Groove Synthesis 3rd Wave OS 2.0a Adds New Options + Effects
Groove Synthesis 3rd Wave OS Version 2.0a is now available as a free update, adding new synthesis and effects options.
Key features of the update include a new way to make waves and a flexible Shimmer reverb.
“The 3rd Wave has come a long way since it first came out, capable of things we never dreamed of at launch,” said Andrew Silverman, co-founder of Groove Synthesis.
A Brand New Shimmer Reverb
The first highlight of this release is a new effect: Shimmer Verb, living in effect slot 2 right after Super Plate. The Shimmer will give you the ability to shift the pitch in fractions of a semitone across a full two-octave range, from one octave down to one octave up, which means you’re not limited to complete octave or semitone shifts.
“I was surprised by how it makes even the most simple patch sound immense,” said Bob Coover, co-founder and DSP engineer at Groove Synthesis. “The effect is really wide. Route a single sustained note through it and just let it spread the sound out and up at the same time.”
The Filter Cutoff parameter lets you shape the reverb’s tone from dark and filtered to bright and open. There are also several other useful controls in the “Extra” section.
What makes the effect especially cool is that Rev Time, Pitch Amount, and LP/HP Cutoff are all available as destinations in the mod matrix.
A Smarter, More Capable Way to Make Waves
OS 2.0a also brings real improvements to Make Waves, the 3rd Wave’s built-in wavetable creation tool. If you’ve tried turning your own audio into wavetables, you’ll notice the results are more consistent right away with the existing modes.
The big addition is a third mode: Spectral. Make Waves has always given you two ways to turn audio into a wavetable. Pitch On is built for sources with a clear, stable pitch, and does its best to detect that pitch and lock the resulting waveforms to it. Pitch Off skips pitch detection entirely and instead finds the best splice points to carve unpitched material, like drums or found sounds, into a clean set of waveforms.
Spectral mode takes a different approach from both. Instead of tracking pitch or hunting for splice points in the waveform itself, it analyzes the audio in the frequency domain to find the best slices across the entire file. That makes it the mode to reach for on sources that might not have worked for the other two. Chorused sounds, ambient recordings, anything with a pitch that wanders or never quite settles should do well with the Spectral mode. Where Pitch On would fight to lock onto a moving target, and Pitch Off would just slice without regards to pitch, Spectral mode is built to make sense of exactly that kind of material. Feed it something strange and Make Waves will find the wavetable hiding inside it.
Here’s an in-depth look at the Shimmer reverb and the new Wave Maker algorithm by The Midlife Synthesist:
Everything Else in 2.0a
Beyond the two headline features, this update carries a few other noteworthy improvements: expanded MIDI CC mappings for the 24M and 8M desktop modules, new MIDI SysEx features including wavetable and sample import/export, a new envelope retrigger option with a quick reset, and various bug fixes worth checking out in the release notes on the support page.
OS 2.0a is available now as a free download for all 3rd Wave 24K, 24M, and 8M owners.
