Zebra 2/FL 7 LFO woes

[snugsound]

Hi all,

I'm in the market for a new soft synth so I downloaded Zebra 2 last night and played around with it in FL Studio 7. Overall it seems great but I've noticed some quirks with the LFOs that held me back from reaching for my wallet. Not sure if it's a problem with FL or Zebra but here's how to recreate it:

FL Studio:
1. Add an instance of Zebra
2. Create a few whole notes in the piano roll
3. Turn on the metronome

Zebra (start with the initialize patch):
1. Set the LFO1 to saw down, free, 1/4 speed
2. Add VCF1 and route OSC1 to it
3. Set the cutoff for VCF1 to 50% and modulate it with LFO1 @ 100%

Start playing. The filter should be (more or less) in sync with the metronome. Turn on the arpeggiator and let it play some more. The LFO will occasionally go out of sync when a note starts (and yes, I realize the LFO is in free mode). I'm not sure if this is only an issue when the arpeggiator is enabled but it seems to be more prominent.

I also noticed some other weird behaviour when using much lower speeds for the LFO - i.e. the LFO would do a partial sweep and then get "stuck". Again it seemed to be more prominent with the arpeggiator on but I'd need to do some more tests to see if I can recreate it consistently or if I'm just crazy.

Has anyone noticed anything like this before, either in FL or in another host? Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I can put together a little MP3 or FLP to demonstrate the problem.

Thanks,
Adam

[Urs]

The voice LFOs in free mode are not reset when you hit a new note. The voices are iterated though, no matter what mode you're in. Thus free running LFOs in voices are somewhat random phase.

What you need are global LFOs. These are single entities, meaning there's only 1 of each regardless of how many notes are played. These keep in sync.

[snugsound]

Hi Urs,

Thanks for the prompt reply. It wasn't obvious to me that there were two types of LFOs.

I'll play around with the global LFOs tonight and see if they do what I need.

Thanks again and keep up the good work

Adam

[emtear]

that is exactaly what i was going to say...

[Urs]

Btw. because this issue comes up *often* (to say the least) I'm checking out if there's a chance to create pseudo-monophonic LFOs within the voices as well.

The whole issue is tricky because there's also the (even stronger) wish to have non-tempo based LFOs, i.e. based on seconds or Hertz. These would then have to take the "time elapsed into the song" into account, which, arrrrgh, can only be estimated in current plugin formats.

Another method being in discussion thus is a "manual trigger", i.e. a special key or any midi event/automation that could just trigger LFOs/envelopes at any moment of your choice.

Also - this is pretty advanced stuff - there could be customizable events (midi/automation) that trigger a *script*. These scripts (currently undocumented and available in .h2p presets only) could virtually do anything.

Yeah, hehehe, a lot of stuff is going on here, and it takes some time to stirr all the pros and cons out of all the different possibilities

Later,

Urs

[michkhol]

Another method being in discussion thus is a "manual trigger", i.e. a special key or any midi event/automation that could just trigger LFOs/envelopes at any moment of your choice.


Later,

Urs

That would be awesome! Just imagine triggering several LFOs and MSEGs in a row for the same note...

[phidelity]

Another method being in discussion thus is a "manual trigger", i.e. a special key or any midi event/automation that could just trigger LFOs/envelopes at any moment of your choice.



Urs

Has this idea been developed in any way .. this is exactly what i need.

second i have a point i need clarification on. while hunting for this topic i ran accross a post mentioning something to the effect that the lfos are triggered once - i am assuming that means if multiple notes are sounded and at least one note remains keyed on that the other notes will not retrigger the lfo. as opposed to the first note on message in a tune triggers the lfo and all the rest have no effect.


i just reread this post and realized i misread it so my second question is answered but has the manual trigger function been implemented?

and thanks for the new manual


tia phi