Little Questions about Z2

[fgimian]

hey there, I haven't posted in the u-he forum before but I've spent the last day trying out most analogue type VSTi synths and found Zebra to be the best by far !! Beautiful work, I am considering buying it soon. Just a few questions if I may...

1. How much longer will the special price last ?

2. I have noticed a little GUI flaw in the Windows VST version of Zebra2, after using the knobs and drop downs for a little while, I get strange white shadows appearing all over the place. The only way I can fix this is to close Zebra and reopen the it.

3. I notice the Single, Dual and Quad modes on the oscillators which is an awesome feature. However, the sound of the unison isn't what I expected. I think this has to do with...

- free-running oscillators (phase of oscailltor may not necessarily be 0 when you hit a note)
- key synced oscillators (phase of oscailltors always start at 0 when you hit a note).

It feels that you are using key synced oscillators even for the unison which is usually not the case. A good example is Kjaerhus Spectra which actually allows you to choose key sync for the unison or free running oscillators for it instead. The free running sound results in hardly any flanging effect between the oscillators, the sound is a lot thicker and sounds more natural. I believe that in this mode, the oscillators actually begin at different phases to give this sound. Can I do this with Zebra ?

Also, if you could add upto 8 voices on the unison that would be awesome

Thanks a lot
Fots

P.S.: your synth has the best oscillators i have ever heard on ANY soft synth, I believe you have created the most awesome VSTi in history

[Urs]

Hey Fots,

First off: Thanks!!!!!

The pre-order offer will last until final release. I had to set back my schedule for a lot of reasons, but now it's closing in to the target, so it's weeks rather than months from now.

The gui flaw is known and it'll be fixed. In fact I have already tried some working fixes, but I want to benchmark them to get the fastest fix.

The oscillators are either free running or triggered to a phase of your choice. That's what the "Reset" switch does in the OSC panel. However, the first 16 notes you play in quad mode sound like reset even if it's turned off. That's because when you open a new instance, the phases are set to 0 and you have to iterate through each osc of 16 voices to set each to a random state. I shall make a note here that I should initialize them to randon phase at creation time.

Here's a little trick you might wanna try for big sounds:

Stack as many quad oscs as your cpu allows to.

In the FX pane of the oscillators, select the "Fundamental" effect for each osc with the value turned to 0.00 - this will make the oscillators render only the harmonics, without the fundamental frequency of the note played.

Add an FMO to another Grid channel to create just a monophonic fundamental sine for each voice. Push its volume up to match with the other oscs.

This way you can enhance the bass energy of a supersaw patch because the fundamental doesn't cancel out by the detuned generators.


Oh, I've been thinking about adding more osc unison modes to it, i.e. 8/12/16. But I'm not sure if it saves any more cpu over simply stacking 2 or 3 quad oscillators instead. We'll see. As Zebra2 is based on an extensible platform, I might add this later if it turns out to be a desirable feature - My current priority is finishing the whole thing, i.e. write load/save functions for microtuning, module presets, randomizers and stuff.

Cheers,

Urs

[fgimian]

Sounds awesome Urs, thank you so much for your response I'll try your suggestions tonight, this synth is so huge and versatile that I would have never thought about such an intelligent arrangement.

A few little notes..
- Adding the feature to start notes at different phases from the start would be really awesome
- I find that higher unison voices are easier to deal with than multiple oscillators since you then have the issue of deciding how much to detune the 2nd oscillator and what phase it should start at .etc Don't worry about CPU usage, I always epxect a smash to the CPU when using a high number of unison voices lol If you could add more unison voices in the near future, that would be SWEET !!!

Keep up the great work
Fots