Adam Van Baker Zebra 2 Soundset

[symplectiq]

Dark skin 5€? LOL!

[bmrzycki]

I am sorry you dont like the site. Took me a whole summer to make?

I didn't mean to offend you and I'm sorry if I did. I just strongly dislike all flash sites for several reasons. First it takes quite a bit of time to load just to get to the home page. Second you can't copy any text off the site which means everyone ordering your presets has to manually type your email address into their client. This will lead to incorrectly sent emails. It's also non-intuitive to find pricing and how to order (case in point, see note above). I much prefer a simple html page like zebrasynth.com with a prominent price and buy now button. Oh and no load times. I have no doubt you worked hard on it but you can't expect everyone to like it.

But please, you are giving a false image of my work. Some patches DO use the XY controller but true, not all of them.

I'm sorry but I still stand by my statement. 6 of the 128 presets use XYs:

Code: Select all

Lead - Solid State
Lead - Suru
Lead - Virus Wavetable
Pad - Huge Bell Pad
Pad - Super Saw
Seq - Saturation

Of those they all only use 1 of the XY panes and almost all of them only map to Cutoff/Resonance. The only exception I saw is the Virus Wavetable preset which actually changes the timbre of the pluck when moving XY1. This is more than acceptable for free preset banks but pales in comparison to every other commercial bank out there. Zircon's, Ben's, Howard's, and Michael's banks all use the XYs in several presets in creative ways where 122 of your presets say "XYn not Assigned". I wanted to let others know not to expect the same when purchasing your sounds.

Also, if one is too lazy to turn down the volume, then one shouldn't even use a music app.

Insulting me won't change the fact that several of the presets exceed 0db with a single note. Here's a screenshot of BASS - "Hook n' Sling" where I have no limiters and have only hit one note, C4:


That's 6db over, sustained not peak. If I just dropped this in a mix to audition it I'd have to quickly adjust the volume. Heaven forbid if I was auditioning with headphones...

I think your sounds are excellent and you have an amazing ear to recreate popular trance timbres. I don't regret paying for the presets either, I like them and use them. PAD - Blue Corals and LEAD - Arctic Arp are beautifully done and made me smile the first time I heard them.

I didn't mean to insult you, please just take the above as constructive criticism.

[adamszabo]

No harm taken bmrzycki
Ok now I know why there is clipping for you. You use logic right?
My DAW is FL Studio, and over there NONE of my patches clip. I was very careful not to let them clip when designing. But I guess in FL the channel volume is set lower that in other daws so thats why I some patches clip for you?
I had no idea, so I have to keep this in mind in the future.

BTW, the text which contains my email is indeed selectable so people can either copy and paste it, or simply click on it to bring up the email program.

[bmrzycki]

No harm taken bmrzycki
Ok now I know why there is clipping for you. You use logic right?
My DAW is FL Studio, and over there NONE of my patches clip. I was very careful not to let them clip when designing. But I guess in FL the channel volume is set lower that in other daws so thats why I some patches clip for you?
I had no idea, so I have to keep this in mind in the future.

BTW, the text which contains my email is indeed selectable so people can either copy and paste it, or simply click on it to bring up the email program.

It's interesting that FL and Logic have different master levels. I use Logic 8. I'll try to get you a list of the preset names with their peak level + adjusted main output levels for minimal clipping.

As for the email address, I tried on my mac when I ordered last December. It wouldn't highlight the text for me, maybe I was just unlucky.

Cheers!

[tboulette]

No harm taken bmrzycki
Ok now I know why there is clipping for you. You use logic right?
My DAW is FL Studio, and over there NONE of my patches clip. I was very careful not to let them clip when designing. But I guess in FL the channel volume is set lower that in other daws so thats why I some patches clip for you?
I had no idea, so I have to keep this in mind in the future.

BTW, the text which contains my email is indeed selectable so people can either copy and paste it, or simply click on it to bring up the email program.

Adam,

Just FYI -- a number of your patches clip in Live as well.

[beej]

Zircon's, Ben's, Howard's, and Michael's banks all use the XYs in several presets in creative ways

I can't speak for anybody else, but for me, the XY's were a really important part of Zebra & Transmission, and *all* of the patches, including the variation patches and the patch templates, have individually tweaked XY's that make the most sense to let the user quickly shape the sound, and maximise the usage that each patch has to the end user.

I wanted each at least to always have filter, tonal, envelope and FX settings under XY control, so without any programming you can create variations very easily, or program organic modulations in your sequences. The exact XY settings vary - sometimes they are somewhat generic (but always tweaked in range) and for others, where it makes creative sense, they are more specialised. For instance, bass patches tend to have an EQ XY rather than an Effects XY because that makes more creative sense.

The XY's were under-used in the original patches as well. it does take a *lot* of effort to set up and tweak, especially for a large patch collection, but the value to the end user is worth it, imho.

So, if you're a Tranmission owner, I really suggest playing with those XY patches... if only to make me feel that the time invested in doing them was worthwhile...

(Also, each patch also has modulation and aftertouch routed to something interesting as well, for extra expression.)

Volume balancing is also important - it's difficult to do consistently, because people use different patches in different ways, so you go for some sensible averages that make the most sense, and allow for polyphonic playing on those patches. But you can never tell what the end use is going to do, so you just do the best job you can...

God, that sounds a bit like an advert doesn't it... I didn't really mean that, just wanted to express my attitude to using those features - not everyone is the same of course, but for me it was a definite design goal. I had several conversations with Michael for example about our patch strategies, and he is quite different to me, in that he wants to make the best patch possible and present it to the user as is, like a beautifully crafted freshly baked cake from a master baker. For me, I wanted to give a freshly baked and crafted cake, but give a range of side and decorative options, so each cake could be eaten in many different ways according to the whim of the eater - basically letting the user choose to eat the cake as I intended, or customise it to their tastes if they wish. They are equally valid, just different approaches and different mindsets.

As you were...

[Lotuzia]

No harm taken bmrzycki
Ok now I know why there is clipping for you. You use logic right?
My DAW is FL Studio, and over there NONE of my patches clip. I was very careful not to let them clip when designing. But I guess in FL the channel volume is set lower that in other daws so thats why I some patches clip for you?
I had no idea, so I have to keep this in mind in the future.

BTW, the text which contains my email is indeed selectable so people can either copy and paste it, or simply click on it to bring up the email program.

Not coming to the rescue of Adam but ...

Just chiming here to say that when I made the expansion bank for the Sytrus, IL asked me to make the presets available in FLS format also (I used the Vst version in Cubase 4 to design the presets) and I noticed a difference of level too. As I noticed that many Sytrus older factory bank presets will clip in Cubase 4 as well when loaded as a Vst.

I would never design presets in FLS in a native way. (Not saying here that FLS is not a good host, just saying I prefer to make them on a "neutral" host)

My two cents

LtZ

[Lotuzia]

So, if you're a Tranmission owner, I really suggest playing with those XY patches... if only to make me feel that the time invested in doing them was worthwhile...

Aka : The Dream of the Sound Designer ......

[bmrzycki]

I can't speak for anybody else, but for me, the XY's were a really important part of Zebra & Transmission, and *all* of the patches, including the variation patches and the patch templates, have individually tweaked XY's that make the most sense to let the user quickly shape the sound, and maximize the usage that each patch has to the end user.
...
So, if you're a Tranmission owner, I really suggest playing with those XY patches... if only to make me feel that the time invested in doing them was worthwhile...

I love the XYs in Transmission. In fact I think they spoiled me to where now I feel disappointed when I see a Z2 preset I really like and I switch to the Perform panel and it's empty.

You did an outstanding job on Transmission and for $30 it's still an absolute steal. I bet if we look at the number of hours you put into it your hourly rate at $30 total is laughably small (doubly so since you're in the UK and that's 15 measly pounds )

Thanks for all your hard work, you have at least one very satisfied customer.

[beej]

Great to hear, thanks! I really wanted to make it too good and too cheap to pass up.

It's really cool when people get what you are going for, and I feel the same as you when I come across patches and, for example, reach for the mod wheel or aftertouch and find it does nothing. It's a real bugbear of mine, coming from the days of where £80 got you 50-patches on a cartridge for hardware synth X and it was almost entirely lazily programmed same-old sounds. Not very good value for money.

Same for the XY's in Zebra, although it may be that when people are preset browsing, they have a tendency to miss the XY's as they are on a different page. It's cool though when you have them mapped to hardware knobs or better still, a joystick...

[Howard]

I feel the same as you when I come across patches and, for example, reach for the mod wheel or aftertouch and find it does nothing.

Yes, that's my bugbear too . BTW: It took me a good while to get into X/Y programming because I need my right (mouse) hand to play the keyboard.

[adamszabo]

Hmm, ok in FL all the channels default volume is at 75% that is -6.0db.
I have always thought that there was some "standard" set for default levels in all hosts. It seems FL uses lower levels to prevent the sound from clipping, hence resulting in me thinking that this is the same level in all hosts, and if it doesnt clip in FL it doesnt clip in other hosts.

As I mentioned I was very careful with all patches not to go beyond 0db and in FL they dont, but apparently not all hosts have the same defult level and in some they clip. I had no idea about this so this is one more thing to watch out for in the future.

The reason I didnt use so many XY patches is because of two reasons primarily.
I make these banks mostly for myself and I rather like to tweak the controls at the main synth page, so that I can see other controls as well. Unfortunately I dont play live either.
Also, I have been working on the bank for quite some time, and due to important university studies coming up I wanted to get this out, so I only had time to add a few XY patches.

However, next time I will try to think out of the box, and improve myself. After all we are humans...well some of us anyway

[tetsuneko]

Could one lower the levels on a bunch of patches with some scripting? (like, say, dropping the master vol -3dB for each run of the script) I'd need a script like this for my own stuff as well!

PS: IMO, presets in softsynths are almost always too loud. This has led me to always start with dropping the faders a notch before even auditioning anything. Thought this convention came from the old days when every signal tried to be the hottest one on the planet (whereas in the modern age, having some headroom is actually not so bad)

[beej]

I think so. I did in fact do some judicious perl-scripting on the Transmission patches to copy some settings between patches, but ultimately, you have to eyeball the volumes as different patches with different purposes need to be set to an artistically valid volume, but also bearing in mind the average for the set as well - a bit like album mastering...

[MaliceX]

Man, the demo mp3 is awesome. If that's all purely Zebra, dang. I heard other mp3 demos of Adam's patches, and well this is probably one of the best.

Dang, gotta invest for Zebra AND this thing.
Adam, you should make a bank for Helix, too, once the closed-beta turns commercial.