Most of the samplers used today are not wavetables, but are sample based. The following explains:

Wavetable synthesis is fundamentally based on periodic reproduction of an arbitrary, single-cycle waveform.[3] The distinction to other synthesis methods employing single-cycle waveforms is twofold: 1) multiple single-cycle waveforms are used while 2) one or several wave modulators control the change between those multiple waveforms or mixtures thereof. The wave modulation rate is usually significantly smaller than the sampling rate.

The particular sound associated with wavetable synthesis is unique, since only perfect harmonics are produced. Depending on the details of the actual implementation the sound also contains recognizable artefacts, especially aliasing, quantization and phase truncation noise.


Comparison with other digital synthesis techniques

Sample-based synthesis uses multiple-cycle waveforms and intricate algorithms for pitch-shifting.
LA synthesis uses short PCM samples for the attack portion of the sound and looped samples (most of them single-cycle loops) for the sustain/release portion of the sound.
Granular Synthesis uses many overlapping windowed samples. While these samples are very short, they are never periodic.


Confusion with sample-based synthesis
Starting around 1993, with the introduction of Creative Labs' Sound Blaster AWE32 and Gravis' Ultrasound cards, the term "wavetable" started to be applied as a marketing term to any sound card that used PCM samples as the basis of sound creation. However, these sound cards did not employ any form of wavetable synthesis, but rather a high-end sampler and subtractive synthesis system based on technology from the E-mu Emulator family.

HP Win 11 12 gig ram, Mac mini Sonoma with 16 gig of ram, BiaB 2025, Realband, Reaper 7, Harrison Mixbus 9 32c , Melodyne 5 editor, Presonus Audiobox 1818VSL, Presonus control app.