Is it still worth buying Zebra2 (and The Dark Zebra)?

[Stefken]

The name Zebra 3 makes sense (rather than Mongoose) because it is the continuation of Zebra and will use the same basic concept with the modules on the grid. Besides that, there will be big changes to Osc's, Filters, LFO's, etc etc.

U-he has learned a lot and developed much new tech since Zebra 2 was released. Diva, Bazille, ACE, Hive and RePro have all come along since Zebra 2 first shipped a decade ago. Zebra 2 has reached the point where maintaining preset compatibility is an impediment to further development and incorporating all the advances made over the past decade. So Zebra 3 is where a break from the past and preset compatibility happens.

The Dark Zebra, with the Zebra HZ install, was a one-off project and is confusing to others besides yourself. Hopefully this makes it a bit clearer.

This makes a lot of sense.

[spunkmuffin]

Guys please don't make it too clear for Wags or he won't have anything to be confused about.

Also apparently Urs is on a tropical beach sunbathing (and contemplating life) so Z3 might never happen.

[wagtunes]

Okay, I understand now. Given all the info above, making Zebra 3 a free upgrade for those who own Zebra 2 and Dark Zebra is incredibly generous given that Zebra 3 is going to be a very different synth from both. I'm not sure why Urs is doing this but I'm not going to complain about it. However, given that I will probably never use Zebra 2 again after Zebra 3 comes out, given that it will be far superior, it makes no sense for me to get Dark Zebra for Zebra 2. I'll just wait until Zebra 3 comes out and be content with that.

Thank you to all those who helped clear this up for me.

[machinesworking]

Zebra HZ was a list of feature requests from Howard Zinn

HZ stands for the not entirely obscure film composer Hans Zimmer.

Synth programmer par excellence Howard Scarr created a host of Zebra 2 sounds for Zimmer's Batman score, using a custom version of Zebra 2 that was later marketed as Zebra HZ.

"Howard Zinn" was an author…

/Joachim

relax he just made a mistake on the name, he most likely meant to say the right one. It happens a lot when you get older like me

Can't really use age as and excuse. Always been horrible with names.
That and I really don't care for most of Zimmer's scores, so I just didn't pay that much attention to remembering his name..

[Stefken]

Okay, I understand now. Given all the info above, making Zebra 3 a free upgrade for those who own Zebra 2 and Dark Zebra is incredibly generous given that Zebra 3 is going to be a very different synth from both. .

U-he uses a financial model that puzzled me for a while and is less transparent.
Other companies regularly do huge sales (like 50%). U-he does not. And the price of Zebra is pretty high.

I use the sweetspot of about 100 euro for a good synth. And I guess a lot of people do that too. Anything above this will have to be damn good. So, in this respect U-he seems less attractive (pretty high prices; no sales).

It seems to me that the benefit for the customer is in their update/upgrade and beta policy.
A lot of free updates, cheap upgrades and a sale price for early adopters who bite the bullet in the beta stage. For owners of Zebra 2, the upgrade to Zebra 3 will be just 30 dollars, which is dirt cheap.

[wagtunes]

Okay, I understand now. Given all the info above, making Zebra 3 a free upgrade for those who own Zebra 2 and Dark Zebra is incredibly generous given that Zebra 3 is going to be a very different synth from both. .

U-he uses a financial model that puzzled me for a while and is less transparent.
Other companies regularly do huge sales (like 50%). U-he does not. And the price of Zebra is pretty high.

I use the sweetspot of about 100 euro for a good synth. And I guess a lot of people do that too. Anything above this will have to be damn good. So, in this respect U-he seems less attractive (pretty high prices; no sales).

It seems to me that the benefit for the customer is in their update/upgrade and beta policy.
A lot of free updates, cheap upgrades and a sale price for early adopters who bite the bullet in the beta stage. For owners of Zebra 2, the upgrade to Zebra 3 will be just 30 dollars, which is dirt cheap.

Exactly. Which makes it a no brainer. I just wonder how they stay in business with upgrade prices so low.

[ariston]

U-he uses a financial model that puzzled me for a while and is less transparent.

Seems pretty transparent to me. No sales, solid prices, a focused and select product line, more than fair upgrade paths and products that actually gain value over time with some very generous free updates. If you want to resell, you'll get an appreciable part of your money back - precisely because of this transparency.

Much prefer this over, say, Waves, Izotope, IK and others, who have near-constant, erratic sales that devalue their products.

[Spitfire31]

U-he uses a financial model that puzzled me for a while and is less transparent.

Seems pretty transparent to me. No sales, solid prices, a focused and select product line, more than fair upgrade paths and products that actually gain value over time with some very generous free updates. If you want to resell, you'll get an appreciable part of your money back - precisely because of this transparency.

Much prefer this over, say, Waves, Izotope, IK and others, who have near-constant, erratic sales that devalue their products.

/Joachim

[Stefken]

U-he uses a financial model that puzzled me for a while and is less transparent.

Seems pretty transparent to me. No sales, solid prices, a focused and select product line, more than fair upgrade paths and products that actually gain value over time with some very generous free updates. If you want to resell, you'll get an appreciable part of your money back - precisely because of this transparency.

Much prefer this over, say, Waves, Izotope, IK and others, who have near-constant, erratic sales that devalue their products.

Well, you need some insight knowledge/experience with their products.
They also don't take much effort to communicate that on their website or so.

FL studio for example makes it very clear no to expect upgrade fees. It's part of their business model.
If you put a banner "SALE 50%" on top of your website, everybody instantly gets it without even knowing your products. That is transparent communication.

U-he is not so clear about their policies. They could still learn a few things about communication.

[AnalogGuy1]

Right, so no 50% sale banner means no 50% sale. Not trying to be difficult, but I can't imagine how things could be more transparent than a simple no-haggle, non-changing, single price. Maybe you're trying to say you wish he would run pricing discounts - that's a different thought.

[AnalogGuy1]

...and in the interest of good communication and complete transparency, I want to say that the statement I just made above hasn't changed since I made it earlier.

[egbert101]

<delete>

[Stefken]

Not trying to be difficult, but I can't imagine how things could be more transparent than a simple no-haggle, non-changing, single price.

Try harder .

I'l give it one more try.
What I'm saying is that the U-he website shows their quite high prices (not a benefit for the customer) but it doesn't accentuate their great upgrade (or beta) policy (a clear benefit for the customer). As a commercial business you should accentuate your strong points.

Also, the website is not updated on a regular basis, sometimes there are mistakes on it that are easily avoided. Etc...

[Acknowledgement]

Seems pretty transparent to me. No sales, solid prices, a focused and select product line, more than fair upgrade paths and products that actually gain value over time with some very generous free updates. If you want to resell, you'll get an appreciable part of your money back - precisely because of this transparency.

Much prefer this over, say, Waves, Izotope, IK and others, who have near-constant, erratic sales that devalue their products.

This. That's why I like them even more, same as Spectrasonics and Xfer.

[Winstontaneous]

Although I understand and respect Urs's business model, I think eventually he'll have to cave into the demands of the market and do the same bundle philosophy as everyone else, to survive.

There is a lot of saturation at the moment, with too many plugins doing much the same thing, so I think there's going to be a lot of developers going out of business over the next few years. The biggest (Native Instruments, Arturia, Waves) will probably survive because of that business model you seem to think devalues their products.

I disagree, u-he is one of the few developers (along with Valhalla) who don't need to play the endless discount game because their products represent an incredible value for money, reflected by satisfied users and high resale prices. For $150 (with the Dinosaur Upgrade discount), you get Zebra 2, the Zebrify FX processor, the Zebralette single-oscillator synth, and the experimental ZRev reverb - plus great support, an awesome user community, and reasonable demo restrictions/copy protection/resale policies.

I believe Urs has posted that the reason Zebra 3 has been delayed is due to the unexpected degree of popularity several of their plugins have had in recent years.