Re: [Bug 19561] New: WaveTable is poorly named

On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 4:37 PM, Tom White (MMA) <lists@midi.org> wrote:

> **
> I have no opinion on the choice of the name, but would caution against
> picking the name on the basis of opinions represented in this wikipedia
> article...
>
> Having been involved in the musical instrument industry for more than
> 35 years I can attest to first hearing about "wavetable" synthesis in the
> manner used by PPG, but substantially more people heard about it as
> a result of the explosion of "wavetable sound cards" in the early 1990's.
>
> One can choose to decide that the first use defined the term, or one
> can choose to decide the most common use should be the definition...
> I don't think the wikipedia article authors can claim any authority over
> the matter.
>

Tom, good point.  The problem in our case is that the object currently
called "WaveTable" is *neither* of the two accepted meanings.  It's neither
a PPG-style WaveTable, nor is it of the type used by "wavetable sound
cards" of the 1990's.  The AudioBuffer is pretty close to the "wavetable
sound card" notion of wave-table.  But what we're looking at is a very
abstract object representing a periodic waveform.  It's a very high-quality
representation to be used with OscillatorNode.

In any case, given that there's a good deal of confusion about industry
acceptable of this term, I suggest we stay away from "WaveTable"

Chris


>
> Tom White
> MMA
>
>  It's been pointed out off-list that the WaveTable name is poor, since
> this name
> has other connotations involving synthesis techniques which sweep through
> through multiple waves:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wavetable_synthesis
>
> Suggested renaming is:
> WaveTable -> PeriodicWave
>
>