Cymatic Wavetable Pack

59 wavetables computed from the standard mode shape formulas for an ideal round drum membrane and a square plate.

StatusNot for sale yet. The price is set when the pack is listed. The release is announced first in the Discord. A free sampler of five tables is not open yet either.

Square plate, mode (2,3). Computed live from the formula, not recorded. Yellow and blue are the two directions the sheet moves, the pale lines do not move.

What it is

A drum skin and a plate vibrate in fixed patterns called modes. Each wavetable is a closed path, a circle or an out and back line, read through one of those patterns, and the 64 frames of a table are that path moving. A scan through a table moves the path across the pattern.

The tables are calculated from formulas. They are not recorded or measured from a real drum or plate. Drum tables use Bessel functions on a disc. Plate tables use a cosine pattern on a square. Both are standard textbook formulas. The slice paths are my own design. Every table is built to loop: the path is closed, so the wave is continuous across the loop point.

For the background, read Chladni patterns and drum modes.

What is inside

30 tables from a drum membrane and 29 from a square plate
64 frames of 2048 samples each, mono, 44.1 kHz
Every table twice, 32 bit float and 16 bit, 118 WAV files in all
A picker page, one self contained file with no outside requests
A list of every table with its source mathematics
The license text

Hear it

Three tables, each as a 15 second clip. Every clip scans the whole table once at 55 Hz, then 110 Hz, then 220 Hz, five seconds each. No filter, no reverb, no chord. Nothing plays until you press a button.

Drum 2-3 Ring

A circle read through the drum pattern, so every cycle loops without a seam.

Stopped

Drum 3-1 Chord

A straight line through the drum pattern, out and back. Brighter than the ring tables.

Stopped

Plate 2-5 Sweep

A line through the plate pattern, read out and back, moving from near one edge toward the middle across the 64 frames.

Stopped

The clips are for listening only and are not part of the licensed download.

Using the files

Load them into a synthesizer that reads wavetable WAV files and set the frame size to 2048. The steps are in How to load a wavetable into a synth. The 16 bit files are there for readers that do not accept 32 bit float.

Limits, stated plainly

A script checked all 118 files for clipping, silence and mismatched first and last frames. That report is from 11 October 2026.
The files have not been tested in a named synthesizer, and the picker has not been tested across browsers. Synthesizers differ in how they read file headers, so check yours.
At high pitches a full table holds more harmonics than fit below half the sample rate. Use a synthesizer that band limits by pitch, or use the picker.
Nothing is modelled beyond the mode shapes: no damping, no material, no real drum or plate.

License

Use the sounds in your music, sound design, film, games, apps and live performance, free or paid. No royalties and no credit required. Do not resell or redistribute the wavetable files themselves, alone or inside another pack. The full text ships with the download.