Wavetable formats
First things first, let’s take a look at what’s going on behind the scenes…
The most important wavetable concept is the ‘frame’ or ‘window’. This is a span of audio that’s a specific number of samples in length, and which contains the template for a waveform; usually a single cycle. That waveform should be sized to fill the frame perfectly so that, when repeated, a constant static timbre is produced.
Different synths have different wavetable specifications, and these centre around the number of samples in a frame, the bit depth of those samples, and the maximum number of frames that a wavetable can contain. There is no standard for this, so you should always check a synth’s requirements before spending time creating wavetables for it.
The good news is that most modern wavetable synths have gravitated towards the same format: 2,048 samples per frame, any bit depth, and a maximum of 256 frames in a wavetable. These synths can also handle mono or stereo wavetable files, but there’s rarely much point in creating stereo wavetables, so use mono wherever possible.