Designed as a "pure" synthesizer rather than a music workstation, it lacked an on-board song sequencer, yet the Wavestation, unlike any synthesizer prior to its release, was capable of generating complex, lush timbres and rhythmic sequences that sounded like a complete soundtrack by pressing only one key.

Although the Korg Wavestation was the first keyboard that used Wave Sequencing, its roots can be traced back to the preceding variations of wavetable-lookup synthesis, including the multiple-wavetable synthesizers[6] realized as PPG Wave that was produced by Palm Products GmbH in the early 80s, and the vector synthesis realized as Prophet VS by Sequential Circuits, Inc. in 1986 and Kawai K1 in 1988.

By combining wave sequencing with vector synthesis—the process of mixing and morphing between multiple waveforms of audio samples—the Wavestation differed from other sample-based synthesizers of the digital era.

[9] Each step in the wave sequence can have a different duration, pitch, fine tuning, level and crossfade amount.

The result is a continuously changing sound, producing either a smooth blend of crossfaded waves, or semi-arpeggiated and rhythmic sequences, or a combination of both.

The mix envelope for a two-oscillator patch structure is arranged on a horizontal line or axis, and is interpreted as one-dimensional vector synthesis.

A patch's mix envelope can be looped for a finite or indefinite amount of time as well as modulated by controllers.

Moving the joystick whilst playing overrides the pre-programmed mix envelope, giving the user dynamic control over the timbre of the sound.

The effects section contained two DSP blocks capable of a wide range of processing algorithms, such as reverb, delay, chorus, flanger, phaser, etc.

Similar in structure to the Ensoniq VFX and Korg's M1, the Wavestation's top level of sound control is the Performance, which organizes up to eight Patches (parts) and two independent effect processors.

Tone generation is achieved by assigning any of the 20-bit PCM samples and single-cycle waveforms or a wave sequence to an oscillator.

[24][25] The team, ex-SCI engineers Dave Smith, John Bowen, Scott Peterson, and Stanley Jungleib, then went on to Korg in May 1989 and designed the Wavestation, refining many Prophet VS concepts.

A few notable mainstream artists that used Wavestations in the early 1990s were Joe Zawinul, Jan Hammer, Phil Collins, Michael Cretu (used KORG WAVESTATION on the first five albums of his famous project "Enigma (German band)" (the factory preset "Deep Atmosphere" was most often used), as well as in many of his projects from 1990 to 2003)), Gary Numan, Keith Emerson, and Tony Banks of Genesis (who also used them on the band's 2007 European Tour) Depeche Mode, Steve Hillier of Dubstar, Michael Jackson, Ed Wynne of Ozric Tentacles, Ulf Langheinrich and Alan Clark and Guy Fletcher of Dire Straits.

[22] The Wavestation remains one of the most evocative, unusual, creatively-designed synths ever...The OASYS (2005) and Korg Kronos (2011) workstations have full-blown wave sequencing and vector synthesis implementation (complete with joystick), along with virtual analog, sample-based synthesis, and 16 MIDI + 16 digital audio tracks.