WaveCraft questions & answers

Why are you releasing it for free?

The software is now well over two years old, and two years is a very long time in the fast-moving world of computers and especially software synthesis. We still believe WaveCraft to be the best all-round solution for producing analogue-style sounds, but with some tough competition, we felt it time to - to put it bluntly - maximise the availability of our software, and at the same time hopefully get some valuable feedback to find where we could improve things for any future release.

This software's far too good to go for free!

If you really want to pay money for this downloadable version of WaveCraft then please give generously to a humanitarian charity of your choice.

Is this version of WaveCraft legitimate?

Yes, absolutely. In fact, one of the secondary aims of making this release is to counter the thriving trade in pirated copies of WaveCraft - a trade which is itself testament to the continuing popularity of the software.

Will it run under Windows 98, NT, OS/2 etc?

WaveCraft was developed using Windows 3.1 and was also successfully quality-tested with Windows 95. Its status with respect to other flavours of Windows and Windows-like systems is unknown, but it should work under any such system with 16-bit and DOS support. No harm should be done if your system is incompatible, but we do advise a degree of caution and can take no responsibility for damage done through incompatibility or attempts to resolve compatibility issues.

Is there going to be a Macintosh version?

The Windows-based PC is the most rapidly expanding sector of the computing market, and with almost all the major sequencing and recording systems now available for the platform, it has the brightest musical future of all currently available systems. You should be able to run WaveCraft using PC emulation on a PowerMac or similar, but no native version is planned for the foreseeable future.

Will there be another version?

That depends on a number of things, including the feedback we get from users regarding this release of the software. The software synthesiser marketplace is moving on rapidly, and even a product as strong as WaveCraft will eventually get left behind to the extent that it will be impossible to catch up again.

What other versions of WaveCraft are there?

WaveCraft Lite was the original downloadable demo of the software, fully functional with respect to being able to generate sounds, store settings and so on, but with a reduced number of available modules, still including the acclaimed resonant filter. WaveCraft Bass Edition accompanied the Prentice-Hall book, Cubase Dance Music Secrets by Roger Brown. It offered a fixed configuration of modules and no ability to save settings, but could produce some very solid two-oscillator bass sounds, and again included that filter - unlike some competitors who give their demo users second-rate modules.

What's the newest version number?

The only officially released version number was v1.0. Anything else is a fraud. We are aware that some pirate copies have been claiming higher version numbers, even as "full CD-ROMs". This is just a scam to attract the gullible people who are prepared to pay money for cracked rubbish. Get the latest and only official version of WaveCraft from here, for free, today. Legally.

What is the history behind the software?

The software was originally conceived way back in early 1994, starting out as a set of signal processing routines for the Commodore Amiga, including basic oscillators and filters. From summer 1994 to 1995, the system was ported to the PC and substantially enhanced, adding the graphical design interface and most of the modules seen today. It was still a very technical tool at that time, requiring the user to have their own C compiler; although it was as automatic as it is today, it required some quite fiddly setting up. Then in autumn 1995, a concerted effort began to polish it for commercial release, tidying up the interface, removing the dependence on the C compiler, and adding a few final modules. WaveCraft as we know it was finally released in January 1996.

It's not real-time, so why should I bother?

In an ideal world, all software synthesisers would offer real-time sound generation and dozens of voices of polyphonic, multitimbral sound. The original analogue synthesisers were mainly monophonic, it is true, but the world has moved on since then, and going retro with sounds should not mean having to go retro with flexibility too. Real-time software synthesisers simply do currently not offer the MIDI-response, polyphony, multitimbrality or sound complexity to be truly useful, even with the fastest PCs - especially PCs already burdened with hard disk recording duties etc. WaveCraft strikes a balance, offering efficient generation of even the most complex sounds, and then allowing playback flexibility limited only by the sampler or sound card in use, often up to 64 or more voices with impeccable MIDI response.

Why shouldn't I use one of the newer software synthesisers?

Feel free to try them, but all too many of them feel like "work in progress", with missing features, poor filter implementations and so on. WaveCraft was only ever released as a completed product, and never delivered anything less than it promised. Things may have moved on with flashy Windows 95 interfaces and so on, but it is the sound quality that matters at the end of the day - when your listeners play your music in their own homes and clubs - and WaveCraft has yet to be surpassed in that respect, certainly for analogue simulation. Don't tolerate vague - if grandiose - claims of future functionality whilst shelling out hard-earned money for alpha versions of software; WaveCraft was fit for commercial release right from the start, and now it's free, so why not give it a go?

What sound cards and samplers do you recommend?