OSCILLATORS B1 · B2Wavelet Additive

1Quick start

From closed to sounding in a few steps — pick the column for the version you use.

2The panel

The panel is the same in the web app and the plug-in, apart from a few buttons (the web app's DEMO and DOWNLOAD VST, the plug-in's size button, SAVE PRESET and the SYNC buttons of the tempo sync). From top to bottom: the header; the card of the oscillator shown, OSC MIX and the SCOPE; SCALE FILTER, POSITION and the oscillator's TUNE / OWN ENVELOPE / PITCH ENVELOPE; AMP ENVELOPE, MOD ENVELOPE and EFFECTS; LFO 1, LFO 2 and VOICE; the keyboard row. With CHORD MODE on, the chord-harp card appears below and the window grows. The credit line “By OktoPierre · beta 0.2 · GPL v3” sits under the wheels.

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1. 1Oscillator tabs — A1 A2 B1 B2: which oscillator's cards are shown (the sound is set by OSC MIX).
2. 2Preset browser — ◀ ▶ step through the presets; click the name for the list.
3. 3EVALUATE SOUNDS — the listening test of the new presets.
4. 4DOWNLOAD VST / SAVE PRESET — the web app links to the plug-in; the plug-in has SAVE PRESET here.
5. 5MANUAL — this manual on an A tab, the other one on a B tab.
6. 6VOLUME and meter — master level and stereo peak meter.
7. 7PATTERN — the atom pattern that writes the coefficients.
8. 8Drawbars 1–11 — the level of each of the 11 bands.
9. 9ATOM SHAPE · WAVELET — one atom of the selected wavelet; the wavelet below it.
10. 10TILT · SEED — dB per band across the drawbars; the seed of the RANDOM pattern.
11. 11Band envelope — SCALE ATTACK, SPREAD, BODY, BRIGHT, SCALE SUSTAIN: the time behaviour of each band.
12. 12OSC MIX — four levels, one per oscillator; below them the SUB OSC.
13. 13SCOPE · SCALOGRAM — one cycle of the oscillator shown; its atoms in the 11 bands.
14. 14SCALE FILTER — a gain for each wavelet band: type, cutoff, slope, resonance, key tracking, envelope, velocity.
15. 15POSITION — confines the filter or the detail to part of the cycle.
16. 16TUNE · OWN ENVELOPE · PITCH ENVELOPE — the oscillator's own pitch, its own loudness envelope and its pitch envelope.
17. 17AMP ENVELOPE — loudness of the whole sound.
18. 18MOD ENVELOPE — moves the cutoff of every oscillator by its ENV AMT.
19. 19EFFECTS — saturation, chorus, ping-pong delay and reverb.
20. 20LFO 1 — pitch, cutoff, position, wavelet morph, sparsity, resonance and envelope-to-wavelet.
21. 21LFO 2 — one control chosen by TARGET: any scale-filter or wavelet control, in every oscillator.
22. 22VOICE — portamento, octave, tuning, polyphony, glide, unison.
23. 23CHORD MODE · BASS — shows the chord-harp card and turns the keyboard into chords; BASS adds the low note.
24. 24TUNING — the three-position switch of the oriental keyboard: Western, Arabic, Turkish.
25. 25Wheels · keyboard — pitch bend, modulation; five octaves.

The header

Working with the controls

3Four oscillators

Okto MultiWave Synth plays up to four oscillators in every voice: A1 and A2 (wavelet subtractive), B1 and B2 (wavelet additive). A new patch plays A1 alone; the four levels in the OSC MIX card decide which oscillators sound and how loud. Each oscillator is a small instrument of its own — its tone, its SCALE FILTER, its POSITION window, its tuning, its own envelope and its pitch envelope — while the AMP ENVELOPE, MOD ENVELOPE, LFOs, VOICE settings, effects and sub oscillator are shared by the whole voice.

• One panel at a time. The tabs A1 A2 B1 B2 show one oscillator's cards; the other three keep their settings and keep sounding. Switching a tab never changes the sound and never marks a preset as modified.
• Levels cost nothing at 0. An oscillator whose level is 0 is not computed and its wave tables are not even built, so presets that use two oscillators cost about twice one — not four times. A level is smoothed over 20 ms, so it can be moved while playing.
• Every preset uses at least two oscillators (the 22 TOP Sounds keep their one or two of the Wavelet Synthesizer). The letters in the names of the new presets — A1A2, B1B2, A1B1 — say which.

OSC MIX and SUB OSC

TUNE, OWN ENVELOPE and PITCH ENVELOPE

The wide card in the middle of the third row belongs to the oscillator shown; the card's title says which. It is what turns four oscillators into a sound with a front and a body.

The table shows the ranges and defaults of A1's controls; A2, B1 and B2 have the same ones. The own envelope has no effect while its switch is off.

Ideas, and presets to study

4The additive oscillators B1 · B2

A B oscillator builds its sound from atoms: a pattern writes the coefficients of the 11 bands, the drawbars (with TILT) set their levels, and a scale envelope gives every band its own time behaviour — before the oscillator's filter, window, own envelope and the AMP ENVELOPE shape the whole.

Every oscillator plays one cycle of 2048 samples, analysed by a periodic wavelet transform into 11 bands: band b has 2^b−1 atoms and covers about one octave of harmonics (band 1 the fundamental, band 2 the 2nd harmonic, band 3 harmonics 3–4, band 4 harmonics 5–8 …). The analysis is pitch-synchronous, so the bands follow the note. To keep high notes alias-free each band is stored in octave-wise band-limited versions: the finest bands only exist on low notes — at middle C only bands 1–7 are played, at C2 bands 1–9. The SCALOGRAM draws the atoms of the 11 bands of the oscillator shown (B1 at the bottom).

The wavelet chooses the atom

Each oscillator has its own WAVELET (the step control under the atom picture): seven classic wavelets from the 2-tap Haar step to the 40-tap Daubechies 20. Short wavelets are precise in time — sharp edges, crisp POSITION window borders — but their bands overlap; long wavelets separate the octaves cleanly. For a clean, organ-like staircase choose Daubechies 8 or longer; for hard, chip-like bands Haar.

WAVELET MORPH builds every oscillator with a second wavelet too (WAVELET 2) and moves between the two with MORPH, LFO 1 (its WAVELET knob) and the mod envelope (ENV>WAV); it acts on each oscillator that plays and is heard where the wavelet shapes the sound.

5Scale filter and position window

The SCALE FILTER multiplies the band levels set by the drawbars, the tilt and the scale envelope: think of it as a second set of drawbars you can move with an envelope, an LFO, velocity and the keyboard. Its default cutoff of 12 is open. The level normalisation of the drawbars is computed before the filter, so closing the filter really makes the sound darker and quieter. Every oscillator has its own filter and window; the tabs show the cards of the oscillator selected. The table lists the controls of B1; the other oscillators of the same kind have the same ones.

SCALE FILTER

The cutoff actually used by a voice, recomputed every 32 samples: cutoff = CUTOFF + ENV AMT × mod envelope + LFO 1 CUTOFF × LFO 1 (+ LFO 2) + VEL AMT × (velocity − 1) + (1 − KEY TRK) × log₂(261.63 Hz ÷ note frequency).

POSITION window

Atoms live at definite places in the cycle, so a B oscillator can decide where the detail is allowed to exist: coarse band 1 everywhere, bands 2–11 only in part of the cycle — a moving "focus", a pulse-width-like effect locked to the pitch.

6Envelopes

Two ADSR envelopes run for every voice, plus the own envelope and pitch envelope of each oscillator (see TUNE, OWN ENVELOPE and PITCH ENVELOPE). Attacks are linear; decays and releases are exponential (the time given is the time to fall by 60 dB).

AMP ENVELOPE

MOD ENVELOPE

It moves the cutoff of every oscillator by that oscillator's ENV AMT (so with ENV AMT at 0 it does nothing there), and the WAVELET MORPH by ENV>WAV. It ignores velocity — use VEL AMT for that.

7LFO 1 and LFO 2

Two LFOs sit side by side. They are shared by all voices and oscillators and run freely (not restarted by new notes): in a chord every voice moves together. For a movement that starts with each note use the MOD ENVELOPE.

LFO 1

LFO 2

LFO 2 moves one control, in every oscillator at once, by the same amount: the one chosen in its TARGET menu — CUTOFF, SLOPE, RESO, KEY TRK, ENV AMT or VEL AMT of the scale filters, POSITION, WIDTH or DEPTH of the windows, the PHASE, SPARSITY or SRC WIDTH of the subtractive oscillators, the TILT, ODD BARS, EVEN BARS or SCALE SUS of the additive ones, or the MORPH between two wavelets: every control of the wavelet oscillators and of the scale filter. Each oscillator keeps its own base value; the LFO moves them in step.

PHASE, SPARSITY and SRC WIDTH (SOURCE WIDTH: the pulse width of a PULSE source or the skew of a TRI one) change what the wavelet transform sees, so the subtractive oscillators' tables are built at several values — 12 phases round the cycle, 9 sparsities from 0 to 100 %, 9 widths from 2 to 98 % (about 1 MB per set) — and each voice crossfades between the two nearest: a smooth scan through the timbres. At AMOUNT 0 nothing extra is built. One kind of scan per oscillator at a time: SPARSITY (from LFO 1 or LFO 2) comes first, then PHASE, then SRC WIDTH. TILT, ODD BARS, EVEN BARS and SCALE SUS move the additive oscillators' drawbars (odd = bands 1, 3, 5 …; even = bands 2, 4, 6 …) and the level their bands decay to; MORPH adds to the WAVELET MORPH position.

SuperModulation

The idea of the instrument is that every timbre control acts on the scales of one cycle of the wave — and so can an LFO, while the note sounds. Moving the cutoff of a scale filter, the resonance, the SPARSITY, the window, the SOURCE PHASE or the morph between two wavelets does not sweep a Fourier filter: the harmonics are re-coupled according to the wavelet, so the timbre swims in a way an ordinary filter sweep does not. The SuperModulation section of the presets (the first one in the lists, 120 sounds) is made of such sounds: two oscillators of very different character, and LFO 1 and LFO 2 each moving two or three of these controls at unrelated speeds. Open one, then set the amounts of LFO 1 and LFO 2 to 0 one by one to hear what each does.

Tempo sync (plug-in only)

In the plug-in a SYNC button sits at the right of the LFO 1 and LFO 2 titles and of the delay heading. Lit, the RATE (or the delay's TIME) becomes a note value at the host's tempo (120 BPM when the host gives none) and follows its tempo changes. The note values run from 4/1 to 1/32 for the LFOs and 1/32 to 1/1 for the delay (T = triplet, D = dotted). SYNC sets the speed only; the LFO is not restarted on the beat. SYNC is off by default, and the web app has none (a browser page has no tempo).

8Voice and effects

VOICE

When all voices are busy a new note takes the oldest released voice first, then the oldest held one. Each note plays at about −8 dB to leave headroom for chords. A preset can switch mono ↔ poly; a note off always finds its voice.

EFFECTS

In the order of the sound: saturation → string-machine triple chorus → ping-pong delay → reverb → DC blocker → master volume → soft limiter (never above 0 dBFS).

The smoothing of the delay, its filter, the master level and the reverb damping have the same time constants at 44.1, 48 and 96 kHz. An instance with nothing sounding and no echo left to come does not compute its effects (it costs nothing while idle).

9Chord mode

The CHORD MODE button next to the keyboard turns the keyboard into a chord harp: the panel grows and the CHORD KEYBOARD card appears below it. With CHORD MODE off the card is not shown and the keyboard plays plain notes.

• One octave chooses the chord type and makes no sound: KEYS OCT (C3–B3 by default, tinted purple on the keyboard). Every key above it plays the whole chord with one finger; keys pressed while the root is held play as themselves; keys below it play a bass line.
• Twelve pads in the layout of the selector octave — Maj, Min, 7, m7, Maj7, Sus2, Sus4, Dim, Aug, 5, Add9, Note: the white keys carry the major and bright chords, the black keys the minor, altered or bare ones. A click on a pad chooses the type and switches CHORD MODE on. 22 chord types in all (the Chord Type parameter has the others: 6, m6, m7b5, dim7, 9, m9, maj9, 7sus4, mMaj7, 6/9).
• VOICING: STACKED (root + intervals) or FOLDED (the chord's notes inside the octave of the root, as on an electronic chord harp); STRUM (0–100 ms) starts the notes one after the other; the strum plate strums the chord with the mouse.
• BASS (the button under CHORD MODE, on by default) adds a bass note with every chord: the root two octaves below, a little louder (+3 dB), never lower than C1. A chord keeps the level of a triad whatever its size (the notes of a seventh with its bass are turned down a little), so chords never press on the limiter.
• The chord follows the left hand. Hold a note with the right hand and press another chord on the selector octave: the held chord changes at once, even for the note already pressed. Only the notes of the chord now played sound — the notes that are not in the new chord fade out in a few milliseconds, the ones the two chords share go on without being played again. The left hand has a memory: the last chord chosen stays chosen after its key is released and applies to the next right-hand note. Clicking a pad, VOICING or BASS while a note is held changes the held chord the same way.
• The chord's notes are ordinary notes: sustain, portamento, voice allocation and every sound parameter work as usual, and a chord never uses more voices than VOICES. A note shared by the chord and a held key sounds until both release it.
• The chord settings are plug-in parameters (automatable, saved with the Live Set) but never part of a preset: loading a sound does not change how you play. A selector key updates the Chord Type parameter.

10Oriental keyboard

Beta 0.2 adds an oriental keyboard with quarter tones, as on the oriental keyboards of Yamaha. The three-position switch TUNING sits under CHORD MODE (left of the wheels):

• WEST — equal temperament, as always (the default).
• ARAB — the Arabic tuning: 24 tones to the octave, the quarter tone being 50 cents. The keys that are half-flat in the scale chosen are lowered by a quarter tone.
• TURK — the Turkish tuning of the makams: 53 commas to the octave (a comma is 22.6 cents; the values of the Arel-Ezgi-Uzdilek system), so a third or a seventh is a comma or two away from the Western one.

Outside WEST two more controls show under the scalogram: MAQAM chooses the scale (Rast, Bayati / Uşşak, Hijaz / Hicaz, Saba, Nahawand / Buselik) and TONIC the key it starts on (the scale is moved to it: Rast on D is Rast starting at D). The keys the tuning moves carry a small amber arrow on the keyboard (pointing down: lower than the piano key). A key that is not a degree of the scale keeps its piano pitch, so the sharps and flats you need stay in tune.

• Every note follows the tuning: the keys, the chord harp's notes (a chord on Rast has its half-flat third), the sub oscillator, the notes a MIDI file plays — except the demo and EVALUATE SOUNDS, which always play in equal temperament so that they are not out of tune with the music.
• TUNING, MAQAM and TONIC are playing settings, like CHORD MODE: they are automatable parameters, saved with the Live Set, and never part of a preset.
• Examples. Rast on C, Arabic: play C D E F G A B C — E and B are a quarter tone low, the rest is as on the piano. Bayati on D: D then E, a quarter tone flat, F G A B♭ C. Hicaz on D, Turkish: D E♭ F♯ G A B♭ C with the commas of the Turkish system.

The tunings are the usual approximations of keyboards (half-flat = −50 cents; Turkish values rounded to a comma): they do not replace an oud or a ney, but they make the characteristic intervals playable on a piano keyboard. In the Arabic tuning Rast retunes the third and the seventh, Bayati and Saba the second degree, and Hijaz and Nahawand use the piano's semitones (nothing to retune); the Turkish tuning gives all five their commas.

11Presets

Okto MultiWave Synth has 522 factory presets: OktoPierre's 22 TOP Sounds (unchanged from the Wavelet Synthesizer beta 0.7: they sound exactly as there, from B · Mirror Sub Bass to A · Laser Sweep) and 500 new presets: the 300 of beta 0.2 (201–500), in which LFO 1 and LFO 2 move the controls of the wavelet oscillators and the two oscillators of a kind are very different from each other, and the 200 of beta 0.1 (001–200, unchanged), sorted into the categories SuperModulation, Bass, Lead, Keys, Organ, Pad, Strings, Brass & Wind, Pluck, Bells & Mallets, FX and Drums & Perc. A new preset's name is its number, the oscillators it uses (A1A2, B1B2, A1B1, A1A2B1 …) and a title: 201 B1B2 · Odd Low End. Every new preset uses at least two oscillators, often one of them as the attack; their loudness is matched to the TOP Sounds. The SuperModulation category (120 sounds) holds the ones whose life is the LFOs moving the scale filter, the sparsity, the window, the source phase, the morph and the additive scales (see SuperModulation). The preset browser at the right follows the preset box: step with ◀ ▶ or the name's menu and it shows the category of the sound and the sound itself. ◀ ▶ step through them in that order; clicking the name opens the list (the preset browser at the right of the panel: TOP Sounds and the categories, one click plays a sound, the arrow keys ↑ ↓ ← → too).

Saving your own sounds

• Web app. The buttons at the right of the status bar: Save preset keeps the sound in this browser's storage (the USER PRESETS group), Export downloads it as a .json file, Import loads one. User presets live in that browser profile only: use Export for anything you want to keep.
• Plug-in. See The plug-in: SAVE PRESET, the user bank, the presets file. You can also keep sounds with Live (a device preset, an Instrument Rack, the Live Set).

All the presets

★ = one of OktoPierre's TOP Sounds. The oscillators are the ones whose level is above 0.

12Evaluate sounds

EVALUATE SOUNDS (header, web app and plug-in) is a listening test of the 500 new presets: it plays a piece of music with each one, asks how much you like it, and writes your answers — and the changes you make to the sounds you like — in a text file you can send back.

1. Click EVALUATE SOUNDS, then Start at 201 (a later session says Continue at …; the list is the factory order: the new presets 201–500 first, then the 200 of beta 0.1). The window plays 5 seconds of Beethoven's Appassionata (the busy passage at 0:13 of the demo) with preset 201 — polyphonic, at its normal octave, with short echoes — and shows its name, category and one-line description.
2. When the passage ends, give 1 to 10 stars: click a star (in the web app also the keys 1–9, 0 = 10). The answer is saved at once and the next preset plays. You can also play the preset on your MIDI keyboard while the window waits. ▶ Replay, ◀ Previous, Skip and Stop are always there; Stop (or the lit EVALUATE button) gives back the sound you were playing.
3. More than 5 stars asks whether to modify the preset. If yes, the preset loads exactly as designed, the window shrinks to a bar over the keyboard, and you change the panel with the mouse and play it on your keyboard. ▶ Play the passage plays it again. Keep initial settings forgets your changes; Record preset change writes the parameters that differ from the preset in the file.
4. Stop whenever you like: the file is rewritten after every answer, and the next session continues where you stopped (it reads the file again).

The ratings file

• Plug-in: Documents\Okto MultiWave Synth\okto-multiwave-ratings.txt (the local application data folder when the Documents folder is missing). Change file… chooses another file (an existing ratings file continues where it stopped; the choice is remembered), Show file opens its folder, Save now writes it again, Save as… saves a copy of the ratings so far under a name you choose, Clear all starts over.
• Web app: the ratings are kept in the browser; in Edge or Chrome you choose the file at the start (it is rewritten after every answer), in other browsers Save as… downloads a copy (it also works in Edge and Chrome, with the name you choose).
• The text is the same in both: a header, NUMBER | STARS | CHANGED | PRESET for every preset, a ranking, and PRESET CHANGES as parameter key: value in the preset -> new value (name: shown value -> new shown value).

13The plug-in

The plug-in runs the same sound engine with the same panel. It is a single self-contained file inside an OktoMultiWaveSynth.vst3 bundle folder, which also carries these manuals; nothing else needs to be installed. The same file is a VST3 and a VST2 plug-in (a copy named OktoMultiWaveSynth.dll sits next to it for VST2 hosts). Windows 10/11, 64-bit.

Installation

1. Download the zip from the release page and unzip it.
2. Copy the whole OktoMultiWaveSynth.vst3 folder into C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3 (vst\install.bat does it and asks for administrator rights), or into the VST2 plug-in folder you use.
3. In Live: Preferences → Plug-ins, switch on Use VST3 Plug-in System Folders (or the VST2 custom folder), Rescan. If both are on and see the folder, Live lists the plug-in twice; use either.

It installs next to the Wavelet Synthesizer and the WaveChord Synth: its own name, class IDs, VST2 ID and presets file.

What is specific to the plug-in

• No welcome window, no DEMO or DOWNLOAD VST button, no status bar. Audio runs as soon as the plug-in is loaded. The window-size button (70–150 %) is next to the logo.
• Tempo sync: the SYNC buttons of the delay and the two LFOs (see Tempo sync).
• Presets: ◀ ▶ step through the factory presets (those you deleted are skipped); a click on the name opens the preset browser (FACTORY and USER BANK tabs; HIDE ▸ folds it away), a right-click the classic menu. In the browser: ▲ ▼ move a sound within its list, a sound dragged onto a category moves there (onto TOP Sounds it joins them), the arrow keys choose, and the buttons TO BANK…, RESTORE, DELETE, EXPORT…, IMPORT… manage your sounds.
• SAVE PRESET (left of MANUAL) overwrites the preset playing: a factory preset is adjusted in place, optionally under a new name (RESTORE brings the original back); a sound of the user bank is replaced.
• The presets file: everything above lives in one readable text file, OKTOMULTIWAVE presets.txt, kept next to the .vst3 folder (the folder must allow writing: C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3 needs administrator rights, so install into a folder you own, or run Live as administrator once). It is written atomically after every edit and read again when another instance changes it. A file longer than 16 MB is never written over.
• Automation: every sound parameter and the chord harp's six settings can be automated; the oscillator tabs (OSC) are a panel choice, not part of a sound.
• EVALUATE SOUNDS works in the plug-in too, with the host's audio engine running (see Evaluate sounds). While a session runs the preset browser, SAVE PRESET and the arrow keys are locked.

14Troubleshooting

15More, and a glossary

Okto MultiWave Synth is built on the Wavelet Synthesizer. Its manuals explain the ideas behind each oscillator kind in depth — partials versus atoms, how many atoms a wave needs, source phase, the scale envelope, the full recipes — for the original panel, where the two engines shared one filter and one window:

• Wavelet Synthesizer — Manual A (Wavelet Subtractive)
• Wavelet Synthesizer — Manual B (Wavelet Additive)

Everything in them about a source wave, an atom pattern, the scale filter or the position window applies to each oscillator of Okto MultiWave Synth (each has its own); what they say about the A/B MIX knob is replaced by the four levels of OSC MIX.

Glossary

16About

Okto MultiWave Synth beta 0.2, a test version (2026-10-19), created by Pierre Arnaud GUYOT (OktoPierre), on the basis of his Wavelet Synthesizer beta 0.7 and his chord keyboard (WaveChord). Free software under the GNU General Public License v3 or later, WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY: github.com/PierreArnaudGUYOT/Okto-MultiWave-Synth.

• Demo music: MIDI from the Mutopia Project — J. S. Bach Toccata in D minor and Beethoven's Op. 57 III, Op. 129, Op. 67 I, Op. 13 I, Op. 31/2 I, Op. 111 I (public domain); Beethoven Moonlight Op. 27/2 III typeset by Stewart Holmes (CC BY-SA 2.5). The listening passage of EVALUATE SOUNDS is part of Op. 57 III.
• VST3 interface headers: Steinberg Media Technologies, MIT licence. Wavelet filter coefficients generated with PyWavelets (MIT).
• Thanks to Jeremi Palmigani (Saoul Machine), Flo (Go Tiger) and Arnaud Grignard for testing and review of the Wavelet Synthesizer.