This video, via retrosound, is a demo of the PPG Waveterm A + Wave 2.2 – a vintage wavetable synthesizer from 1982.
via retrosound72:
PPG Waveterm A and Wave 2.2 Wavetable Synthesizer from the year 1982.
The Waveterm is the heart of the legendary PPG system and based on an old german computer called Eltec Eurocom II with Motorola 6809 processor.
– creation of Waves and Wavetables
– fourier analysis / resonator
– additive synthesis
– 8 bit Sampling for the WAVE 2.2
– sequencer / event generator
– storage of sounds on 8″ discthis first demo video shows only a few functions (creation of waves, wavetables) of the Waveterm A. more coming soon.
I love the cool wave sequencing near the end of the video
Sounds massive.
The white keys would work also!
Just the sound of this thing loading the disk makes me smile. This is sweet. Huge sound.
Instant 80's Tangerine Dream
I'm pretty impressed by how fat that sounds. I need to delve more into wavetables…
Heres a vst version, http://www.hermannseib.com/english/synths/ppg/wav…
Heres a vst version, http://www.hermannseib.com/english/synths/ppg/wav…
Heres a vst version, http://www.hermannseib.com/english/synths/ppg/wav…
Heres a vst version, http://www.hermannseib.com/english/synths/ppg/wav…
Heres a vst version, http://www.hermannseib.com/english/synths/ppg/wav…
Heres a vst version, http://www.hermannseib.com/english/synths/ppg/wav…
No useful comments here.. Instead amazement.. I'm almost literally looking at this with my jaw wide opened (and truth be told, that's not too far from the truth).
I didn't live the 8" disks (but the 5.25") but I have seen, used, experimented with some of the compute equipment from back then.
Seriously; this kind of stuff was *already* available and existing back THEN ?
Honestly; I didn't know and I am truly amazed. Especially since although I didn't live it I do got a pretty good feeling / impression of the kind of stuff which was and wasn't possible back then. This is amazing. I am really in awe…
I can try to put it into words why this is awesome but no,not tonight. You need to have lived this period. Coming from someone totally clueless as to what was the norm back then let me say this: your average PC (as if those really existed back then, ha! the first IBM had 5.25" disks) had a speaker which did bleeeep.
totally awesome, honest…
and now its bedtime for me 🙂
To save you some trouble: It's not the wavetables, but rather the low resolution DACs in the PPG Wave. Probably some influence by the analog filters and VCAs as well.
The IBM PC was the odd man out, there were several dedicated sound chips (take a look at Plogue Chipsounds for example). And even way before the advent of microcomputers, let along minicomputers people made musical (or not so musical) sounds. Remember HAL singing "Daisy" in 2001? Well, that was inspired by a real computer of that time. You should be able to find a recording of the song done by the original IBM 704 computer online.
Fantastic sounds, and the 8" FDD is its own drum machine!
This was really high tech – the 6809 was a seriously high-powered (and rather underrated) microprocessor back then. Hmmm, time to dig out and fire up my old BBC Master 128 with 6809 co-processor and start experimenting…
Would-be wavetable experimenters should note that getting started can be very easy:
[youtube HICFPj0Gi4U http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HICFPj0Gi4U youtube]
more Waveterm vids coming soon 😉
this is the first.