Groove Synthesis: 3rd Wave Synthesizer

If you are a synthesist, we currently live in a golden age of instrument design. The original “East Coast” and “West Coast” analog synth designs that were supplanted in the mid-‘80s by digital synthesizers have evolved into a huge palette of options to consider when shopping for (or designing) a new synthesizer. Whether a re-creation of the classic Moog Minimoog, a completely modern digital synth like the ASM (Ashun Sound Machines) Hydrasynth, or something that mixes several topologies, there are many great options available. Bob Coover (who also does DSP work for Sequential) and the crew at Groove Synthesis have threaded this needle in a particularly elegant way with their 3rd Wave synthesizer that is inspired by the classic PPG (Palm Products GmbH) Wave: A digital/analog hybrid first built in 1981 that combined then cutting-edge digital wavetable oscillators with a classic analog signal path and resonant filter. The PPG Wave was a huge hit at the time (and hugely expensive at $7000 or more!), made even more popular by artists like Thomas Dolby [Tape Op #119], Trevor Horn [#89], Art of Noise, Gary Numan [#125], Tears for Fears [#147], and a-ha. Used PPG Waves are expensive ($10,000 and up) and temperamental. When Waldorf acquired Palm Products GmbH, they strangely never relaunched the classic PPG Wave instrument, although several instruments were made based on the Wave’s technology, including Waldorf’s Quantum and Iridium [#141]. However, what most of those instruments missed was the classic analog filter and relatively simple architecture of the original PPG Wave that made it so popular. While the Iridium (introduced in 2020) is an impressive piece of technology, I ultimately did not love it because it sounded a bit cold and was fairly complex to program.

In 2022 Groove Synthesis finally created a worthy successor to the PPG Wave with the 3rd Wave. It does everything the original PPG Wave did (and more), but is a simple, well-built, and easy-to-use instrument/processor. As an homage to the original PPG Wave, the 3rd Wave is the same deep shade of blue and has a similar front panel layout with a mostly “one knob per function” design. Even though this is a very deep and complex instrument, it’s pretty intuitive and simple to program – and it looks cool! It's clearly modern and new while retaining a nice retro vibe. Part of an instrument’s appeal is how it looks and feels. Waldorf’s Quantum and Iridium, for instance, don’t look or feel that inviting to me. Though the Quantum can do much of what this synth does, the 3rd Wave is easier to use. It features an LCD screen about the size of a standard iPhone, but it’s more helpful and informational for the most part, rather than something we're forced to interact with.

I’m not going to get too deep into how wavetable synthesis works. In short, there is a memory slot (the table) that holds 64 single-cycle waveforms, and an oscillator steps through them. How the oscillator steps through them is what differentiates various wavetable-based synths and distinct patches within those synths. Other than the Wave PPG, classic wavetable synths include the Sequential Circuits Prophet VS and the Ensoniq VFX, while Korg’s wavestate and modwave are newer wavetable-based synths. What really sets the 3rd Wave apart from most of its competitors is how it can emulate the classic PPG Wave’s 8-bit wavetables or work in a newer, more modern way while eliminating many of the weird glitches and artifacts inherent in early wavetable synthesis machines with their limited CPU resources. The 3rd Wave also goes one step further by including seven analog synth waveforms so that it can also function in a classic “East Coast” topology while taking advantage of the Dave Rossum-designed (the person behind the classic SSM filters on early PPG Waves and Sequential Circuits Prophet-5) resonant analog filter and all analog signal path. These waveforms give us a monster analog polysynth with three oscillators, four LFOs, and four ADSR envelope generators with a versatile modulation routing scheme. Factoring in mixing and matching the Wavetable Oscillators with the analog waveforms, the sound design possibilities are vast.

Another cool feature that Groove Synthesis added to the 3rd Wave is the Wave Surfer knob: A rotary controller that allows us to manually step through the waves in a wavetable that can create some cool live performance effects in the same way one might manually work through the resonant filter knobs on a traditional synth. This feature is similar to the joystick on the Sequential Circuits Prophet VS but with significantly more control and a much cooler name. If this was all this synth did, it would be impressive at half the cost of a vintage Wave PPG, but Groove Synthesis has taken this several steps further and added the ability to do sampling and to build your own wavetables with user-generated samples. In this way, the 3rd Wave adds the functionality of the super rare (and cutting edge for its time) PPG Waveterm, which worked in conjunction with the Wave to create sampling back when that technology was brand new. By adding it into the 3rd Wave, it vastly extends the sound design capabilities of the synth while doubling as a basic sampler. It might be best to think of these sampling capabilities as being similar to the classic AMS DMX-15-80S digital sampling delay from the same era, but with 35 seconds of sampling time at full bandwidth with the ability to have eight different samples across the keyboard in a multi-sample.

The 3rd Wave’s audio input is modern and can easily be used to make samples and wavetables, but it can also import audio directly via its USB port, which is an even simpler process. The 3rd Wave also supports Xfer’s Serum wavetable format. The 3rd Wave has all the classic 8-bit legacy wavetables from the Wave PPG but also has 64 open patches for user-generated wavetables, which can each hold up to 64 waveforms. So, while the possibilities are not endless there are exactly 3,072 available configurations. Moving past the oscillators and the analog filter, there are also a host of onboard effects, plus a digital Oberheim SEM-type multimode filter. The synth has 24 total voices and can play up to four multi-timbral parts. I’m still scratching the surface here; there are even more features (aimed at live performance) you can learn about on Groove Synthesis’ website. Lastly, the 3rd Wave’s analog or USB inputs can be sued to process audio through the synth’s filters and onboard effects, and there are four stereo outputs on the 3rd Wave, allowing panning of voices independently on complex patches.

So, after all this explanation, how does this thing sound? Pretty damn amazing! I’ve been playing around with this synth for a few weeks now. All the presets sound great and are actually useful for the most part. The 3rd Wave brings a huge palette of sounds to the “table,” ranging from the classic PPG Wave and thick analog polysynth sounds to more percussive, glassy, crystalline tones. As we are going to press, artist/producer Robby Moncrieff is in Panoramic and has been using the 3rd Wave every day, and he keeps telling me how much he likes it. This synth is not cheap at $5,000, but is comparable to the (sadly discontinued) Moog One, so it’s helpful to put it in that perspective. This is the type of instrument that a studio or artist could add to their rig that will likely get used all the time while rendering many less versatile, more complex instruments redundant. In other words, this is an investment that any serious musician, producer, or studio owner should consider.