What I discovered about Synth waves

[AlenK]

There isn't much about the Synth waves in the manual beyond a list of them in the Appendix. Here's what I have discovered by auditioning them. First, they all seem to be single-cycle waveforms except for the VA waves, the TB waves and the SH bass waves (and maybe a few others - sometimes if an attack is short it's hard to tell if it different than the sustain). The VA, TB and the SH bass waves are like PCM waves in that they are either one-shot samples with attack and decay or they are looped. However, they are unlike PCM waves in that the don't seem to be multi-sampled. However, some of the single-cycle waveforms do sound like they are multisampled, such as the some of the CZ waves. It's really a curious collection.

Another thing, this one explained by Mike Martin, is that the -L and -B variants of the waveforms, when they exist, contain progressively stronger high harmonics. So they sound brighter at any given pitch. That also means that they will alias more if you transpose them up (applies only the -L waves since the -B waves can't be transposed up).