Groove Synthesis 3rd Wave OS Version 2.0a is now available as a free update, adding new synthesis and effects options.
Key features of the update include a new way to make waves and a flexible Shimmer reverb.
“The 3rd Wave has come a long way since it first came out, capable of things we never dreamed of at launch,” said Andrew Silverman, co-founder of Groove Synthesis.
A Brand New Shimmer Reverb
The first highlight of this release is a new effect: Shimmer Verb, living in effect slot 2 right after Super Plate. The Shimmer will give you the ability to shift the pitch in fractions of a semitone across a full two-octave range, from one octave down to one octave up, which means you’re not limited to complete octave or semitone shifts.
“I was surprised by how it makes even the most simple patch sound immense,” said Bob Coover, co-founder and DSP engineer at Groove Synthesis. “The effect is really wide. Route a single sustained note through it and just let it spread the sound out and up at the same time.”
The Filter Cutoff parameter lets you shape the reverb’s tone from dark and filtered to bright and open. There are also several other useful controls in the “Extra” section.
What makes the effect especially cool is that Rev Time, Pitch Amount, and LP/HP Cutoff are all available as destinations in the mod matrix.
A Smarter, More Capable Way to Make Waves
OS 2.0a also brings real improvements to Make Waves, the 3rd Wave’s built-in wavetable creation tool. If you’ve tried turning your own audio into wavetables, you’ll notice the results are more consistent right away with the existing modes.
The big addition is a third mode: Spectral. Make Waves has always given you two ways to turn audio into a wavetable. Pitch On is built for sources with a clear, stable pitch, and does its best to detect that pitch and lock the resulting waveforms to it. Pitch Off skips pitch detection entirely and instead finds the best splice points to carve unpitched material, like drums or found sounds, into a clean set of waveforms.
Spectral mode takes a different approach from both. Instead of tracking pitch or hunting for splice points in the waveform itself, it analyzes the audio in the frequency domain to find the best slices across the entire file. That makes it the mode to reach for on sources that might not have worked for the other two. Chorused sounds, ambient recordings, anything with a pitch that wanders or never quite settles should do well with the Spectral mode. Where Pitch On would fight to lock onto a moving target, and Pitch Off would just slice without regards to pitch, Spectral mode is built to make sense of exactly that kind of material. Feed it something strange and Make Waves will find the wavetable hiding inside it.
Here’s an in-depth look at the Shimmer reverb and the new Wave Maker algorithm by The Midlife Synthesist:
Everything Else in 2.0a
Beyond the two headline features, this update carries a few other noteworthy improvements: expanded MIDI CC mappings for the 24M and 8M desktop modules, new MIDI SysEx features including wavetable and sample import/export, a new envelope retrigger option with a quick reset, and various bug fixes worth checking out in the release notes on the support page.
Availability:
OS 2.0a is available now as a free download for all 3rd Wave 24K, 24M, and 8M owners.
Great to see Groove both continuing to evolve the 3rd Wave platform with new features as well as to provide the features no cost to existing users! The new shimmer reverb FX is exactly what the platform has needed.
Groove Team – Add my voice to the chorus of people asking you to please stop spending money on giving free units to synthfluencers and free give away contests and sink your money instead into redoing the factory patches to effectively show off all of the incremental features that have been added to the 3rd Wave over the past 4 years. The current factory patches don’t do the hardware or all of your hard work justice.
So, are there any third party libraries that shows off the ‘2026 capability’?
This kind of advertising is what makes more sales, probably one of the biggest reasons they can continue investing in development. So this Reverb thing is maybe a direct result of that. A lot of youtubers today don’t make a video without some sort of payment. You don’t pay of giveaway (Or both) you don’t get coverage, unless maybe if you’re already very well known.
That’s just how it works nowadays. I hate it, but without it, it’s very hard to sell today.
I know about so many amazing manufacturers who have been making wonderful instruments for ages that almost nobody knows about, and I bet they are often just one-person businesses that can’t afford more than a few tweaks here and there.
Just from searching “Groove Synthesis 3rd Wave sound pack” on Google, I can see there are at least 10 3rd parties making presets. Some are even available as free downloads, like the ones from Starsky Carr, who probably also got his unit for free 🙂
A couple of quick comments:
New patches are just as valid as new features when it comes to influencers making content or generating “advertising” (as you’re calling it). There’s very much a “both and” scenario for Groove to offer features and sounds for free rather than an “either or” constraint.
Agree with amazing small companies being out there….however Groove isn’t a one person company. They’ve got some very senior established well connected people (Bob Coover and Mark Wilcox) that have been FTEs or contractors with Sequential, Oberheim, Apple, etc. Sequential (or their sub contractor) appears to be the party that’s assembling and packaging the 3rd Wave hardware, so I think “can’t afford more than a few tweaks” isn’t the case – they have resources to leverage.
I already own all of the commercial patch sets available for the 3rd Wave (I count 6 unique 3rd parties with GeoSynths in the wings actively developing a set). The issue with these patch sets are 1) Some are only 20-30 patches rather than full banks. 2) Some are offered by the same individuals that contributed factory patches and are in the exact same vein sonically and stylistically. 3) Many of the patch sets are 2-3 years old (and programmed on OS versions that didn’t contain some of the newer features and enhancements). 4) None of the commercial patch sets have been refreshed / optimized for the 8V which only supports 2 parts and 2 effects slots (vs 4 on the 24vs).
I agree that updated factory patches may be useful for advertising too but that’s not really what you said originally.
You said stop giving free units to youtubers and spend that money on patches instead.
That’s the part I disagree with. A factory patch might help demonstrate the synth, but it doesn’t put the synth in front of hundreds of thousands of people.
Groove should be glad that these creators are willing to put the 3rd Wave in front of their audiences. Without that kind of exposure a lot of people would probably never even know it exists.
You might not even know about it just like you may not have come across Gotharman’s zaTurn 🙂