How can I mimic the audio synthesis layers from Kraftwerk's "Tour de France Etape 3"?

Question

I'm currently trying to achieve a similar sound from "Tour de France Etape 3". Specially the intro of the song. The same sound can be heard across the whole Tour de France Sountracks album.

From this link I found a list of Kraftwerk's equipment and these were the synths I managed to narrow down from the original list the selection:

• Cubase SX - Professional MIDI/Audio Sequencer
• Halion - Steinberg Virtual Sampler (VST)
• Native Instruments - Virtual instruments (VST)
• Propellerheads Reason - Virtual studio rack
• TC Works Plug-Ins - Virtual Instruments & Effects (VST)
• VST Instruments - Steinberg Virtual Instruments & Effects
• Waldorf PPG - VST version of classic Waldorf PPG

After checking all of the above I realized that Waldorf PPG VST might be what I'm looking for. From this YouTube link it seems that the same sound was achieved.

But after getting the VST's demo I just couldn't get even near that sound.

I'm not really sure how am I supposed to do this but I also trying fiddling with Reason's Thor Synth (The wave table oscillator) but I just couldn't get there.

I also just realized that Ableton's Operator is a wave table synth but I didn't even touch it (my only use for Ableton is vocal processing, I'm not even sure I have instruments installed on my PC)

I've also been recently fooled into thinking that Ableton's Operator is a Wave Table synth. It is a FM Synth. (Special thanks to ObscureRobot for pointing that out)

Anyways, any idea or suggestions would help a lot.

Answer 1

This is not the most suited answer but it's what I got from Reddit.

From Reddit user valiantism:

Ok I think I got fairly close. I made a thor with 3 wavetable oscs.

• OSC1: PPG 8 HP VCF @ position 44. Turn the octave down to 3.
• OSC2: PPG 8 HP VCF @ position 34. Turn the semi up to 7.
• OSC3: PPG 27 Formant @ position 2.
• Route all 3 oscs to a Lowpass filter (filter1) with the freq set to ~400 hz.
• Set filter2 to a State-Variable, and set it to High-Pass. Set the freq to ~100hz.
• Set the mixer balance between OSC1 and OSC2 to 50.
• Turn 1+2 down to -4,9db and turn down OSC3 level down to -11 db.
• Turn on the delay in Thor, turn on temposync. Set Time=3/8T and F.Back=16 Add a Phaser device to your Thor. Turn down the freq quite a lot.
• Finally set up a send effect in the Thor's mixer channel to a "The Echo", the initialized setting will do find. Play around with the channel send, until you're happy.

Most of these settings can probably be tweaked alot more to get closer to the original sound, but this should get you pretty close.

It's not the exate sound and it's pretty close, but I'm not satisfied.