Zebralette 3 Spline Editor & UX Discussion
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- KVRAF
- 25459 posts since 3 Feb, 2005 from in the wilds
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- KVRist
- 40 posts since 4 Sep, 2011
Yeah, not so practical - wouldn't be too difficult to print them numbers at least every major axis I'd hope.
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- KVRAF
- 4123 posts since 23 May, 2004 from Bad Vilbel, Germany
Unfortunately, a single bar created via GridMoveY or GridStep spans two harmonics. Adjusting levels of triangles via GridMove introduces new harmonics for the same reason.pdxindy wrote: ↑Mon Feb 26, 2024 5:47 pmThere is GridMoveY and GridStep both which allow setting individual harmonics (with Harmonic Grid) No need to move/edit points at all.jooster wrote: ↑Mon Feb 26, 2024 5:40 pmyes good point, I did have a look at that before but found it to be a bit cumbersome for this purpose. I can add a "peaky" shape (which again suggests there is spectral content generated left and right of the peak/harmonic) but then am still left with moving/editing 5 (!) points if I want to change things. Yes it's all possible I understand, I just want the "tool" to be so intuitive that it goes away while I am creating sounds. (Sorry if I come across as a complainer, not intended if I do).
No solution yet. Patience
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- KVRist
- 124 posts since 18 Mar, 2004
- The biggest drawback to both editors it not having save/load, or locking when switching presets.
- - Endless controls that need to be individually locked is also frustrating.
Each main section would be greatly improved with a toggle for all/none. The left OSC section alone has 18 parameters. Why require 18 steps for something that could take 1 (or 36 steps when you consider unlocking)?
It's often much simpler to consider the specific parameters that I don't want locked and it would be much faster to unlock those than to manually lock everything else. The same is true for the reverse
- - If there's going to be 500 icons and tools that no one is going to remember, it's better to display it's name in a tooltip vs. somewhere else on the screen entirely. A "tips" mode or whatever could give a brief description in a larger tooltip.
- - It's much faster to access related tools where you need them with a right-click menu rather than constantly mousing all over the place. Modifier(s) + right-click could bring up related or favorite tools etc. Even having the full toolset in a context menu with sub-menu would be faster because it's closest to where you want to use it (adding English could help those who's native language isn't uhe-glyphs
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- u-he
- 28065 posts since 8 Aug, 2002 from Berlin
Some of these concepts (module locking, Curve/Curve Set presets) are part of the development towards Zebra 3. If and when they come to Zebralette we can not say yet.
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- KVRAF
- 25459 posts since 3 Feb, 2005 from in the wilds
Huh?
So even though the harmonic grid is labeled 1,2,3,4,5, etc., that's wrong?
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- KVRist
- 40 posts since 4 Sep, 2011
Right, visualized in images below; one with a bar from 1 to 2 clearly creates two sinusoids as evident in waveform. Move the bar slightly off #2 (harmonic 1) and we have a pure sine wave.
This presents two issues IMHO;
a) there is no way to quickly create and continue to edit "just" harmonics
b) the visual content between level 1 and 2 (line in this case, can be fancy curves), represents no audible content i.e. Zebralette does not create a series of sines between fundamental and first harmonic. Image #3 shows a different curve but has the exact same audible content.
Many physical instruments create a harmonic series that have modulation effects around some or all of their harmonics. Hence, being able to create frequency content in between the drawn harmonics could be interesting though in most cases the result will be just non-musical and a nightmare to manage. So I am not suggesting that spectral content between harmonics should be created per what is drawn. Besides ZL3 offers other modulation effects that may take care of this aspect (I haven't gone into other parts of ZL3 yet so don't know). What I _am_ saying is that the drawn spectra should (again IHMO) be representative of what is created audibly so drawing bars with a fixed (small) width on only the harmonics would make more sense. If I recall Zebra2 does a similar thing (sorry haven't used it for a while) so this may be a sin of the past - no point in repeating that with this all new way of thinking in ZL3/Z3
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- KVRAF
- 25459 posts since 3 Feb, 2005 from in the wilds
Yeah, I also checked after Howard's post. The Harmonic Grid is inaccurate/offset and so yeah, you cannot easily affect 1 partial as is with the partial tools.
The Harmonic Grid is also visually inaccurate at higher partials. For example, around the middle of the grid, what looks like 1 partial is really 4. You have to zoom way in to get to 1 (besides the issue with 1 being 2 because the grid is offset)
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- u-he
- 28065 posts since 8 Aug, 2002 from Berlin
Yes, hehehe, it looks a bit messy to display a line for each of 1024 harmonics. Zooming is necessary to target individual partials.
I think the labelling can be improved, i.e. some lines should always be labelled and thus if the label crosses into other lines, those lines should be shortened there or have a gap.
I think the labelling can be improved, i.e. some lines should always be labelled and thus if the label crosses into other lines, those lines should be shortened there or have a gap.
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- KVRAF
- 25459 posts since 3 Feb, 2005 from in the wilds
The scaling of the harmonic grid could be improved. For example, if I zoom in enough to see say the 32nd partial, by that time, the fundamental takes up most of the editor in width.
Being able to see say the first 32 partials, all at once would be helpful. To see 32 individual partials, as is, requires lots of scrolling. Even with just 16 partials, the fundamental takes up 40% of the edit window and still requires scrolling.
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- KVRist
- 124 posts since 18 Mar, 2004
Great to know. Zebralette3 is insanely powerful especially for a free synth. Once there's a wider variety of presets users will be able to get a much better impression of it's capabilities and come to appreciate the advanced editing when they have more places to start and examples to draw from. At the moment it feels a bit like needing to learn all the controls in a nuclear power-plant when you just want to turn on the lights.
To the person who spent years building/designing the reactor one piece at a time I'm sure it's all logical and second nature, but the impression for new users might be that the learning curve is too steep to even bother.
As long as there's a decent beta period for Zebra3 to refine the workflow etc. I'm sure it'll be fine.
Also, there's endless presets for Zebra2 and while they obviously won't work in Z3 (and no one expects them to), being able to extract any useful information from them as starting points would open up an enormous resource. Even if it sounds nothing like the original preset it will sound like something which is always better than nothing...
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- KVRist
- 40 posts since 4 Sep, 2011
Improvement request for OSC editor:
In the (curve) timeline, with several curves on it, I find myself wishing to temporarily disable one or more curves so that I can hear the morphing effect without those curves I disabled. Makes sense? Possible to add to ZL3 (or Z3)? Preferably with a double click or something to avoid right-click and menu select.
In the (curve) timeline, with several curves on it, I find myself wishing to temporarily disable one or more curves so that I can hear the morphing effect without those curves I disabled. Makes sense? Possible to add to ZL3 (or Z3)? Preferably with a double click or something to avoid right-click and menu select.
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- KVRer
- 12 posts since 8 Sep, 2023
Would it be an option to set the cutoff for the filters (OSC FX and Delay) in HZ? Or in case they are currently in semitones, it would be great to add that in the info display, since currently it just displays a number that doesn't give away too much information.
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- KVRer
- 12 posts since 8 Sep, 2023
Since it apparently for some reason didn't post this the first time I wrote it, here we go again. Some workflow improvements I could think of/small hiccups I noticed while testing the Synth:
- When dragging Curves on the "Timeline" only the small dot above the Waveform Preview can be dragged. That seems a little unintuitive and I found myself multiple times grabbing the Preview and trying to drag it around especially since the are in which the dragging for the dot is quite small.
- A way to save/recall curves- and guidecurve-sets would be super cool. I know there is a way to export them as waves but reimporting them sometimes doesn't work properly and not at all for Guide Curves.
- Regarding the importing of .wav files, this still feels really buggy. (To be expected I guess) However from what I gathered so far, I'd love to have a little more control about how the Sample is imported. Right now it's not really clear to me how the sample is cut up/which parts of it are used. Maybe that might clear up with some additional documentation. On top of that I noticed that some small wavetables with just for example four waves, it doesn't give me the option of how many frames should be used and just puts all waveforms in one curve.
- As already written in the modulation forum, some visual indicators to the modulation that's going on would be amazing and improve the workflow by a lot.
- The transpose selector feels a little weird with the huge dropdown menu. On my screen it actually exendes the boundaries of the screen, even with the plugin scaled to 80%. Maybe limit the dropdown menu to octaves since that will cover 99% of the use cases. For transposing in semitones I feel like it's usually more convenient to just transpose the midi. And since this synth has just one Oscillator, there is no need to detune it from another Oscillator.
I think that's it for now, hope I remembered everything I wrote in the first Post. xD
- When dragging Curves on the "Timeline" only the small dot above the Waveform Preview can be dragged. That seems a little unintuitive and I found myself multiple times grabbing the Preview and trying to drag it around especially since the are in which the dragging for the dot is quite small.
- A way to save/recall curves- and guidecurve-sets would be super cool. I know there is a way to export them as waves but reimporting them sometimes doesn't work properly and not at all for Guide Curves.
- Regarding the importing of .wav files, this still feels really buggy. (To be expected I guess) However from what I gathered so far, I'd love to have a little more control about how the Sample is imported. Right now it's not really clear to me how the sample is cut up/which parts of it are used. Maybe that might clear up with some additional documentation. On top of that I noticed that some small wavetables with just for example four waves, it doesn't give me the option of how many frames should be used and just puts all waveforms in one curve.
- As already written in the modulation forum, some visual indicators to the modulation that's going on would be amazing and improve the workflow by a lot.
- The transpose selector feels a little weird with the huge dropdown menu. On my screen it actually exendes the boundaries of the screen, even with the plugin scaled to 80%. Maybe limit the dropdown menu to octaves since that will cover 99% of the use cases. For transposing in semitones I feel like it's usually more convenient to just transpose the midi. And since this synth has just one Oscillator, there is no need to detune it from another Oscillator.
I think that's it for now, hope I remembered everything I wrote in the first Post. xD
