What is "wavetable"

n. A collection of many single-cycle waveforms with subtly changing harmonic contents, sometimes based on a sample of a real musical instrument, used in sound synthesis.

Wavetable may refer to:

• Waveform table, generally used on digital signal processing.
  • Table-lookup oscillator, appeared on MUSIC II in the late-1950s (Puckette 2002).
    • Table-lookup synthesis — a generic class of sound synthesis methods using Table-lookup oscillators (Curtis Roads 1996, p. 87).
      • Single-cycle wave table-lookup synthesis — seen on the early computer music, analog/digital hybrid synthesizers, and embedded sound chips in the 1980s-1990s.
        • Multiple wavetable synthesis (Horner, Beauchamp & Haken 1993) developed by Michael McNabb and Wolfgang Palm in the late-1970s — a specific sound synthesis technique typically used on PPG Waves, using an array of single-cycle waveforms to implement wavetable sweeping.
        • Wavetable-modification algorithm — known as Digital waveguide synthesis, especially Karplus-Strong string synthesis.
    • Sample-based synthesis — a class of sound synthesis method using audio samples of arbitrary length.