Zebra3 Info

[DHR53]

I was reading through this and I had a few thoughts... Firstly, Zebra is my favorite synth... it does just about everything, and the cpu hit is extremely low for the quality of the sound. Secondly, there are a LOT of great presets from really good sound designers. So being an avowed "preset user" that's one of the reasons it's always ben in my list of the best, and one I use all the time. That being said, I've noticed that recently, a lot of the synths that have been released are monster "cpu crushing" beasts, that I just can't justify purchasing or using, when synths like Zebra sound this good with a 1/4 of the hit? I'm thinking a lot of these synths are overkill, piling on features as opposed to good programming...

I realize if you have unlimited power at your disposal this may not be much of an issue, but here's to hoping Zebra in it's next incarnation remains as great sounding but continues to be the cpu efficient go-to that I've come to love! Woot!

Happy Holidays to U-He's!

[frenchboy]

Some feature suggestion that would be great:

-Sideband tuned to semitones, and the ability to make more than 2 bands, and scale the bands volumes, would be useful to make hard sync type sounds.
-A combfilter tuned to semitones with keyfollow, but not as tonal as the one already in there, would be useful to make air in a pipe sound that follows a saw or square wave. Would maybe even be useful for making crash cymbal type sounds that have a lot of noise harmonics and a tons of resonant peaks that decay slowly and unevenly.
-As many distortion types as possible, with an GR meter like the comp module has.
-being able to see the frequency of the cut off on filters would be awesome.
-being able to lock an arp pattern and switch presets would be awesome.
-pitch envelope more than 48st, like 64 or more would be great.
-being able to have like 20 oscillators would be great for physical modelling, but a more advanced sideband would also do the job. I'm sure it would take tons of CPU but for people just looking to make a specific sound once that would be amazing.
-a resonator type module would also be great for physical modelling, I already use the phaser filter and EQs like crazy, but I feel a resonator type module would be even better.
-Being able to see the seconds and ms on the delay and MSEG would save me a lot of headache.
-Being able to map a mixer ENV to MSEG.
-The Env could have a 1 second as well as 10 seconds option. Most of the time I use 10 seconds but I have to put in super small values.
-The ability to use a pitched down oscillator as a modulator would be great for LFOs that follow the notes being played.
-a Global MSEG would be amazing for making riser and swoosh type effects every 8 bars or something while an ARP and Pads are playing all at the same time without one patch.
-I feel like wave tables should be more accessible on the oscillator module, I don't use them as much as I could just because it takes so much time to get to them and switch them around. For example in NI Massive it's so quick to change wave table and try all of them after your sound is near completion.

[Urs]

Agreed on most points - many of this is planned one way or the other.

Question about Sideband suggestion: What exactly do you mean by tuning to semitones? This sounds rather like a pitch shifter than a frequency shifter. The sidebands could be tuned in Hz scaled by a factor of the voice's pitch though, i.e. an exponentially curved keyfollow modulation source.

Using an oscillator for modulations is still difficult. Zebra's concept strictly distinguishes between audio generators and modulators. I'm reluctant to make exceptions (apart from obvious audio rate modulations of course).

We do have a pretty cool concept for some sort of modal synthesis, which aligns nicely with the resonator concept. Wait and see

Cheers,

- Urs

[frenchboy]

Agreed on most points - many of this is planned one way or the other.

Question about Sideband suggestion: What exactly do you mean by tuning to semitones? This sounds rather like a pitch shifter than a frequency shifter. The sidebands could be tuned in Hz scaled by a factor of the voice's pitch though, i.e. an exponentially curved keyfollow modulation source.

Using an oscillator for modulations is still difficult. Zebra's concept strictly distinguishes between audio generators and modulators. I'm reluctant to make exceptions (apart from obvious audio rate modulations of course).

We do have a pretty cool concept for some sort of modal synthesis, which aligns nicely with the resonator concept. Wait and see

Cheers,

- Urs

Actually just the ability to tune an LFO and have it keyfollow would be enough, no need to necessarily use the oscillator as the modulator. Kind of like NI Massive does in its modulation osc section.

and yes now that I think about it it would be a pitch shifter. For example, take a saw wave at full volume, then add 2 saw wave and pitch them +1 and - 1 st, and lower the volume 6db, and do that with 6 other saw waves with lower volumes and bigger semi tone settings and I think it gives really interesting sounds that resembles hard sync or a comb filter tuned to the original oscillator's partials. I think it sounds especially good in the 1kHz range since it emulates the partials that a lower fundamental saw wave would have in this range. It would also be real useful for making chord like timbres without having to open multiple oscillators with all the same settings except volume and tune, and without having to play chords on the keyboard with different velocities. To me just the ability to choose semitone instead of 10-200-4000 hertz on the sideband would be really cool, I guess it couldn't make major and minor chords that way though, but it would still be great for more dissonant timbres.

[Howard]

Actually just the ability to tune an LFO and have it keyfollow would be enough...

You can do that already.

[FarleyCZ]

...speaking about Massive. Would NI be somehow offended if you took that extra knobs for modulation in Zebra and laid them over the modulated knobs itself kind of like Massive has it? It would make the workflow a bit more fluent.

[lalo]

some suggestions

- More FM oscillators ( 8 ? )
- Audio Input ( usable as a mod source to )
- Sampler Osc ( with loop start, loop stop, loop direction parameters as mod destinations)
- Granular Osc ( like the Sampler but with granular features )

[frenchboy]

Actually just the ability to tune an LFO and have it keyfollow would be enough...

You can do that already.

I know but you can't tune it to semi tone ratios. And I guess you can probably tune it but you'd have to do it manually I guess?

I'm not 100% sure it would be useful, but it's an option I often wish I had to try what it would sound like,

[DJBenniBoy]

Should be free to all registered Zebra 2 users, As they paid £150 uk pounds for the software (as i did urs) like what flstudio does with there chaps, when they pay for a product online, they get all the free updates, , Just a good idea as they paid in good faith for the software

[DJBenniBoy]

...well anyone who has latest update 2.7rev 2126

[zerocrossing]

Should be free to all registered Zebra 2 users, As they paid £150 uk pounds for the software (as i did urs) like what flstudio does with there chaps, when they pay for a product online, they get all the free updates, , Just a good idea as they paid in good faith for the software

I highly disagree. Shut up and take my money!



Why? Because I live in the real world and I bet Urs does too. Urs, do you like food? Haben sie Nahrung geben, kostenlos in Deutschland? I doubt it. Also, I know that incentive drives innovation. Urs, make me something cool(er) and I'll give you... well nothing! = Stupid. Urs, make me something even cooler than Zebra 2.5 and I'll give you some money! = Smart.

Zebra is a great sounding and amazingly full featured instrument that's had many, many free updates. I'd enjoy paying for the privilege of a v3.

[Spitfire31]

…like what flstudio does with there chaps…

Doubtless, with "there chaps" you meant to write "their chaps"? You know, what with possessive pronouns and all that, eh?

Sorry, couldn't resist…

/Joachim

[pdxindy]

Should be free to all registered Zebra 2 users, As they paid £150 uk pounds for the software (as i did urs) like what flstudio does with there chaps, when they pay for a product online, they get all the free updates, , Just a good idea as they paid in good faith for the software

They paid in good faith for the software and they received the software...

[BBFG#]

Should be free to all registered Zebra 2 users, As they paid £150 uk pounds for the software (as i did urs) like what flstudio does with there chaps, when they pay for a product online, they get all the free updates, , Just a good idea as they paid in good faith for the software

I believe it is free to all registered Zebra2/HZ users.

[aaron aardvark]

It will only be free if you bought ZebraHZ, not just Zebra by itself, from what I understand.