Ensoniq Fizmo Transwave Digital Synthesizer

Note: links to listings are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.

via this eBay listing

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Elektron Acquired by Bonnier Capital

via Elektron

The Swedish company will continue to operate from its headquarters in Gothenburg and its subsidiaries in Los Angeles and Berlin, with its team, brand, and product development focus intact.

Gothenburg, Sweden — April 8, 2026 — Elektron, the Swedish instrument maker behind a range of electronic musical instruments and performance tools, today announced that it has been acquired by Bonnier Capital, the long-established Swedish family-owned media group with international operations.

The acquisition of Elektron Music Machines AB from a consortium led by EMM Intressenter AB provides long-term support for Elektron’s continued development, international growth, and future expansion. Elektron will maintain full independence and continue to operate from its headquarters in Gothenburg, as well as its subsidiaries in Los Angeles and Berlin, with its existing team, brand, and commitment to creating instruments and tools for music makers worldwide.

In connection with the transaction, Jonas Hillman, Alexander Hellström, together with the management team, will reinvest alongside Bonnier Capital, reaffirming their ongoing commitment and active participation in Elektron’s journey.

Since its founding in 1998, Elektron has established a distinct position in electronic music through its unique approach to sound, sequencing, and performance-oriented design. As part of Bonnier, the company will gain access to broader strategic resources while preserving the focus and identity that have defined Elektron over the years.

“Elektron has built a truly distinctive position at the intersection of technology, creativity, and music culture. We are deeply impressed by the team’s craftsmanship and vision, and we see strong alignment with our long-term approach to building enduring, creative businesses in the music industry. Our ambition is to support Elektron’s continued growth while preserving the unique identity that has made it so respected by artists worldwide,” said Jonas Von Hedenberg, Investment Director at Bonnier Capital.

Alexander Hellström, CEO of Elektron, added: “Joining Bonnier marks an exciting new chapter for Elektron. It gives us the support and strategic backing to keep doing what we love most—creating inspiring instruments and pushing the boundaries of sound and performance. At the same time, this is just the beginning of a more ambitious journey ahead. Together with Bonnier Capital, we see strong opportunities to grow further, as we expand our role in shaping the future of electronic music creation.”

For customers, partners, and the wider Elektron community, day-to-day operations continue as usual. Ongoing product development, support, and existing business commitments remain unchanged.

Ensoniq SD-1 Emulation - "Between Worlds" Soundset 54 Presets

video upload by LFOstore

"LFO.store presents a soundset for Ensoniq SD-1 VST Emulation synthesizer – 'Between Worlds' Soundset.

BUY: https://lfo.sellfy.store/p/ensoniq-sd...

Great developers from Sojusrecords giving us this treassure for free:
https://github.com/sojusrecords/Enson...

SD-1 is a real deep,versatile & powerfull synthesizer, one of the really first wavetable ones.

'Between Worlds' Soundset crossing 2 worlds – digital & analog timbres and contains 54 organic presets:

Big & massive strings
Various unearthly drones
Silky and evolving pads
Plucks & Bells
Various hybrid basses
Polyphonic & Modular sounds
Cutting Leads

As with USUAL SUSPECTS products we are giving full instructions of how to install plugin, how to load OS & how to import our sounds.

This soundset also working with real SD-1 hardware.

Soul of Ensoniq SD-1 sounds really cosmic & cinematic + its a great machine for synthwave music.

Made by Nick Klimenko aka Chronos, a creator of “Organica” for Waldorf Blofeld & “WS Universe” for Korg Wavestation.

Enjoy & may music be with you!"

NRSynth Quatuor Polyphonic sounds

video upload by Nr Synth

"Some exemples of the polyphonic mode (typical 'Oberheim' flavour).

WARNING: i'm not a musician, don't expect a 'killer' playing...

Long resonant filter sweep.
Brass jumpy style
Polysynth saw
Another thing with resonance!

As usual, no traitement except delay/reverb in Cubase."

Rui Da Silva, Cassandra - Touch Me (Manna Remix) | TeknoBaby Live Remake | Sub37 | e7 | Hydrasynth

video upload by TeknoBaby

"This is IMO the best remix of my favorite House track. Manna did an amazing job, giving it that modern Melodic Techno production. Most of the synth sounds are from the GS Music e7 with lots of osc sync. I just got the Hydrasynth a few days ago so am only using it with a pad preset for now. Bass is Sub37 as usual. And I bought some crappy disco lights off Amazon lol."

Thephonoloop Announces Availability of Outlines VI

video uploads by THEPHONOLOOP

https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/samplers/kontakt-8-player/

Press release follows:


Thephonoloop announces availability of outlines VI, beautifully blending raw acoustic gestures with tape loops and modular-processed tonal experiments

KATOWICE, POLAND: Thephonoloop is proud to announce availability of outlines as its latest NKS (Native Kontrol Standard) ready VI (virtual instrument) for Native Instruments’ Kontakt Player free sample player — beautifully blending raw acoustic gestures with tape loops and modular-processed tonal experiments to spark musical momentum as the sample-based instruments with character-producing Polish two-person team’s approach to a collection of tonal variations designed to be combined and explored, each preset being an outline of a musical idea ready to be expanded and reshaped into something larger — as of March 12…

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Hexdrums cranked, compressed & gated (no talk)

video upload by Richard DeHove

"Compressor hiss? Meh, the world's full of noise and hiss. Levels pushed, why not? Some limiting on the output - sure. We're just having fun here, not trying to educate anyone on noise levels or production techniques. And as usual this video has completely mutated from its original form. The intention was to show the new Nightverb gated reverb option and blather on about drum machines. Then I started playing with Hexdrums' compressor. So instead of my long diatribe on drum machine programming I chopped that all out and just kept the actual drums.

Compressor's aren't my thing. Yet with the Hexdrum compressor I had fun. Pushed past noon it will start giving an audible hissy noise floor but if you're cranking lots of other things that that just disappears :D If I was making an album track I'd probably try to get rid of it but for now every noise is welcome.

On the routing: Voice 1 (bass drum 1) and Voice 3 (snare) are on separate outs and are completely dry - although I was severely temped to do some processing on them. All the other voices go to the Hexdrums stereo out, then to the Nightverb on the gated reverb option; then to the Echolocator. With either effect unit turned to 100% wet it's up to the dry voices 1 & 3 to keep things together.

At times I turn up the release on Voice 2 (bass drum 2) and that's what upsets the compressor and holds it open so long that the gated reverb doesn't get a turn.

The main reason I like this setup is that you can get variations on a single drum pattern without having to program any new drum patterns :)

The main out from the DAW has some mild limiting to catch stray spikes but otherwise this is an unedited one-pass twiddlefest.

Many thanks to my kind patrons who keep this channel ad-free
My website: https://richarddehove.com/"

Very early Synthi A -1971! s/n 4118

Note: links to listings are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.

via this Vemia listing

Click the auction link on top when you get there for additional listings.

Pic of the inside below.

"This auction is for an original 1971 Mk1 EMS Synthi A synthesiser, serial number 4118, in its Spartanite case. The case has a few marks and scratches as befitting a 55 year old instrument, but no chips or breaks. The latches, although showing some corrosion, work perfectly.
The Synthi front panel is one of the cleanest we’ve seen, being almost immaculate with virtually no panel marks and, unusually, no writing or marking absent or worn from the screen printing. In addition this example comes with the early chrome mirror finish knobs.

The internals are extremely clean and original with no modifications (see photo#4 now under the wrong thumbnail) and the unit has the genuine GE PA234 audio amplifier devices for the outputs and reverb.

The unit has been fully tested by one of the three or four people in the world who can call themselves EMS experts. It has been aligned and found to be working perfectly, and consequently given the original condition of the unit, no capacitors have been replaced. The original ones are working fine and show no signs of leakage or decay. However while the existing pots are electrically good with no scratchiness, some are a mechanically stiffer than current production models and the buyer might wish to have these replaced. This can be done at additional cost either here in the UK by EMS experts Lucid or by the buyer’s own engineer.

The Synthi comes with a full set of 20 patch pins and a new UK 240VAC mains lead (not shown). (Observant viewers may notice the absence of the usual Synthi A plastic name plate which usually adorns the outer case. This isn’t missing, but was simply never fitted as there are no holes for it, perhaps because of the early serial number. In addition the rear case is attached by four factory fitted screws and bushings, rather than the more usual arrangement of three)."

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Steps as a sound processor

video upload by Tre Modular

"Steps is our clock sequencer with a built‑in PLL circuit. It works great in its intended role, but feed it an audio‑rate signal and it turns into a divider, multiplier, sub‑oscillator, and chaotic tone‑shaper all at once.

If you enjoy sounds that sit outside the usual modular vocabulary, Steps might be just for you.

If you want to learn more about PLL circuits check out Sound + Voltage channel where Jeff does a deep dive into these circuits. • What the h_ll is a PLL? More than you eve... [posted here]

More info: www.tremodular.com"

Not Just an Update… JE-8086 Keeps Getting Better

video upload by Autodafe

"JE 8086 by The Usual Suspects just received a new update… and this is not your typical 'couple of presets and done' kind of release.

In this video I take a closer look at version 2.2.2, focusing not only on the obvious new features, but also on the many improvements happening behind the scenes — the kind of work that really makes a difference when you actually use a plugin every day.

From the new centralized Settings panel to the redesigned MIDI Learn system, this update brings meaningful workflow improvements, including:
🔹 A new centralized Settings panel (MIDI, DSP, Audio, GUI)
🔹 A completely reworked MIDI Learn system with auto-detection (absolute/relative)
🔹 A visual MIDI Learn overlay mode for faster mapping
🔹 New high-quality and lo-fi resampler modes
🔹 DSP optimizations for better performance and efficiency
🔹 Improved parameter linking with safer behavior
🔹 Enhanced patch management and MIDI integration
🔹 A wide range of bug fixes improving stability and usability

If you had issues with previous versions, this might be a good time to give it another try.

Also worth keeping an eye on the bigger picture: many of these improvements are happening at the framework level, which means we’ll likely see them extended to other instruments from the same project in the future.

What I like about The Usual Suspects approach is the steady, continuous development — not just adding features, but refining the instrument over time.

Download: https://theusualsuspects.io/downloads..."

Thorny - Dystopian ambient set from Interference, 3.14.26

video upload by Thorny - Witherwillow Sounds

"My dystopian ambient set from Interference, a monthly synth show at the Jewel in Manchester, NH, on Mar. 14, 2026. A bit darker than some of my usual stuff and a lot heavier than usual in some places.

Note: camera guy in frame is only for the first minute and a half.

audio by James Dattolo IG - ‪@acuriousproduction‬

copyright 2026 JD Ryan/all rights reserved
witherwillow.com
witherwillow.bandcamp.com"

Xenodrive and DB-01 twins (no talk)

video upload by Richard DeHove

"Why does the Xenodrive not want to let me go? I've had all sorts of good intentions for other content and other devices, stuff that I'm really impatient to show, yet here are we are with the Xenodrive again. I suspect it's down to two things: First that I've cycled through loads of dirt pedals and effects and rarely found one that has more than a single good sound. The Darkglass B3K for example has a brilliant effect on synths, but despite having four knobs and two buttons, it only has one sound. The Xeno has loads of flavors to explore. Second reason I am fixated on this device is that it's finally given me the 'punk synth' sound I've always wanted. Which is largely what we have in this video.

I originally had a big blabfest at the start of this video talking about the Xenodrive in detail but on sudden impulse I cut it all out. I think I was mesmerized by the Xeno and it was giving me instructions. I must exert my free will while I can. If my next video features the Xeno, send help.

Routing here is the MIDI out from the master DB-01 (left) to the rightside DB-01. The master DB-01 has an 8-step random-generated pattern, the leftside DB-01 is empty. Audio goes from each DB-01 to the Xeno left and right. As usual there is absolutely no other processing.

Many thanks to my kind patrons who keep this channel ad-free" My website: https://richarddehove.com/"

A "JP-8000" in your DAW for FREE

video upload by mylarmelodies

"Meet the DSP6300 crew and 'JE-8086', part their amazing ongoing project to make the firmware in 90's virtual analogue synths run in a modern DAW as a VST plugin. FOR FREE. 🔗 https://dsp56300.wordpress.com/ 👉 / mylarmelodies 🙌 MORE LINKS BELOW

Thanks to those who sent me the lecture - it's really interesting if you'd like to understand how this was achieved!

MORE INFO
▶︎ DSP56300 Site (the plugin is called "JE-8086"): https://dsp56300.wordpress.com/
▶︎ Roland's Official JP-8000 Firmware is here: https://www.roland.com/global/support..
. ▶︎ Lecture video by the creators on how it was done: • 39C3 - From Silicon to Darude Sand-storm: ... [video below]
▶︎ The DSP56300 donation link from the app: https://paypal.me/dsp56300
▶︎ More talks from them: https://media.ccc.de/search?p=giulioz


CHAPTERS:
00:00 This sounds familiar.
00:42 The sound, the feat
02:07 How it was done
03:41 Legal implications of ROMs
04:27 A quick fiddle
06:49 How to install & support it

39C3 - From Silicon to Darude Sand-storm: breaking famous synthesizer DSPs

video upload by media.ccc.de

"https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-from-sili...

Have you ever wondered how the chips and algorithms that made all those electronic music hits work? Us too!

At The Usual Suspects we create open source emulations of famous music hardware, synthesizers and effect units. After releasing some emulations of devices around the Motorola 563xx DSP chip, we made further steps into reverse engineering custom silicon chips to achieve what no one has done before: a real low-level emulation of the JP-8000. This famous synthesizer featured a special "SuperSaw" oscillator algorithm, which defined an entire generation of electronic and trance music. The main obstacle was emulating the 4 custom DSP chips the device used, which ran software written with a completely undocumented instruction set. In this talk I will go through the story of how we overcame that obstacle, using a mixture of automated silicon reverse engineering, probing the chip with an Arduino, statistical analysis of the opcodes and fuzzing. Finally, I will talk about how we made the emulator run in real-time using JIT, and what we found by looking at the SuperSaw code.

This talk is a sequel to my last year's talk Proprietary silicon ICs and dubious marketing claims? Let's fight those with a microscope!", where I showed how I reverse engineered a pretty old device (1986) by looking at microscope silicon pics alone, with manual tracing and some custom tools. Back then I claimed that taking a look at a more modern device would be way more challenging, due to the increased complexity.

This time, in fact, I've reverse engineered a much modern chip: the custom Roland/Toshiba TC170C140 ESP chip (1995). Completing this task required a different approach, as doing it manually would have required too much time. We used a guided automated approach that combines clever microscopy with computer vision to automatically classify standard cells in the chip, saving us most of the manual work.

The biggest win though came from directly probing the chip: by exploiting test routines and sending random data to the chip we figured out how the internal registers worked, slowly giving us insights about the encoding of the chip ISA. By combining those two approaches we managed to create a bit-accurate emulator, that also is able to run in real-time using JIT.

In this talk I want to cover the following topics:
What I learned since my previous talk by looking at more complicated chips
Towards automating the silicon reverse engineering process
How to find and exploit test modes to understand how stuff works
How we tricked the chips into spilling its own secrets
How the ESP chip works, compared to existing DSP chips
How the SuperSaw oscillator turned out to work


giulioz

https://events.ccc.de/congress/2025/h..."

DiscoDSP Releases Retromulator Based on The Usual Suspects dsp56300 Engine

via DiscoDSP

[Note: although DiscoDSP gives credit to The Usual Suspects, it's my understanding TUS is not happy about it. From a forum:

"He basically took our source, put his own wrapper on it and is trying to sell it and use it to promote his own business. Can't prevent it, but frankly this is reprehensible IMHO.

Yes. He knows he cannot legally "sell" it due to the licensing model our code is published under. Therefore he sells "support" of "his development efforts" to include difficult things like "git clone" and other Arcane and extremely difficult stuff. sigh... I'd strongly advise anyone using it not to actually pay him for it, but that is just my opinion.]

What isn't clear is whether the UI is just the player above or includes the full editors by The Usual Suspects. I'm hearing it's just the player, which in effect might be an upsell for the full editors by The Usual Suspects.

That said:

"Retromulator brings legendary hardware cores back to life through authentic low-level emulation. The virtual analog synths are powered by a faithful recreation of the Motorola DSP 56300 processor, the Yamaha DX7 runs a full emulation of its original chip set, and the Akai S1000 sampler plays your SF2, SFZ, and Bliss sample banks with studio-quality interpolation. Each core runs its actual firmware or sample data — delivering the unmistakable character of hardware that defined electronic music from the early 80s through the 2000s.

Unlike traditional software emulations that recreate synthesizer behavior by approximation, Retromulator emulates the original integrated circuits at the hardware level. The virtual analog synths run on a cycle-accurate Motorola DSP 56300, the Yamaha DX7 runs a full emulation of its Hitachi HD6303R sub-CPU and Yamaha YM21280/YM21290 EGS/OPS chip set, and the Akai S1000 sampler runs on the SFZero v3.0.0 engine with 8-point sinc interpolation supporting SF2, SFZ, ZBP, and ZBB sample banks. Each core executes its authentic firmware or sample data exactly as intended.

Load the ROM firmware from your own hardware or sample banks from your library, place them in the designated folder, and Retromulator takes care of the rest. The result is not an approximation — it is the real hardware running inside your DAW.

Retromulator is built on Gearmulator, an open-source synthesizer emulation project by the dsp56300 team. We are grateful for their extraordinary work in bringing these classic instruments back to life."

You can find demos of the dsp56300 engines in previous posts here.

Featured synths:

CLICK FOR MORE »

SUBSTANCE Vol.1 – Melodic Techno Presets for Access Virus Ti & OsTirus by The Usual Suspects

video upload by ULTIMATE X SOUNDS [ Presets for Synthesizers ]

"SUBSTANCE Vol.2 is a Melodic Techno preset pack for the Access Virus TI, built around modern, emotive club energy.

Inspired by the Melodic Techno sound of Argy and Anyma, plus the wider lane shaped by artists like Adriatique, Mind Against, Massano, Kevin de Vries, Innellea, Colyn, Cassian, Tale Of Us. Label DNA you’ll recognize in the vibe: Afterlife, Rose Avenue, Siamese, Diynamic, Steyoyoke and Innervisions.

Note: Artist and label names are used for stylistic reference only. No affiliation or endorsement.

🔗 WEBSITE  https://www.ultimatexsounds.com/knifo..."

Ocean Swift Releases Ocean Deep Mind Sound Bank

video upload by Ocean Swift / Faxi Nadu

Ocean Deep Mind | Behringer DeepMind Presets | Demo Showcase 2 #deepmind12 #deepmind #behringer
video upload by Ocean Swift / Faxi Nadu

Ocean Swift releases Ocean Deepmind soundbank - With +70 ethereal like presets

Ocean Swift announces Ocean Deep Mind, a new soundbank for Behringer Deepmind synthesizer with over 70 ethereal like presets.

Ocean Swift quotes:

"A collection of Poly and monophonic sequences, deep ambient and cinematic soundscapes, ethereal pads, keypads and lead pads, lush psychedelic like arpeggios & more.

Instead of the usual, bread and butter presets and 'Essential' kits – Ocean Deep Mind transcends conventional sounds by offering a unique collection characterized by a lush and ethereal mindset.

Ocean Deep Mind features intricate, evolving sounds that are ideal for sound designers, music producers, and keyboardists seeking a more diverse array of tones that this instrument usually provides."

Contents:
.1 Sound bank with 75 presets delivered in .sysex format
.Compatible with both Deepmind 12 and Deepmind 6 versions
.Featuring Poly and monophonic sequences, deep ambient and cinematic soundscapes, ethereal pads, keypads and lead pads, lush psychedelic like arpeggios and more
.Easy drag-and-drop installation with the Deepmind Editor

Price:
Ocean Deep Mind is available for 14.99€ (22€ reg.), 32% intro offer until 18 March

Get it at:
https://oceanswift.net/product/ocean-deep-mind

LXR-02 gets Xeno'ed (no talk)

video upload by Richard DeHove

"In the last video I had the DB-01 going into the Nightverb reverb and then into the Xenodrive. This time it's a more conventional routing of the LXR-02 into the Xenodrive and then into the Nightverb. With the Nightverb early reflections, a little pre-delay and a careful amount of shape,it sudden;y came together. I was setting up for a completely different video idea but just had to capture this instead.

It's not all happy accidents though. First I tried Echolocator feedback into the Xeno and then Nightverb. Mildly interesting but even the Xeno couldn't rip the Echo feedback apart. And that's how it goes sometimes - you set everything up, twiddle up to 11 and you draw a blank. Sometimes I'll chew on it for days before admitting it was a rotten idea. I wasted the best part of two weeks recently on a looper pedal I bought and just couldn't get a single thing out of it. So sometimes when I don't post a video for a couple of weeks it's not because I'm too busy with cocktails and cigars, it's because my latest great idea just didn't produce anything worth your time.

Hopefully you'll agree that this little experiment with the LXR-02 was worthwhile. The LXR-02 remains one of my favorite machines. It has its flaws and is still desperately in need of another firmware update but I think it's a brilliant machine. Six assignable LFOs and multiple filters, deep editing and a tiny footprint: So much to love.

If this were a final production drum track I would definitely add a deep and clean bass drum from Hexdrums, but as usual I like to keep things well defined. Adding an external bassdrum would sound better but then you wouldn't be hearing pure LXR-02 / Xeno / Nightverb. My aim is to show you possibilities.

Many thanks to my kind patrons who keep this channel ad-free
My website: https://richarddehove.com/
My other channel "IntraCosmos" of long-play dark ambient textures: / @intracosmos"

Speak & Glitch GND 1T circuit bent synthesizer: The power of Manual Morph and Drift Buffer Scaling

video upload by GND-1

"The GND-1T is available directly from https://richardvanhoesel.com/gnd1t

This video shows how to use two powerful tools on the Speak and Glitch GND-1T: manual patch morphing, and drift-buffer scaling. Combined they offer a powerful way to navigate the GND-1T's vast sonic landscape, and make creating unique new textures and patches very simple. There's a lot more that you can adjust in this process than I don't have time to show here, so see the manual for more information. But if you haven't used this combination so far with your GND-1T, I think you will be very happy to start doing so after watching this.

As usual, everything you hear in these demos is a direct stereo stream recorded from the GND-1T, without any external effects."

Blue Monday/New Order (Circuit Tracks Revision)

video upload by Guinan

"Almost! It's another Monday, so what could be more apt than todays 1983 New Order classic, Blue Monday.

As per usual this is ALL Novation Circuit Tracks playing live from the audio outs direct into my Zoom L6 recorder. No extra synths/no effects/no extra edits.

This is a revision of a version I did about 12 months ago. There is a lot going on in this track so I've squeezed a bit extra out of the groovebox in using some short melodic samples in place of drum sounds on 3 pads.

I'd initially dug it out to get me started on an Ableton Move version of the track and with some polished up samples and a little bit of editing I thought it was worth a revision.

More details for synth nerds,

BPM 131
I originally programmed the top arpeggio line on the Circuit Tracks quickly realising I was going to run out of voices. I sampled the riff and stuck it on a pad and played it back as a pattern and saved myself a voice, I couldn't get a bass synth sound that would double up as the main synth and as 'Peter Hook'. Instead I played a short Spaghetti Western style bass guitar riff through a spring reverb in my best impression of Hooky and sampled it on the Circuit Rhythm. I then transferred this onto one of the drum sample pads and put it on Drum 4 as another pattern, finally there is a choir sample the band played on an old Emulator. I simply copied the same source they used ( Kraftwerk's track, 'Uranium') and made a loop on another one of the drum pads, turning it into a 3rd pattern for Drum 4."

Soundpaint Juniper 1982 (Vintage Roland Jupiter 8) Sample Library Review/Overview and Demo!

video upload by Keith Crosley

"Set the Wayback Machine for the early 80s, because we're taking a look at Soundpaint Juniper 1982 -- a sampled recreation of the Roland Jupiter 8 -- via a cheeky demo track that uses Juniper, Gforce Software's Icon Drum (Linn 9000) and Oberheim DMX drum machine plugins, and our old pal Arturia Pure LoFi! Along the way, I drop some 80s-vintage synth programming tips, make the usual goof-ups, and talk about some of my latest inspirations. So grab your analog filter and hold on for an 80s-A-GO-GO episode of your favorite talky synthesizer content show!

Get ‪@Soundpaintmusic‬ Juniper 1982:
https://soundpaint.com/products/junip...

You can find wavetables and additional resources by Keith Crosley available at https://www.wavetables.lol.