i was wondering if z3ta can do everything that triangle 2 can do. i ask because i hear from you peeps that triangle 2 can do great basses and also the fact that theres 10 new patch banks out for triangle 2 at patcharena. but if z3ta can do evrything triangle 2 can do then theres realy no point in
aquireing it. also can z3ta do what pentagon can do ? i know z3ta is rgc's top synth so i was wondering if it has all of rgc's other synths under its hood ?

hitman8081 wrote:

i was wondering if z3ta can do everything that triangle 2 can do. i ask because i hear from you peeps that triangle 2 can do great basses and also the fact that theres 10 new patch banks out for triangle 2 at patcharena. but if z3ta can do evrything triangle 2 can do then theres realy no point in aquireing it. also can z3ta do what pentagon can do ? i know z3ta is rgc's top synth so i was wondering if it has all of rgc's other synths under its hood ?

Why dont you simply download the demos ?
Triangle 2 is free btw

Completely different sound. Pentagon and Triangle have a much more classic analoguish sound. Z3ta+ sounds a lot like the additives, which for me means "trendy". (I'm a throwback, so I tend to think of this difference as gutsy vs. airy.)

i will, but i still dont know what to look for which is
why i come to you guys

Why dont you simply download the demos ???

THey have a different sound. I don't think you could faithfully recreate certain kinds of Triangle II patches on z3ta+... nor should you bother to try. Just use both.

I know I never shut up about this, but Pentagon/Triange can PWM well, z3ta can't.

You can PWM rather nicely in z3ta.. and not just pulse, but any waveform. You just gotta use the matrix for that, routing target PWM.
So you can do more than just cross-modulate Pulse PW with another oscillator, you can do it with anything.

From what I understand the Osc's and Filters are pretty different throughout the line of RGC synths (though Z3ta might have the P1 and T2 waveforms, not sure ask Rene). Either way, T2 is free, and if you like Z3ta over P1 then you have your answer. A lot of people own both and seem rather happy with them, so maybe you can end up doing that. Z3ta's a bit too big for me personally, but it's all up to taste.

Ok... I did a little tweaking and got some acceptable PWM sounds from z3ta... They're ultra bright and need a lot of eq, but they sound somewhat like PWM. I'd still prefer any other softsynth for this kind of sound.

Bright? You sure you didn't FM the osc with a frequency slightly under or even higher than the carrier's own frequency? That'd rather dramatically reshape the carrier waveform and may sound rather bright compared to the original (depending what modulator waveform you use).

The PWM result of a pulse wave in reaktor and z3ta sound rather similar, I can't quite see or hear how z3ta sounds too bright. If you compare it to other synths, make sure its not a filter that can't be turned off, because in z3ta by default theres nothing filtering the raw OSCs, so they come out ultra bright, you also have no aliasing on the OSCs, which would 'smoothen up' (if you will) the high end.

You also should keep in mind that z3ta allows rather extreme settings for all values like usually only modular systems do. Its really a question of flexibility vs easily getting a pleasing sound by twiddling a knob. You just have to get familiar with z3ta and experiment to realize that it *can* sound very smooth and pleasing, however it is extremely versatile, that means you have to use several of the controls rather subtly.
What helps is to experiment, then define min/max for several of the sliders, and then use a midi controler to tweak the value - within the min/max borders you defined earlier - and approach designing a patch that way. Thats vital with synths like z3ta.

Just because a minimoog or numerous modular synths and their emulations have self oscillating filters which can ruin your hearing doesn't mean they sound bad, you just have to approach the instrument more subtly.
Other instruments trick you into thinking they sound better than more versatile ones, because they are very fast to program as they have no extreme values, and no matter what you tweak or twiddle (and thats usually to the full knob/fader extent to hear what that fader does), they sound pleasing. Thats certainly useful and for a lot of sounds really nice.
But then at some point you want to do unique sounds (as in 'new' but still sounding pleasing). You hit the limits very quickly with ordinary synths that you're used to programming. Z3ta is a monster synth not because it does bread'n butter sounds well, but because its very accurate in sound, and because you can do sounds with it you can't do with most other synths, and you have a ton of presets slots to save all your presets for quick and comfortable browsing.

That synth is extremely underrated here, simply because it takes someone who isn't used to programming it (and its rather unique to program from the whole 'gotta treat this thing very subtly because of the extreme value ranges available' mental) rather long to get anything 'normal' sounding out of it.
Many people are used to aliasing, to 'fist on the eye' antialiasing filters (I am talking about any dsp or native synth here) which darken the sound automatically and smooth out the highend. You can have that soft and warm sound with z3ta but you gotta consciously program that! The point is, if you want a bright and less warm sound which is very detailed in it's high end (i.e. up to 20khz), you can have that with z3ta, you can't have that with most other synths.

Anyway, I'm really surprised to see myself writing all this.. well not anymore, but just recently I began 'learning' z3ta, and its amazing what you get out of it sonically. The learning curve is steep and its easy to get demotivated by extreme sounds before you reach the sound you want. That was the case for me, but then I started learning modular synthesis, and I noticed the same issue there.. a wrong connection or just a too motivated knob twiddle and the resulting sound blows up the neighbourhood.

And if you're arguing 'extremely versatile.. well sounding.. maybe, but totally user unfriendly' then I gotta recommend you try re-creating the sound range in e.g. reaktor. You will realize that even though z3ta's learning curve is steep, its incredibly fast to pull off things within moments, where you sit long hours over reaktor trying to make configurations work that'd require a hardware analogue modular synthesizer (because these don't distinguish between CV and audio signal except to label ports, but reaktor unfortunately does which complicates things).

Its really the most versatile piece of VA I know, and it was intimidating to get into it.. but once you are into it, you go 'holy!'.


my 2¢ (actually more like a whole purse.. sorry )


Markus

Thanks for the detailed response xRAVENx. Here is a 16 bit wav (1.5 meg) of pro-53 (1st) vs the best PWM I could get with z3ta (2nd). Note in the z3ta example I added 18 (yes, 18 ) db of 250 hz and 90 hz gain, and dampened the highs a bit. Maybe I'm missing something here. Perhaps you could point me in the right direction?

Right now spinrite is running on my DAW (hd maintenance tool), so I can't give this a try with z3ta, but I listened to the wav file.

The modulation settings you use in z3ta are more extreme then the pro52 ones. For example the rate is a good bit faster (higher frequency of whatever you used to modulate the pulsewidth.. sounds almost like double the frequency). Depth/modulation amount seems roughly the same but because of the higher rate in z3ta the depth seems too brutal, so to make it sound smoother you gotta tune the depth back a bit, or if you want to get closer to pro52 you have to go down with the modulator frequency.

I can't hear what waveform you used for the modulator in z3ta, but make sure you use at least the same waveform type as in pro52 (the waveforms will be slightly different in sound anyway, to get closer with the raw OSC sound you should use the vintage OSCs in z3ta). Also the OSC sync you use in z3ta sounds different than the one you used in pro52. Try setting the modulator to free running in z3ta.

I don't have pro52, so I don't know how the filter behaves (it isn't bypassed though it seems in that example) nor what the signal flow is. The filter is a 24dB LP though, so you should use the same in z3ta, also slightly adjust the resonance so that you get the raw sound closer to the pro52 OSC+filter (prior to the PWM).

Most likely pro52 also has an EQ in there that you don't get to see or tweak manually, in z3ta that EQ has no fixed setting so you gotta tune that yourself to get the pre modulation sound closer to pro52's.
What pro52 might also have on top of everything else I mentioned is a slew-rate limiter (same thing that does portamento, it 'smoothens out' a waveform, which is usefull when applied to modulators before they modulate their target, makes for a smoother modulation). I didn't yet try this one in z3ta, but it appears you can have this behavior by chosing one of the slow curves in the modulation matrix for your PWM routing.


hth

Markus

Quote:

i was wondering if z3ta can do everything that triangle 2 can do. i ask because i hear from you peeps that triangle 2 can do great basses and also the fact that theres 10 new patch banks out for triangle 2 at patcharena. but if z3ta can do evrything triangle 2 can do then theres realy no point in aquireing it. also can z3ta do what pentagon can do ? i know z3ta is rgc's top synth so i was wondering if it has all of rgc's other synths under its hood ?

Nope. Triangle I and II, Square I, Pentagon I and z3ta+ have all different sound generation components, which allow each for unique sounds not possible to be recreated exactly for the others. Like a 'personality'.

Quote:

I know I never shut up about this, but Pentagon/Triange can PWM well, z3ta can't.

I'm not sure why you say so, but it's not the first time I hear that: it's wrong. Are you a z3ta+ owner? I suggest you to take a look at this thread if so:

http://www.kvr-vst.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=64200&sid=3dda9835b2297a6 cc88f582983b409cd

-René