WT-3 Wavetable Synth manual

Open it in your DAW

WT-3 Wavetable Synth plays inside Studio 56. Add Studio 56 to an instrument track in your DAW and sign in, then choose WT-3 Wavetable Synth on Home.

If you don’t have Studio 56 yet, the Support page shows how to install it and add it to a track in your DAW.

The four knobs

The four knobs on WT-3 Wavetable Synth’s screen shape the whole sound, and each preset sets where they start.

Morph

Shifts the tone as each oscillator moves through its wavetable, and opens the filter to brighten it.

Warp

Bends the waves harder, so the sound gets rougher and brighter as it turns.

Width

Makes the sound wider and thicker by spreading and detuning its unison voices.

Space

Brings up the reverb and the echoes.

Your DAW records every turn as automation, and Undo takes a turn back.

Using presets

Click the preset’s name at the top to see them all, or use the arrows beside it to go to the next or the one before. Its folders are down the side, with Favorites and My presets under them, and the star beside a preset keeps it in Favorites.

Save as new keeps the sound you have under a name of your own in My presets, and Save updates one of yours. Point at one of yours to rename or delete it.

Write 4 more like this writes four new presets close to the one you’re on and places them around it on the map beside the list. Drag the dot between them to blend, and Keep this sound saves the blend as a preset of your own. It works with Pro and on a plugin you bought.

More controls

More controls at the top opens the settings WT-3 Wavetable Synth’s face has no room for. Press it again to go back.

Three wavetable oscillators that bend one another with FM, phase distortion and ring modulation. Up to sixteen unison voices on each oscillator, and two filters in series or side by side. Sixteen effects, with up to six on in each preset.

Wavetable Oscillator

Moves through a table of wave shapes, from saw and square to growl and vocal, stacked up to sixteen voices thick.

Sub Oscillator

Adds weight under every note with a low layer one to three octaves down, from a clean sine to a gritty buzz.

Noise Generator

Layers hiss, vinyl dust or recordings like rain and key clicks under each note, steady or as a short burst.

Character Filter

Shapes each note’s tone in many filter characters, from squelching acid bass and screaming leads to smooth sweeps and talking vowels.

Multimode Voice Filter

Gives each note its own filter sweep, so basses open as you dig in, plucks snap shut and pads slowly bloom.

Curve LFO

Moves other controls up and down in a shape you draw, slow for drifts or in time for pumps and gates.

Modulation Envelope

Moves other controls once for every note, such as a filter snapping shut on a pluck or an 808’s falling pitch.

Studio 56 Chord Generator

Plays full in-key chords from one finger, moving smoothly between them, and can strum them like a guitar or harp.

Studio56 Graph Arpeggiator

Turns held chords into arpeggios in time with the song, from up-and-down runs to strummed chords, octave jumps and random scatter.

Drive

Distorts eight ways, from warm clipping and grit to bright folded tones and lo-fi crushing, or along a curve you draw.

3-Band EQ

Turns the lows, mids and highs up or down and cuts rumble, without adding any color of its own.

Filter

Runs the whole sound through one filter in ten types, with resonance and drive.

Studio 56 Three-Band Dynamics

Lifts quiet detail and holds down loud peaks in the lows, mids and highs separately, for a denser and more detailed sound.

Filtered Stereo Delay

Echoes from 0.3 ms to 12 seconds or a note of the song, in parallel, ping-pong, crossed or as two mono lines, with a filter in the feedback loop and a ducker that turns the echoes down while the sound plays.

Plate Reverb

Adds a smooth plate reverb, from a short ambience behind drums to a long bright or dark wash behind pads.

Space Reverb

Puts a sound in one of twelve spaces, from a booth, two rooms and a garage to two chambers, two plates, two halls, a church and a cathedral, with early reflections and a tail whose top fades first.

Stereo Imager

Sets how wide or narrow a sound sits and where it is panned, and can keep the bass in the middle.

Limiter

Holds the sound, and the peaks between its samples, under a Ceiling of -12 to 0 dB with a 3 ms lookahead, while Input pushes it in by up to 24 dB.

System requirements

Mac

macOS 10.15 Catalina or later, on Apple silicon or Intel

Windows

Windows, 64-bit

Plugin formats

VST3 and AU on Mac, VST3 on Windows

DAWs

Ableton Live, Logic Pro, GarageBand, FL Studio and other DAWs that load VST3 or AU plugins, but not Pro Tools

Internet

To sign in, to get what you buy and to make instruments and effects, but not to play them

More help

Installing Studio 56, using it offline and other questions are answered on the Support page. For anything else, write to oliver@studio56.ai.