whilst my engineer brain likes the idea… wavetables are just data after all…
I think sonically, without a lot of processing it won’t sound good.
(good) wavetables are designed to not have discontinuities at wave boundaries, if you don’t have this they alias very badly , modulating nrWaves would immediately cause this.
in fact, I cannot remember seeing a wavetable synth that allows for modulation of number of waves, likely for this reason.
ofc, you can work around with things like windowing, as we do in granular, but this would also impart a certain ‘texture’ to the wave. but its possible.
all that said, I find WTO aliases quite a bit… so perhaps none of the matters, its already usually pretty noisy/gritty.
talking of granular, you can actually use granular as a (kind of) alternative to wavetable.
basically start position = wave selection, and grain size = ( file size / number of waves)
as we are in the digital domain, theoretically, you can get quite precise in these…
anyway… have to say, I don’t use WTO too much, mainly because we don’t have the tools to create properly structured 3d wavetables… everyone else uses 2d, and with a single NrWaves parameters these can’t really be made to ‘match’ … so you get the issues I described above.
(really, we need NrWavX nWavY, so that X = 1 will work with 2d wavetable)
perhaps, one day, I might create my own wavetable module as it is an interesting area.
(but you still won’t be able to modulate NrWaves
)
edit: just to be clear, Im not pooh-poohing the idea at all, really just broadening discussion a bit.
at the end of the day, its up to Bert to decide what features to pursue, and he already knows how to avoid issues like the ones I highlight.
rather, I just find it interesting talking about implications / considerations of changes, partly as it helps solidify my own ideas of what I might do… ideas I might try out. e.g. might be fun to try to use granular as a pseudo wavetable, as it has some other interesting properties.