PPG Wave

"PPG was the vision of one man, Wolfgang Palm. It was his contention that the limitations of analogue oscillators could be circumvented with the use of short, digital waveforms stored in a linear 'wavetable'. His vision came to fruition as the PPG Wave. [...] The PPG's legacy can be felt even today. German synth wizards Waldorf continue to mine Palm's wavetable technology, having produced a long line of wavetable instruments starting with the Microwave in 1990. It even produced a virtual version of the PPG nearly a decade ago and the company's current Blofeld and Largo instruments are jam-packed with wavetables lifted from the PPG. Palm, meanwhile, has put his name to a range of PPG-branded iOS and plugin synths."

"This big blue marvel combined Palm's digitally stored wavetables with a classic resonant low-pass filter, LFO and a handful of envelope generators. Users could modulate through the wavetables using a variety of mod sources, resulting in a lively, exciting sound quite dissimilar from the analogue synths of the day. Though the PPG contained a few waveforms drawn from sampled instruments, Palm offered no apologies for its distinctly synthetic flavour. The PPG could turn out spiky basses (think Frankie's Relax) and evocative digital atmospheres. PPG owners who bought the associated Waveterm computer could work up their own wavetables and, in the 2.3 version, even do a bit of sampling. The Wave was a lofty dream machine, costing nine grand or more. As such, it was rarely seen outside of the studios of the rich and famous."