Controlling Wavetable’s CPU usage

For a wavetable synth, Live’s new Device is actually fairly CPU friendly, but given that it can create multi-layered, animated sounds, things can still mount up pretty quickly if you’re not careful. As we look at over the page, there’s a lot of animation and multi-voice tools included, but the key to keeping control is to ask if you really need these. Wavetable lets you select the amount of voices it uses, and it’s best to keep this to the minimum you can get away with – will a two or three-note chord work just as well as the eight note-one you’ve got programmed? Similarly, the Unison modes are great for adding texture, but significantly up the voice count. Keep Unison voices to the lowest level possible to achieve your desired effect. The animated wavetable oscillators can add to the CPU load significantly too; it’s great to experiment with two moving wavetables at once, but in many cases the desired effect can be achieved with a single animated oscillator underpinned by the – much less demanding – sub oscillator.