Am trying to better understand wavetable synthesis, granular synthesis, sampling and the relationship of these three.
The musical possibilities of these overlapping techniques can be heard in this Doepfer A-112 Demo on soundcloud. Some beguiling sounds coming out of this voltage-controlled lo-fi hardware sampler.
Trying to work with a wavetable that is literally a graph of data inside the module that you can't actually see but can only know the properties of (e.g, which voltages trigger which compartment within a table to produce sound) seems like a recipe for frustration. Yet having the data embedded in hardware adds an undeniable presence and character to the sound.
Contrast an instrument such as Reaktor's Grainstates, explained by Jim Aikin. Here the mechanics of the sound--where the grains are coming from inside a sample--are revealed with perfect graphic clarity. Yet the instrument is somewhat dry; it's possible to make fascinating atonal textures with it but next-to-impossible to do anything musical (just from experimenting with one a little--will keep trying).