1982’s PPG Wave 2 arrives in reimagined Eurorack form

It’s been a long time since the PPG name graced hardware. That brand and its founder, Wolfgang Palm, laid the foundation for decades of wavetable synthesis. Now the PPG name is back via an officially authorized collaboration with Liquid Sky d-vices and Cornel Hecht (Hell Modular) – and authentic Wave 2 sounds are arriving in Eurorack.

Wolfgang Palm is retired now – you can read his thoughts in a 2020 interview with Plugin Alliance. He sold PPG’s assets to Plugin Alliance (now Native Instruments). But while many folks just grab his wavetables and make their own recreations, Liquid Sky Artistcollective (Liquid Sky d-vices) has gone to NI to license the content properly. (They also tell us they give Wolfgang a share voluntarily.)

What’s exciting about this is that we get to see the proper PPG name on hardware again. (By my count, the last time that was true was around 1986 or so.) And this stuff can sound retro or bleeding-edge, with lots of space in between. PPG is what cleared the way for wavetable instruments from Ensoniq, Waldorf, Korg, and more, all the way to Massive, Serum, and Vital. Just emulating the original is “boring,” as Wolfgang himself opined. So why not take the original sounds and give them space for new exploration?

The W2.2×4 has all the original wavetables from the PPG Wave 2.2, the classic instrument from 1982 as favored by Stevie Wonder, Stevie Nicks, Depeche Mode, David Bowie, Tangerine Dream, and many others. So that means the wavetables can sound like this:

This gets combined with Liquid Sky’s powerful dual wavetable oscillator module architecture, as created by Cornel Hecht of Hell Modular:

• Main oscillator
• Sub-bass generator (with dedicated wavetable)
• Dual function of oscillators as LFOs
• Built-in VCA
• Overdrive
• Independent outs (main, square, sub, mix)
• Tons of CV control (transposition, oscillator mix, drive, sync, and wavetable ins)
• Big faders for wavetable select and tuning for each oscillator

You can make this sound like a classic 2-oscillator PPG Wave 2.2 if you want, or apply that overdrive and sub-bass for a more contemporary sound – or dial up something in between.

If this seems familiar, it’s because it’s closely related to the V4-CO oscillator I wrote about here on CDM (and for which I wrote the documentation). There are minor hardware differences between this and the V4CO to tailor it to the PPG use case, but while the two aren’t software compatible, you can use both with the insanely powerful GLITHc expander. That opens up all the GLITHc sound-hacking, bit-flipping, modulation and sequencing capabilities, and it’s something you couldn’t do with past wavetable synths or software recreations.

It’s come full circle, then, since classic wavetable synths were what inspired the the V4-CO in the first place. And that means it’s probably worth revisiting my guide to the V4-CO: