Galbanum goes Googol! Galbanum Architecture Waveforms 2010, is an absolutely massive collection of over 25,000 meticulously designed wavetables provided in several industry-standard formats. Wavetables are single cycle periodic waveforms that form the most fundamental building block of synthesis. They are the sound generators, and can be thought of as the oscillator of a classic analog synth, but they provide infinitely more variability in wave-shape and spectrum. They are chiefly responsible for determining a sound's primary timbre or "tone color". This collection offers an unfathomable variety of waveforms logically organized into 102 categories and provides the following benefits:

• A simple and inexpensive method of quickly and effortlessly expanding the awesome potential of supported synth and sampler instruments

• Over ten times as many waveforms as the previous generation including 58 new waveform classes based on new research

• Vast expansion of available timbre pallet for wavetable synths and samplers

• Newly developed timbres offering fresh, unique starting points which stand out from the competition

• Transformation of sampler instruments into synth instruments

• Bleeding-edge sound-design using complex waveforms as modulation sources and other advanced techniques

• Algorithmically developed content that is mathematically perfect and the highest fidelity of anything similar in the market

• By far the largest and most diverse collection of its kind on the market

• Perfect integration with industry-leading synths and samplers allowing easy navigation and management

The Galbanum Architecture Waveforms 2010 collection is available in three industry-standard Wav format varieties, as well as three proprietary formats to directly support award-winning synthesizers:

Wavetable:Wavetable format combines many single-cycle waveforms into a single multi-waveform wavetable. Wavetable synths are generally able to scan through the members of the wavetable and in many cases create seamless morphing between waveforms. This allows sound-designers to create incredibly dynamic presets that bring a huge variety of new surprises to the table, pun intended. Examples of compatible synths for this format include: XFer Serum, UVI Falcon, Arturia Pigments, Tone2 Icarus, Waves Codex, Synapse Dune 2.5, and many others. These synths represent some of the most exciting hosts possible to use with the Galbanum Architecture Waveforms, and Wavetable format is highly recommended.

Wav32: 32-bit Floating Point Wav format for use wavetable synths that support Wav import such as Cakewalk Rapture and many others. The Sample Rate header is set at 96K, however sample-rate is generally irrelevant in proper wavetable synths such as Rapture which transpose, resample, and perfectly anti-alias the single-cycle waveform using industry leading synthesis engines to provide perfectly clean oscillators over the entire musical pitch range. This should be the default choice for most Wav format users. The Wav-32 format can also be used to create custom Wavetables in Wavetable synhts.

Wav24: 24bit, 44.1 Wav format for use in hardware synths and samplers that do not support floating point formats. Choose this format only if your software host or hardware instrument does not support 32-bit FP files.

Wav64: 64-bit Floating Point Wav format for use wavetable synths that support 64-bit Wav import such as Cakewalk Rapture and others. The Sample Rate header is set at 96K. This is a premium format offered for developers, professional sound-designers, and extreme purists who want absolute perfection. Pricing for this format is slightly more expensive, as these files represent our source files and are the highest fidelity we have available.

ABS: The proprietary GLY format for use in Native Instruments' Absynth synthesizer. Absynth can also load Wav format for oscillator use, but only GLY format may be used as LFOs, and GLY format is much more convenient than loading Wav format one at a time in Absynth.

ALC Two proprietary formats for Camel Audio's Alchemy synthesizer. Both Oscillator and LFO formats all provided for all waveforms.

MS: The proprietary Wave format for U&I Software's MetaSynth for use as oscillators and envelopes in the FX Room.

Our journey into waveform design began with the first version of Galbanum's Architecture Waveforms collection which was originally developed in 2005 for Architecture Volume One for U&I Software's MetaSynth. It contained over 1,000 waveforms. The second version of this collection was released in 2006, grew to over 1,800 waveforms, and supported hosts were expanded to include Absynth as well as any host supporting Wav import. In 2,007 the Cakewalk Edition of the product offered 2,500 waveforms targeted for use in Rapture and other synths.

The current 2010 edition of the collection now contains over ten times as many waveforms as the previous generation and offers over 25,000 waveforms! This edition represents all of our private research and development in this field over the past three years, and makes this unprecedented level of diversity available publicly for the first time. We have added some very interesting and unique new categories based on new proprietary algorithms. These include new categories such as Binary Additive, Exponential FM, Fractal, Modulo, Phase Shift, and Spectral. We have also vastly expanded on the some of the previous categories and made some minor revisions to the folder naming and organization to make navigation of this immense library even easier. The Reference Manual gives a brief description of each of these categories as well providing a visual representation of an example waveform in each category and offering some suggested usage. Suggested usage, however is only that - a suggestion - and experimentation with various use, misuse, and even abuse of these waveforms is highly encouraged.

This library was created using tools that allow for a new level of detail and precision that was previously impossible. All efforts were taken to maximize resolution and fidelity. The large majority of these where calculated algorithmically using pure math in Visual Studio (C++). Others were edited at the single sample level in high precision editor like Sound Forge. All of them are as mathematically perfect as is possible for the format, and the format itself is vastly superior to most/all of the classic wavetable-based hardware synths that we know of. Liberal use of these waveforms as sound-generators, modulation sources, and wave-shaper curves, can give results which are truly amazing.

Potential customers sometimes ask how many waveforms are enough? When we first began our journey we thought 1,000 or 2,000 waveforms was a pretty large number. As we dug deeper however, we began to realize just how much variety is achievable within a single 2048-sample waveform. It is truly mind-boggling! Let's talk numbers...

First let us consider the Frequency Domain: any waveform can be represented by a summation of sine partials at harmonic frequency ratios. Let us consider using only 8 partials either on or off. This gives 2^8 or 256 possibilities, and in fact we offer exactly all of these possibilities in one of the new waveform categories. Now consider using just 16 partials: 2^16=65536. 32 partials: 2^32 = around 4 Billion. Now consider that Galbanum Architecture Waveforms actually use 1024 partials: 2^1024 = 10^308! If that was not big enough already, consider that each partial is not only on or off, but actually has some bit depth. Even if it was 8-bits, it would be (2^8)^1024 = 256^1024! Architecture Waveforms actually use 64-bit so (2^64)^1024! Then there is also the phase of each partial, which results in even more possibilities.

Alternatively we can consider the Time Domain where we choose a sample value for 2048 samples which gives: (possible choices)^(number of choices) = (2^64)^2048 = 2^131072 = 10^39456 = a lot! This is one large number somewhere between a Googol and a Googolplex! It is much longer than the life of the universe in pico-seconds! It is much larger than the number of estimated atoms in the universe! In summary, 1,000 or 2,000 waveforms is not even remotely exhaustive. 25,000 is certainly more than enough to keep us all busy for a while though.

Galbanum has become one of the world's leading authorities on waveform design for synthesizers and musical instruments. Part of the goal of releasing this collection publicly is to contribute to the community as a whole by making this library available for licensing for use in other 3rd-party products. In 2006 Galbanum licensed a part of this collection to Native Instruments for use in Massive. It did the same again in 2008 for Future Audio Workshop's Circle, and again in 2009 with both Camel Audio's Alchemy, and KV331's SynthMaster 2.0. Additionally Galbanum maintains co-marketing and distribution arrangements for its Architecture Waveforms products with companies such as Cakewalk, U&I Software, and others. The majority of these products have subsequently won major industry awards, and Galbanum Architecture Waveforms are heard by millions of people every day in one form or another.

Galbanum is always open to exploring new partnerships, and is currently discussing several arrangements with additional software and hardware manufacturers. Additionally, Galbanum is now opening up licensing to third party professional sound-designers who would like to include and redistribute a sub-set of the Galbanum Architecture Waveforms together with their commercial preset and sound expansion products. Interested parties are invited to contact us.