Dave Whiting has released Wave Emulation, a free and open-source software recreation of the Waldorf Wave for macOS.
If you’ve been following our recent news, you already know there’s absolutely no shortage of hardware synth emulations that require you to own the original hardware firmware.
Wave Emulation is another one of those projects, but the scope here is truly impressive. The plugin recreates much of the original instrument’s architecture, including its processor arrangement, firmware environment, front panel, LCD, voice cards, and signal path.
The current model provides 48 voices across three 16-voice cards. Each card has its own emulated Motorola 68000-family processor, while another emulated 68000 runs the main operating system.
The sound engine models the Wave’s 8-bit wavetable oscillators and 250 kHz time-multiplexed signal path. It also covers the digital high-pass filter, stepped control voltages, sample-and-hold and reconstruction stages, nonlinear resonant low-pass filtering, VCA, panning, and output behavior.
One super interesting detail is the oscillator mixer’s overflow behavior. In the original, you can push the weighted oscillator levels beyond their range, and the values can wrap rather than clip cleanly. Wave Emulation preserves that quirk instead of replacing it with conventional saturation.
The included sound data covers 30 decoded PPG V6 lower wavetable sets, each containing 64 waves. Procedural data fills the unavailable upper tables, and users can import their own compatible wavetable data.
As with the other similar projects we covered lately, the download does not contain Waldorf’s original firmware or factory sound disks. To run the authentic firmware-backed environment, you must provide the Wave OS 1.700 files, using Waldorf’s official Legacy Wave page as the starting point.
You can also mount supported raw floppy images or turn compatible Wave SET files into virtual disk images. Without the firmware, the instrument still powers on and produces sound via a separate behavioral fallback, but that is not the original Wave operating system.
Version 0.1.6 runs as a standalone instrument and in AU, VST3, and AAX formats on macOS 13 or newer. The universal build supports Intel and Apple Silicon Macs.
The signed and notarized installer is a direct 19.5 MB GitHub download, with no account or activation required.
Download: Wave Emulation (FREE)
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