# Can I turn any audio WAV file into a Wavetable for a synth ?



## ManicMiner (Jan 9, 2020)

Lets say I have a sample, a lead sound which I can export to an audio WAV file, recorded at middle C, 24bit 44,100Hz.

Is it possible to make that into a Wavetable and import it into, for example, Serum or VPS Avenger?
Do I have to make that Wavetable 2048 in length, normalize it to 0Db - (wondering how to make it 2048 in length ? Serum take a 2048 long file doesn't it...?)


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## Fredeke (Jan 10, 2020)

Excellent question! I was about to post a similar one, but will add it to this thread instead.

First of all: yes you can easily import wavs to Serum - that's what I've been doing for the last 2 weeks. There are several modes for importing sounds, and I found the one that works best is Constant Pitch, where you specify the length of a cycle manually :
- open wavetable editor (top right corner of oscillator's waveform display)
- in the formulae text field (near bottom right), enter the length of one cycle in samples (e.g. "5887")
- drag'n'drop the wav onto the main window
- for saving, exit the editor and click the disk icon next to the wavetable's name in the oscillator (note: it will only appear if there's something new to save) (wavetables are also saved within patches - so a patch doesn't need its accompanying wavetable files in order to work)
Of course this assumes your original wave has constant pitch. There are other ways, and some are more suited to varying pitches, but I'm not too good at making them work. You'll find plenty of tutorials on youtube i guess.

Note that in my experience, it would seem Serum doesn't care about the original sampling rate and will interpret anything as being 44.1KHz, which really doesn't matter, since only raw wave data counts, and cycles will be pitched to the correct notes anyway. Its own format for saving wavetables is wav too (i didn't look at the resolution - I've been feeding it 24 bits but I don't know whether it retains all that resolution), with, I suppose, metadata as to how to chop it into single cycles.

Now to my own question:
Is there a standard format for sharing waveforms? Otherwise, which are the most common or popular ones? And what editors would you suggest? I'd like the library I'm working on not to be limited to Serum users.


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