# Is there any way to just use a pure pulse wave in Omnisphere?



## Lamerak (Sep 13, 2021)

Really, i wanna just use a pure pulse wave and do some pulse width modulation on it. Ive been told 'symmetry' is what that is used for, but when i adjust that using the saw square wave, it doesn't show my pulse width getting shorter or anything, it just shows it changing shape for some reason, which leads me to believe im at the wrong spot.

So i was looking through the 'Classic Waveforms' section, and i can't seem to find anything that's just a pure pulse wave.

There exists the Saw-Square wave, but when i use that, the symmetry slider only changes from saw to square, it doesn't change the pulse width.


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## proxima (Sep 13, 2021)

I think you might want any one of the pulse waveforms from the classic waveforms section, combined with the "shape" parameter, not necessarily symmetry (note that even in a saw-square oscillator, the symmetry parameter doesn't squarify things in the same way that the shape parameter does). But your impression may be from the Omnisphere manual itself, which suggests that symmetry is a good target for modulating PWM oscillators. 

When I load up the minilogue xd hardware profile (for which I also load the hardware), it loads up the prologue PWM and the shape knob adjusts the shape parameter, which is certainly adjusting the pulse width visually.

No pulse waveform in this list is exactly square, and I noted that the OB-6 PWM sounds significantly different doing the same simple exercise, but that's why there's a giant list of waveforms to choose from.


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## Lamerak (Sep 16, 2021)

So, what would be your suggestion for getting the closest i can to a pure pulse wave that i can do PWM on? It just seems weird that a synth as powerful as omnisphere would be incapable of doing something so simple.

I saw that in the manual, which is what had me super confused. 

How do i load up the "minilogue xd hardware profile", im unfamiliar with what that is within Omnisphere.


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## José Herring (Sep 16, 2021)

Slightly off topic but does Omnisphere generate its own classic waveforms or are the waveforms sampled from another synth?


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## Lamerak (Sep 16, 2021)

José Herring said:


> Slightly off topic but does Omnisphere generate it's own classic waveforms or are the waveforms sampled from another synth?


I was under the assumption that the top 5 (in the pic attached) are it's own waveforms and the rest are all sampled from another synth


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## proxima (Sep 16, 2021)

Lamerak said:


> I was under the assumption that the top 5 (in the pic attached) are it's own waveforms and the rest are all sampled from another synth


No, this is incorrect. The synth waveforms and wavetables are _modeled_, not sampled. 



Lamerak said:


> So, what would be your suggestion for getting the closest i can to a pure pulse wave that i can do PWM on? It just seems weird that a synth as powerful as omnisphere would be incapable of doing something so simple.
> 
> I saw that in the manual, which is what had me super confused.
> 
> How do i load up the "minilogue xd hardware profile", im unfamiliar with what that is within Omnisphere.


I won't pretend to be a wavetable expert, but Omnisphere emulates dozens of pulse wave oscillators from all kinds of hardware synths. They have their own character. I'm not sure what "pure" would be, because all implementations have _some _sort of approximation (computers don't run at infinite sample rates for one thing). My suggestion is use your ears: find a pulse wave on the menu you like, then try the shape and symmetry parameters to see if it affects the sound in the way you want. 

The minilogue xd example was just that, an example. You load it from the "HW" button up top, but I mentioned it to demonstrate that adjusting the pulse width was done via the "shape" parameter to emulate what the hardware does, not the "symmetry" parameter (which the hardware does not have).


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## Lamerak (Sep 19, 2021)

proxima said:


> No, this is incorrect. The synth waveforms and wavetables are _modeled_, not sampled.
> 
> 
> I won't pretend to be a wavetable expert, but Omnisphere emulates dozens of pulse wave oscillators from all kinds of hardware synths. They have their own character. I'm not sure what "pure" would be, because all implementations have _some _sort of approximation (computers don't run at infinite sample rates for one thing). My suggestion is use your ears: find a pulse wave on the menu you like, then try the shape and symmetry parameters to see if it affects the sound in the way you want.
> ...


Gotcha, i was looking for something that could match up with kind of what im seeing in Syntorial, which displays it's pulse wave, as well as PWM as a pure pulse wave, rather than the analog rendition of it, just for my learning purposes so i can match what is happening with what i'm hearing.

I wasn't aware that Omnisphere was exclusively wavetables though, that makes everything make a lot more sense, i figured it would be like most other synths where you start with a pure wave form (or as close as that synth can get, because a lot of the ones omnisphere has dont look much like pulse waves at all), and then you go from there, i didn't realize omnisphere didn't have any pure waveforms, not even those other base level ones. 

And just to clarify, with Omnisphere, i should be using "Shape" to do PWM, not "Symmetry" like the manual says?


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## proxima (Sep 19, 2021)

Lamerak said:


> And just to clarify, with Omnisphere, i should be using "Shape" to do PWM, not "Symmetry" like the manual says?


For some modeled oscillators, "shape" will correspond directly to the pulse width as you're familiar with from Syntorial. I can't guarantee that all will be this way.


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## Lamerak (Sep 27, 2021)

Thanks man! I actually figured out that within those analog waveforms, a lot of them are specifically labelled "PWM" which of course means pulse width modulation, i am an idiot haha


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