A word about authenticity

In this day and age of massive sample libraries, it can often be tempting to resort to samples. However, synthesizing sounds from scratch can, depending on your goals, lend a subtle authenticity, warmth, liveliness and even nostalgia to a track that is hard (impossible) to capture in a static sample; samples - by their very nature - sound the same every time they are triggered, and that is not how analog or organic timbres truly sound.

This mostly has its origins in any analog signal qualities of legacy gear that we are trying to emulate in the digital domain. Many classic sounds used up to this day (such as those from the venerable 808 or 909 drum machines) rely on noise generators. Noise generators - by definition - never output the same value; they are random number generators, so "capturing" them in a sample is impossible, unless you are okay with repeating the same random number sequence again and again.

The same goes for subtle things like small amounts of noise that inevitably make it into the voltage of analog voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) circuitry of an analog synthesizer, or having analog synthesizer designs with free-running oscillators that are gated on and off.

Ditto for emulating the sound of older samplers (such as the famous S900/S950 used in many 80s and 90s hip-hop tracks) or 16-bit home computers, gaming consoles and arcade cabinets. Contrary to the popular practice of insertion of a simple bit-crusher to make something sound "vintage", faithful emulation requires much more subtle modifications to the signal path at the right time. That's because sound designers of the time went out of their way to do the best with what they were given, often times augmenting digital outputs with analog circuitry to hide or transform digital artifacts as best they could.

The custom-built synthesizer engine in your Woovebox pays special attention to these subtleties, giving you various means to emulate the analog signal paths of older gear. Please see the "lo-fi and analog emulation" section for more information.

As a result of this special attention to detail, your Woovebox tends to replicate the sound of the era of analog and digital fusion (late 80s - early 00s) better than many other grooveboxes.