Scythe: Exploring untapped wavetable characteristics and algorithms

kinkujin

Somehow this got a bad rap in my mind, and I really don’t have a clue why. So based on this thread I figured, try-before-you-buy model works for me. It’s really odd, wonderful and certainly has its own sound right out of the chute. I like that it is it’s own thing.

Funny how I have my days where it want sounds that are clean and perfect and other days I want my sound to be grainy and slightly disturbing. Scythe (without digging in much yet) seems the latter and that’s a good thing to me.

Seems that this synth is a sleeper and I hope it gets more attention. From me too now that I have it. Thanks for this thread.

noob

@Paulinko nice post over all apart from RTFM ( thats why we are here mate)

espiegel123

@McD said:

@noob said:
@Jumpercollins @McD so when we create a wt in this puppy it can not be exported? but lets say we share a preset is that preset selfcontained with the wt .. doesnt mattr rly just wanna dissect it
I call that ” Config Pig Syndrome” that I got

I seems to export wavetables out to audioshare: they are 4KB in size and the type extension is *.aifc

Is there another common iPad app that imports that file type?

How did you export a wavetable from Scythe? The only export I’ve found is for sound younrecord in Scythe which gets exported as an aiff (aifc is an aiff chunk type)

SNystrom

Thanks @noob for suggesting moving our Scythe conversation to a separate thread!

It's amazing how much I've learned about the intricacies of the app — as well a number of excellent tips and tricks. Thanks to all of the contributors!

I've been focusing on wrangling some massive sweet sounds from it of late. I've actually had some (very) limited success.

SNystrom

@espiegel123 I haven't actually done it, but it looks like there is a save option within the wavetable editor.

McD

@espiegel123 said:
How did you export a wavetable from Scythe? The only export I’ve found is for sound younrecord in Scythe which gets exported as an aiff (aifc is an aiff chunk type)

I got a 4KB file so I assumed. Maybe RTFM? Can anyone read large documents? I've lost the capacity
for focused thought.

espiegel123

@SNystrom said:
@espiegel123 I haven't actually done it, but it looks like there is a save option within the wavetable editor.

That just saves it internally. As far as I know, there is no way to export the wavetables out of Scythe. If you have something like iMazing, you can find the wavetables, but the dev gave me the impression that there wasn’t a simple way of making use of them in another copy of the app.

espiegel123

@McD said:

@espiegel123 said:
How did you export a wavetable from Scythe? The only export I’ve found is for sound younrecord in Scythe which gets exported as an aiff (aifc is an aiff chunk type)

I got a 4KB file so I assumed. Maybe RTFM? Can anyone read large documents? I've lost the capacity
for focused thought.

If you were tapping the share icon that is sharing a recording made in the app and not a wavetable. Or is there another place from where you were able to export?

Paulinko

@McD said:

@Paulinko said:

@McD said:
Scythe Create Excellent BAD sounds. I tried SERUM and totally get the parallel. Some people
love that form of BAD.

Bad = something someone might not like... maybe even most people.

There are synths where you have to work really hard to make it sound bad...
Scythe Synth is the opposite. It's very hard to make it sound good. Possible but loads of presets indicate this will be a challenge.

Now there are many that will want this particular version of "bad" sounds. You hear them in some great art and think "How did they add that extra bit of beautiful ugliness?".

I hope that helps... It also just fun to see audio be a sincere attempt to animate it in the GUI and be convincing. This is a visual representation of fascinating noises.

Burying the app in massive reverbs helps you get closer to the "ugly texture" that's somehow more interesting that brushed chrome. Who needs more sterile audio? Is that bad?

These thoughts about easily creating bad sounds means that the person trying to use the app doesn’t fully utilize the benefits of wavetable design or the controls in the app itself sufficiently to be able to target their efforts in a more focused way to achieve the specific goals they’re after using the app’s built-in functionality. They choose to use other sound design tools to smooth out the harsher sounds for example. Such an approach is defacto subtractive synthesis where you modify existing sounds to get a sound you’re after. There is of course nothing wrong with such an approach though I do believe you won’t be able to realize the full potential of Scythe Synth if you limit yourself to such an approach.

I recommend exploring the following:

1. You can use the envelopes in the app to shape you sound.
2. detune, octave, semitone, and unison controls provide lots of variation for the pitch characteristics of your sounds.
3. Blend to smooth out differences between each of the waves in your wavetable.
4. Built-In guide, the little finger pressing a button icon to the right of the MIDI icon, allows you to see an explanation of what all of the controls in the app do.
5. Learn to modify and use the LFOs to control various control parameters.
6. Filter delay IAP can add a lot of depth and movement control to the presets you design.
7. Wavetable Creator IAP allows you to edit your wavetables and not simply rely upon importing your own sounds. There are a lot of tools here for shaping your table of waves to direct them towards the direction you want to go.
8. Try different shapes of waves and their various combinations in your wavetables to get a sense of how they shape the timbre of the sound.
9. If you don’t enjoy pursuits like reinventing the wheel, study the wavetables which come with the app and perhaps buy some of the IAP wavetable packs if you want to learn more about how to construct various timbres of wavetables rather than engage in DIY lab experimentation.
10. RTFM there’s a 25 page built-in manual that goes into great detail about how to use the app.

Once again there’s nothing wrong with trying to DIY or to use other tools to supplement or replace existent functionality in Scythe Synth; however, please don’t sell yourself or the app short by failing to put some more effort into understanding its capabilities if they’re not already clear to you.

Very thoughtfully presented.

I will say that the IAP's in this app (and I have them all) do not demonstrate the miracle of this synth well, IMHO. I support the genius behind the app and would like to see this app achieve an income so there might be a sibling someday. I don't think that's going to happen... too much invested for too small a return.
It happens... Come back ThumbJam.

I suspect the developer is an extremely talented engineer but their are barriers to the success of this app that probably could be addressed with better "presets". The lack of FX make it sound cheap... Klevgrand's Tines is similar but when you add some power FX you cn really work wonders with these "cheap" sounding apps.

Now my reference to "bad" is really intended to be tongue in cheek. I downloaded SERUM which is all the rage and the initial sounds were abhorrent. I have since seen videos of users and I can see the attraction of the new in it's design and uses. There's always a leading edge of the culture and I tend to stumble on it
by accident and usually need to be educated to "get it". It comes with age... you seek comfort in general.

It seems perhaps you’re using IMHO tongue in cheek?

You suggest the developer should have had better presets in order to appeal to more people so he could sell more copies of his app to therefore be more successful. You characterize sounds as being cheap, bad, and abhorrent which seems to require judgement which would be inconsistent with being humble. Distinguishing what we like versus what others do and what a particular app is capable is often like opening up a can of worms.

Wavetable synthesis has been around since the early 1980s, so perhaps these abhorrent SERUM sound designs are just another appropriation of older technology/culture in a more contemporary setting? These sure aren’t your grandpa’s wavetables.

We already had several wavetable synth apps with a plethora of presets: Nave, the PPG apps, Poseidon, Korg iWavestation, GrooveRider 16, and SynthMasterOne. Given this saturated market what did Scythe Synth have to offer that other app’s didn’t? From my perspective, it would be the ability to create and edit your own wavetables at a very deep level. The app is therefore a niche within a niche.

I don’t have any insight into why the developer hasn’t further developed Scythe Synth although your thoughts on the matter could be accurate as it’s certainly more work to add the wavetable editing, and setup all of the IAPs, and I could envision disappointment when relatively few people decide to invest in the fruits of your labor. Plus I’m sure there were calls for an update to AUv3 which once again might not be a worthwhile investment for the developer.

Since both PPG (rumors are the people he sold his company to aren’t interested in mobile apps) and Waldorf have already withdrawn from the Apple mobile app development business and we’ve yet to see a Serum app, it would seem there’s not a sufficient economic return on investment.

I believe we’re more likely to see a developer who’s really into wavetable synthesis bring an app with similar wavetable editing capability to Apple’s mobile iOS via efforts to make development easier for these platforms with tools like AudioKit or Apple’s cross platform AU development support. A combination of passion for wavetable synthesis, ease of app development, and being independent of economic or popularity returns on their investment will more likely yield results until such time as Apple’s mobile device platforms are more economically viable versus another preset based wavetable synth app.

There are similar issues with SFZ support in iOS apps. There’s not consistent implementation of this open source protocol. The Sforzando app freely available on Windows and MacOS (as an AU too) hasn’t made it to Apple mobile yet. Many iOS/iPadOS apps are focused on closed approaches where they use IAPs or more recently subscriptions to create a more sustainable development process.

Consequently, there are more tools on PC OSes that are open sourced whereas on Apple’s devices they’re lagging behind— see Pd, CSOUND, SFZ, SF2, Web MIDI, and wavetable editors. Until Auditor arrived recently to narrow the gap, there were similar deficiencies in audio editing too.

McD

@espiegel123 said:

@McD said:

If you were tapping the share icon that is sharing a recording made in the app and not a wavetable. Or is there another place from where you were able to export?

I was but there's also a "floppy disk" icon next to each wavetable and it opens a pop-up to name it. But where that file is stored I cannot say. Still poking about. Hopefully someone beats me to it and comments.
I'm trying RTFM which says you can save it and reload it.

McD

I found where the wavetables are saved in the app but that doesn't mean they could be exported. Arg.
Touch the waveshape icon and choose the "Saved" folder. It's in there but probably not accessible or exportable outside of the app... developers can be that way. (Mine now).

Skyblazer

I really like the IAP wavetables, I do wish they came with presets attached. But I don't mind that so much. An updated sound engine would be nice. I revisited Scythe this morning, and it crashed when I loaded Pro-Q3 into the FX slot, then it crashed again a few minutes later, so...that's my experience.

Here's a tip that I would have appreciated when I was new to production, and first discovered Scythe. It looks like there's a built-in low pass. You can EQ it out. I think it's only there to deal with the aliasing, so if the developer updated the sound engine, I imagine they'd remove it.

Definitely in my top 5 apps that I hope will receive updates. I also love its aesthetics. For achieving that dark cinematic sci fi sound, Scythe has the best selection out there. Won't someone think of the children? Most synths don't have any good presets for trap or dubstep. All that said, if I could just export the wavetables, I probably would. @Paulinko There is someone building a wavetabler with Audiokit.

espiegel123

@McD said:

@espiegel123 said:

@McD said:

If you were tapping the share icon that is sharing a recording made in the app and not a wavetable. Or is there another place from where you were able to export?

I was but there's also a "floppy disk" icon next to each wavetable and it opens a pop-up to name it. But where that file is stored I cannot say. Still poking about. Hopefully someone beats me to it and comments.
I'm trying RTFM which says you can save it and reload it.

That just lets you save it internally so that you can use it in other presets you make.

Paulinko

@Skyblazer said:
I really like the IAP wavetables, I do wish they came with presets attached. But I don't mind that so much. An updated sound engine would be nice. I revisited Scythe this morning, and it crashed when I loaded Pro-Q3 into the FX slot, then it crashed again a few minutes later, so...that's my experience.

Here's a tip that I would have appreciated when I was new to production, and first discovered Scythe. It looks like there's a built-in low pass. You can EQ it out. I think it's only there to deal with the aliasing, so if the developer updated the sound engine, I imagine they'd remove it.

Definitely in my top 5 apps that I hope will receive updates. I also love its aesthetics. For achieving that dark cinematic sci fi sound, Scythe has the best selection out there. Won't someone think of the children? Most synths don't have any good presets for trap or dubstep. All that said, if I could just export the wavetables, I probably would. @Paulinko There is someone building a wavetabler with Audiokit.

Thank you for the info, great to hear, I look forward to its release.

McD

@Paulinko said:
It seems perhaps you’re using IMHO tongue in cheek?

Busted.

You suggest the developer should have had better presets in order to appeal to more people so he could sell more copies of his app to therefore be more successful. You characterize sounds as being cheap, bad, and abhorrent which seems to require judgement which would be inconsistent with being humble. Distinguishing what we like versus what others do and what a particular app is capable is often like opening up a can of worms.

Compare it to Shoom which really delivers an out of the box Wow. It probably has similar sales over a similar time.

The one that really got us fired up was "SpaceCraft Granular" and there's a small but dedicated following for the Koala Sampler app.

Wavetable synthesis has been around since the early 1980s, so perhaps these abhorrent SERUM sound designs are just another appropriation of older technology/culture in a more contemporary setting? These sure aren’t your grandpa’s wavetables.

We already had several wavetable synth apps with a plethora of presets: Nave, the PPG apps, Poseidon, Korg iWavestation, GrooveRider 16, and SynthMasterOne. Given this saturated market what did Scythe Synth have to offer that other app’s didn’t? From my perspective, it would be the ability to create and edit your own wavetables at a very deep level. The app is therefore a niche within a niche.

These apps represent the values of the developer with feedback from the market. Adding a simple
deep reverb DSP into the product could have quadrupled the sales, IMHO. But the Delay included (over time as an IAP) is pretty lack luster.

But I've been a supported of this app and encouraged people to get it for "free" AND buy the IAP's as a thank you. My record pushing this app on the forum is in the record.

I stand by the judgement that it does tend to sound pretty bad compared to other synths that drip in FX
like the Sugar Bytes apps. But as a technical achievement it's like the Nave for "free". How cool is that?
But I suspect the Waldorf has a lot more attention to FX detailing... It's just priced too high for me.

I did pick up iWaveStation on sale but I'm not sure it exposes it's internals does it?

I don’t have any insight into why the developer hasn’t further developed Scythe Synth although your thoughts on the matter could be accurate as it’s certainly more work to add the wavetable editing, and setup all of the IAPs, and I could envision disappointment when relatively few people decide to invest in the fruits of your labor. Plus I’m sure there were calls for an update to AUv3 which once again might not be a worthwhile investment for the developer.

ROI. He periodically drops the price to zero and hopes for more IAP revenues. I have bought them all.

Since both PPG (rumors are the people he sold his company to aren’t interested in mobile apps) and Waldorf have already withdrawn from the Apple mobile app development business and we’ve yet to see a Serum app, it would seem there’s not a sufficient economic return on investment.

Companies have their time and the market for IOS favors the smaller development teams in general and
they aren't getting rich. Many have day jobs.

Paulinko

@noob said:
@Paulinko nice post over all apart from RTFM ( thats why we are here mate)

While I appreciate many people may not benefit so easily from manuals for a wide variety of very legitimate reasons, I believe I would have been remiss if I hadn’t let people know it has a decent built-in manual. If people simply don’t want to read the manual because they believe there’s some sort of short cut to learning how to create your own wavetables in Scythe Synth, then I’d suggest that even a video series would have several parts and some might rather go through the manual than view all of that. Conversations on here can be helpful to people as well.

Unfortunately, the developer’s website and support links haven’t been working for some time so potential users won’t know if there’s even a manual or built-in help based upon the App Store description.

Alternatively, you can wing it by importing some of your own audio samples and bypass learning about all of the mechanics of creating custom wavetables, if so, you might want to check out Poseidon which offers this functionality in an AUv3 app that allows you to export your presets rather than having them trapped inside a particular installation of the app on your device. I’m not aware of an easy way to transfer your Scythe Synth installation to another device. Scythe Synth was last updated a year ago.

Given Scythe Synth has many of the signs of being an abandoned app with no clear way to even be able to use your created wavetables or the presets created with them somewhere else, I’m not so sure it’s an app people would want to invest their time and effort into especially if a developer such as Matt Pfeiffer, thanks for the heads up @Skyblazer, may be working on one.

Poppadocrock

Thanks for all the great info. I’m going to dig a little deeper with this one...

noob

yep its deffo stillcool

SNystrom

Yeah, I checked-out Matt's posts on the progress, and while admirable, I don't see a release dropping in the App Store within the next 20 days. From the audio I heard, it doesn't sound at all like Scythe

You're right about limited documentation with Scythe. I originally searched the net for a manual before finally discovering it right there inside the app. My first feeble attempt at creating a wavetable failed miserably, but after going slowly over the table editor section of the manual, I've created some usable stuff.

espiegel123

Scythe very intentionally is not a typical wavetable synth. It is what it is ...for some it is great and inspirational and for others it will be meh or a something only used for the sorts of things you hear in the presets.

It is unlikely to be updated with new features. The dev became very discouraged about music app development and moved on to doing non-music software which I think was also more in line with his general interests.

SNystrom

It would be nice if he could revisit it just long enough to allow us share our presets and wavetables — but then the peanut gallery would be instantly demanding AU compatibility and start a boycott! 😊

Paulinko

@McD it appears we have different approaches and perspectives with respect to Scythe Synth and effects. I like the delay IAP. More significantly, there’s an abundance of effect apps so I strongly prefer an a la carte approach using synths plus external effect apps rather than bloating every synth app or DAW with effects. I believe this ultimately gives me more flexibility and control of my sound chains. Not all effects will be appropriate as post effects so there are limits to this.

The more moving parts you have in any given app, the more difficult it will be to maintain and update. Such a modular approach where there’s more separation of synthesis and effects means simpler apps which are easier to learn and easier to support by smaller and part time developers which is more sustainable and viable on Apple’s mobile platforms.

I would be super happy if someone developed a wavetable editor app for for use with already existing wavetable synth apps. Never got the Korg iWavestation because they have yet to provide a way to import your own wavetables.

I’m pessimistic about the revival of Scythe Synth in terms of updates anytime soon. It does have all the hallmarks of being abandoned. Nevertheless, for me, it’s provided many learning opportunities which I appreciate.

barabajagal

This I why I love this forum...god I’ve neglected this beauty for ages , feels like discovering a new app.
Seems like a good time to complete the IAPs.

espiegel123

@SNystrom said:
It would be nice if he could revisit it just long enough to allow us share our presets and wavetables — but then the peanut gallery would be instantly demanding AU compatibility and start a boycott! 😊

Unlikely to happen. Even before he gave up on the app, he indicated that adding preset import/export would be non-trivial and wasn’t likely. His decision to abandon the app came suddenly. He was talking about fixing the last straggling bugs (the filter delay state is not correctly restored when recalling presets) and then a week later he was taking down his videos from YouTube and shutting down his web site.

SNystrom

Well, if you can still reach him, let him know his app has seemingly been reborn! 🤗

Hopefully all the IAP purchases I and others here have made will at least allow his music project to finish in the black.

iOSTRAKON

Haven’t read the thread in its entirety yet, however, this synth seems to be down my alley

Jes

Crashes for me now that Ive downloaded the Wavetable Creator IAP.
As soon as I draw a waveform and hit APPLY the app disappears. Ipad 2018 ios 13.4 .1
Anyone else getting crashes?

McD

I have the same OS and hardware. No instability detected (yet) drawing or any other functions.
I suggest you try:

1. full power off reboot of the iPad
2. delete the app (maybe save the data or delete everything and reload the IAP's)

SNystrom

No issues here, either.

2018 iPad. iOS 13.4.1

Paul16

@McD said:
OK. I imported 2 of @rs2000's Rhodes Keyboard sample notes and ran the Scythe Synth output through a "Shimmer" preset in ToneBoosters excellent Reverb (that I forgot about but remembered when someone said "Shimmer"). Really a gorgeous synth for lushness. Go figure... garbage in...

Quite delightful, never thought the beast could be made to sing like that !