Ableton's Wavetable device explained from the ground up: a wavetable is a collection of short looping samples arranged together, and the key to the synthesis is scanning through them during playback rather than holding a single static waveform. This bit covers that core concept and then shows it in action.
The demo starts with the four basic wave shapes, moving the wavetable position from sine to triangle, to saw, to square, and using a Spectrum device to visualise how the harmonic content shifts at each step. An LFO is then assigned to modulate the wavetable position continuously, turning that scanning movement into an evolving, shifting timbre.
With a second oscillator added, you can see both wavetables moving simultaneously, no filters involved. The result makes clear that timbral movement in wavetable synthesis comes from the scanning itself, not from external processing.