaper that has a sineshaper preset or that you can make a sine or parabol with in some way?
Would be great to use massives sine/parabol shaper on other synths.


Thanks guys, love you all.

With Trash You can draw Your own wave shapes..Even in multi band.
Give it a try.

Is there a sine setting though? Impossible to draw a perfect sine.

Who really cares if it's a perfect sine? I doubt you could hear the difference. I'd bet Massive's sine shaper only uses an approximation of a sine internally for efficiency anyway.

SunkLo wrote:Who really cares if it's a perfect sine? I doubt you could hear the difference. I'd bet Massive's sine shaper only uses an approximation of a sine internally for efficiency anyway.

I suppose that could be true, BUT:
In that case why can you hear the difference between a parabol and a sine shaper? What I draw doesn't look like any of them. It's not about a mathematically perfect sine, it's about making it sound like that, and me attempting to draw a sine with a mouse does NOT create the same effect as massive's sine shaper!

Wonder what that is. Man, I'd love to spend a day with everyone at native instruments and just record everything and let them explain how they make everything.

And then spend a year studying DSP just to understand what the hell they're talking about.


Parabol and Sine are pretty radically different. A parabol is an exponential rectifier, the sine is just doing some foldback. With a parabol, 1 and -1 map to 1, with a sine they map to 0. Massive doesn't show you the shape so you can't really easily tell what it is. It could be just folding back the sine a little bit or it could be using the full period of the sine to shape the audio. You can probe the waveshaper with a low frequency saw wave and look at an oscilloscope. That'll show you how it's being shaped. Keep in mind there's lots of other variables going on inside massive so you're not going to get a perfect replica.

What waveshaper are you even using to try and approximate these shapes?

SunkLo wrote:And then spend a year studying DSP just to understand what the hell they're talking about.


Parabol and Sine are pretty radically different. A parabol is an exponential rectifier, the sine is just doing some foldback. With a parabol, 1 and -1 map to 1, with a sine they map to 0. Massive doesn't show you the shape so you can't really easily tell what it is. It could be just folding back the sine a little bit or it could be using the full period of the sine to shape the audio. You can probe the waveshaper with a low frequency saw wave and look at an oscilloscope. That'll show you how it's being shaped. Keep in mind there's lots of other variables going on inside massive so you're not going to get a perfect replica.

What waveshaper are you even using to try and approximate these shapes?

Cyanide 2 and the one in Trash 2. What should I use?

Anything with bezier curves and enough oversampling. If massive's waveshapers are bipolar you'll need a waveshaper that can do that as well, at least to get a parabolic shape. Sine has odd symmetry so you can just make the upper half of it and it'll be mirrored onto the negative values.

If you run a raw massive patch through a waveshaper it should sound the same as a raw patch with just a waveshaper as an insert. If not, compare the two with an oscilloscope and figure out where the waves are different.

I'll try, thanks alot. Don't have an oscilloscope atm though, but I'll figure this out.

bouncingfish wrote:I'll try, thanks alot. Don't have an oscilloscope atm though, but I'll figure this out.

http://bram.smartelectronix.com/scope_docs/
unless you absolutely need an AU
http://bedroomproducersblog.com/2011/07 ... u-plugins/ iirc this blog is run by someone who posts or used to post on here, so has a lot of good stuff.

deadly habit wrote:

bouncingfish wrote:I'll try, thanks alot. Don't have an oscilloscope atm though, but I'll figure this out.

http://bram.smartelectronix.com/scope_docs/
unless you absolutely need an AU
http://bedroomproducersblog.com/2011/07 ... u-plugins/ iirc this blog is run by someone who posts or used to post on here, so has a lot of good stuff.

Yeah, I can only use Au's. THanks!

SunkLo wrote:And then spend a year studying DSP just to understand what the hell they're talking about.


Parabol and Sine are pretty radically different. A parabol is an exponential rectifier, the sine is just doing some foldback. With a parabol, 1 and -1 map to 1, with a sine they map to 0. Massive doesn't show you the shape so you can't really easily tell what it is. It could be just folding back the sine a little bit or it could be using the full period of the sine to shape the audio. You can probe the waveshaper with a low frequency saw wave and look at an oscilloscope. That'll show you how it's being shaped. Keep in mind there's lots of other variables going on inside massive so you're not going to get a perfect replica.

What waveshaper are you even using to try and approximate these shapes?

How do you know everything about everything?!

I happen to screw around with distortion algo's but tbf its not necessary.
Look into foldback distortion, its a type of brittle distortion that causes the audio to fold into itself when exceeding the threshold (the results usually sound like FM)
Im certain Massive's sine shaper is just that.

OfficialDAPT wrote: How do you know everything about everything?!

I internet hard. I've also been studying DSP for a while so waveshaping's come up a few times.

The FL Waveshaper is unipolar or bipolar, has all sorts of curves and it comes in a VST version.

It is pretty easy to make a sine shaper with this plugin using the half sine curve setting;

First one is the sine shaper in bipolar mode, the second one is just an example of the curve system..

This^^
Although i deleted my previous post about fruity waveshaper since the OP is on a mac
Foldback distortion will occur in unipolar mode (and aliasing if you don't use oversampling in this mode)

Foldback occurs whenever the slope changes direction, it's not limited to unipolar mode. You might be thinking of rectification, which I'm pretty sure unipolar mode doesn't do anyway. -1 would still map to -1, unipolar just makes the negative portion of the curve symmetrical. If you went into bipolar mode and made the curve symmetrical around the Y axis you'd have rectification though, for example a parabolic curve.

Oops i meant bipolar i got them mixed up
Fruity waveshaper might not exactly result in foldback distortion but it can sound very similar when drawing certain shapes in bipolar mode. In unipolar mode I haven't been able to achieve any 'Sine Shaper' like results since i don't think its possible.

The one on the left in the photo a few posts up is sine shaping. In unipolar mode, you'd just make the top right quadrant and it would automatically mirror the bottom left quadrant for you. Both of those would be foldback distortion.

What I was trying to say was that being in unipolar mode doesn't automatically do foldback or rectification, at least to my knowledge. Run audio through a waveshaper into Edison and have a look. If the audio is all above the zero crossing, it's being rectified. But I'm pretty sure unipolar mode just means it mirrors the shape for the negative half. To get a rectifier shape, you'd have to switch to bipolar mode and make a V shape. Which is almost like the opposite of foldback distortion because it's folding at 0 instead of +/-1.

Thanks guys. Unfortunately Fruity WS isn't AU though so I can't use it in logic.