Modulating Wavetable's Fold parameter

[Matt_Quinn]

I was playing with Wavetable yesterday & realized that if Warp is set to zero and you try to modulate the Fold parameter with Wavetable's internal LFO, nothing happens. But if you modulate the same parameter with the LFO device (MIDI or audio), it works the way I'd expect, regardless of the Warp settings. Anyone know why this is? Is it by design?

[rgarner]

I sent this to support:

In Wavetable, I can modulate every other parameter in the matrix except Fold. When I attempt to modulate Fold with an envelope or LFO, whatever I choose has no effect. I can switch the same source to Warp or Pos, it will modulate.

Fold remains unmodulatable. In fact, any parameter in the position of Fold cannot be modulated; if I switch the "Modern" mode to Fm/Classic, both the Amt and the Sync parameters respectively cannot be modulated either.

I got this back:

After further investigation, we concluded that this behaviour is not a bug but an intended one. To modulate Osc Fold, for example, a certain amount of the parameter has to be defined in the waveform panel:

It makes absolutely no sense to me at all. It looks like a bug, but apparently it's by design. I can't think why – literally no other modulation target behaves this way.

I just tried it in 11 (I'm usually in 12) and it works the same way. It's also multiplicative – if you want a large modulation, you have to set Fold closer to 100%, which means you can't start from a subtle effect and work up. It just looks broken, but I could understand why you couldn't fix it at this stage if it's long-standing. It could break existing projects' sounds...

[vfld]

It makes absolutely no sense to me at all. It looks like a bug, but apparently it's by design. I can't think why – literally no other modulation target behaves this way.

It is by design, several parameters are multiplicative as mentioned in the manual.

[Matt_Quinn]

I got this back:

After further investigation, we concluded that this behaviour is not a bug but an intended one. To modulate Osc Fold, for example, a certain amount of the parameter has to be defined in the waveform panel:

This isn't true though. That's why I mentioned using an external LFO effect. You can target and modulate Fold with an LFO effect and it works as you'd expect (well, it makes a cool sound which is what I'm chasing here), regardless of what Warp is set to. I don't understand why modulating it with an external LFO produces one effect, but using Wavetable's internal LFO produces no effect at all. I'll try to make a quick video later. Thanks for sending it to support though!

[pottering]

External LFO is also multiplicative if set to Modulation, instead of Remote Control (and it defaults to Modulation), so the internal LFO's modulation behaviour is not that different.

Fold is not the only parameter that behaves that way, the other OSC FX in the same UI spot (Fm Amt and Classic Sync) behave that way, plus Sub Tone, Filter Drive and Unison Amount as well, so at least 6 parameters (maybe 10, since 2 x OSCs and 2 x Filters).

To be fair, the Info View help when you hover over Fm Amt and Classic Sync explains those are multiplicative, but Fold's Info View text doesn't, a small omission.