Wavetables for Wavetable (Live)

The format Wavetable (Live) imports

Drag-and-drop WAV or AIFF onto the oscillator's wavetable display (Live 10.1+, Suite). Live slices imports into 1,024-sample wavetables — at most 256 per file, downmixed to mono — and post-processes them unless Raw mode is on; files created in Serum (2,048-sample frames) are downsampled to 1,024.

What Hyperwave exports

Every Hyperwave export is one packed wavetable WAV. Check these facts against the Wavetable (Live) format above — where the two disagree, the fix is almost always the frame size or a conversion step, not the sound design.

Sample format

32-bit float by default (values between -1 and +1); 16-bit WAV is a direct export option for targets that load integer banks.

Channels

1 (mono). Every frame is one single-cycle waveform.

Header sample rate

48,000 Hz by default. This is a label in the file header — for wavetable import it doesn't stretch or resample your frames. One exception: VCV Rack's Wavetable VCO reads the sample-rate field as the frame length when it's a power of two, and sample players that fall back to one-shot mode use it for pitch.

Frame layout

Frames are packed end-to-end in one data chunk, in wavetable order; the export filename records the shape as name-{samples}x{frames}.wav.

Resolution

The live table runs from 8 to 8,192 samples per frame and 8 to 1,024 frames (defaults 2,048 × 256).

Metadata

No extra metadata chunks are written — targets that read frame size from metadata have to infer it from the file itself.

Load a Hyperwave table into Wavetable (Live)

1. Export from Hyperwave as a packed mono WAV at 1,024 samples per frame so each frame matches Live's 1,024-sample wavetable definition.
2. Drag the WAV from the browser, a clip slot, or Explorer/Finder onto the wavetable visualization in the oscillator section.
3. Enable Raw to bypass Live's cleanup — fading, phase minimization, normalization — since the export is already prepared as a wavetable.

Read the full import guide

Common issues

• Live keeps at most 256 wavetables from a file — longer tables are truncated.
• The file must land on the oscillator's sprite visualization; dropped anywhere else in the device, Wavetable is replaced by Simpler.