PPG Wave

The PPG Wave is a series of hybrid digital / analog synthesizers built by the German company Palm Products GmbH from 1981 to 1987.

Until the early 1980s, the tonal palette of commercial synthesizers was limited to that which could be obtained by combining a few simple waveforms such as sine, sawtooth, pulse. The result was shaped with VCFs and VCAs. Wolfgang Palm transcended this limitation by pioneering the concept of wavetable synthesis, where single cycle waveforms of differing harmonic spectra were stored in adjacent memory slots. Dynamic spectral shifts were achieved by scanning through the waveforms, with interpolation used to avoid noticeable 'jumps' between the adjacent waveforms. Palm's efforts resulted in PPG's first wavetable synthesizer, the Wavecomputer 360 (1978), which provides the user with 30 different wavetables consisting of 64 waves each. While the expansive range of sound is evident, the absence of filters results in the Wavecomputer 360 sounding buzzy and thin, which hampered its original commercial viability. Palm's efforts to resolve the apparent shortcomings of the Wavecomputer 360 would result in the creation of PPG's Wave series of synthesizers.

PPG's Wave series represents an evolution of its predecessor by combining its digital sound engine with analog VCAs and 24db per octave VCFs, featuring 8-voice polyphony; and by replacing its nontraditional series of push buttons and sliders with a control panel consisting of an LCD and a more familiar arrangement of knobs. Also added to the Wave series was an onboard sequencer that is capable of recording filtering and wavetable changes in realtime. At the core of the Wave's processing unit is a Motorola 6809 CPU, and a variety of 6500 and 6800-series support ICs. MIDI support was added in 1984, via a 6840/6850 daughtercard.

The PPG Wave was produced in three successive variants:

The PPG Wave can be connected to multiple peripheral PPG components simultaneously, such as a "smart" keyboard controller (PRK), 8-voice expansion units (EVU), and a wave computer called Waveterm for sampling, editing, sequencing and creating user defined wavetables. Collectively, this setup is referred to as the "PPG Wave System", which was intended to compete with the Fairlight CMI.

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