u-he

mabian · Post by **mabian** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 2:44 pm

Well, put like this it's easy that there's some kind of harmonic or frequency exciter working under the hood, or simply the base waves used by some hardware and software synths are carefully chosen so that they have that extra sparkle.

- Mario

Igro · Post by **Igro** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 4:45 pm

Urs wrote: ...and still not cause headaches.

Here you are 100% right. Cos some synths(especially when using headphones) after some working with them, can give you headache.

P.S: but Brilliance give easily those high freq btw.

pdxindy · Post by **pdxindy** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 6:43 pm

kuniklo wrote:
Urs wrote: I still don't think so. Overly bright oscillators are a disease of the digital age. Zebras oscillators have a balanced, pleasant sound. They can be used without filtering and still not cause headaches.
But from what I've seen so far some classic analog oscillators are brighter than those in many of the digital synths we use now, including Twin and Zebra.

I certainly don't want all my synths to sound the same, but I don't understand what's desirable about essentially having the saw wave pre-filtered. I guess with Zebra I can just smack up the oscillator brilliance effect if I want something sharper.

You can create some osc's you like and save them, and also make some basic presets with them to use as starting points... that is the beauty of Zebra, to create the sound you want... there are lots of tools in Zebra

kuniklo · Post by **kuniklo** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 6:46 pm

pdxindy wrote: You can create some osc's you like and save them, and also make some basic presets with them to use as starting points... that is the beauty of Zebra, to create the sound you want... there are lots of tools in Zebra

Yeah. I've considered doing this. The one big downside to the way Zebra loads osc templates is that it loads *all* the parameters of the osc. This is fine for some things but it's really a hassle when you just want to flip through a bunch of wavetables. I wish there were a way to just load the wavetable from osc presets and leave everything else alone.

pdxindy · Post by **pdxindy** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 6:47 pm

mabian wrote:Well, put like this it's easy that there's some kind of harmonic or frequency exciter working under the hood, or simply the base waves used by some hardware and software synths are carefully chosen so that they have that extra sparkle.

- Mario

It is very easy to do that with Zebra using osc fx, eq, etc... then save that as a preset to use as a template for your your sound design.

It is subjective of course. What you call extra sparkle, I find fatiguing to the ear.

pdxindy · Post by **pdxindy** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 6:59 pm

kuniklo wrote:
pdxindy wrote: You can create some osc's you like and save them, and also make some basic presets with them to use as starting points... that is the beauty of Zebra, to create the sound you want... there are lots of tools in Zebra
Yeah. I've considered doing this. The one big downside to the way Zebra loads osc templates is that it loads *all* the parameters of the osc. This is fine for some things but it's really a hassle when you just want to flip through a bunch of wavetables. I wish there were a way to just load the wavetable from osc presets and leave everything else alone.

agreed, it would be nice to switch without changing all the other parameters...

but it still works to make some basic templates with the bright osc sound you want as a starting point...

Howard · Post by **Howard** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 2:52 pm

Urs wrote:Overly bright oscillators are a disease of the digital age.

I agree 1000% (at least!)

There seems to be a generation that only knows massive bass and treble i.e. overkill at both ends. And dynamic range in songs? Practically zilch because of the sonic assault "arms race"... Don't you hate it when TV advertizing is at least twice as loud as the movie?

A final point: I find it ridiculous that ear plugs are absolutely necessary at rock gigs these days, otherwise you can damage your ears. I find it difficult to play with most under 30-year-olds because of the sheer volume they (in their ignorance) insist upon.

/rant - I need a cup of tea...

Howard · Post by **Howard** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 2:55 pm

Igro wrote:...some synths(especially when using headphones) after some working with them, can give you headache.

I even got headaches from Blofeld using my monitors (ADAM P22 - which show up any nastiness in the high end)

kuniklo wrote:I wish there were a way to just load the wavetable from osc presets and leave everything else alone.

There is. Copy/paste in "More OSC". Very quick once you get used to it.

kuniklo · Post by **kuniklo** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 4:27 pm

Howard wrote: There is. Copy/paste in "More OSC". Very quick once you get used to it.

This seems extremely non-ergonomic.

pdxindy · Post by **pdxindy** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 6:28 pm

kuniklo wrote:
Howard wrote: There is. Copy/paste in "More OSC". Very quick once you get used to it.
This seems extremely non-ergonomic.

It is...

pdxindy · Post by **pdxindy** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 6:32 pm

Howard wrote:
Urs wrote:Overly bright oscillators are a disease of the digital age.
I agree 1000% (at least!)

There seems to be a generation that only knows massive bass and treble i.e. overkill at both ends. And dynamic range in songs? Practically zilch because of the sonic assault "arms race"... Don't you hate it when TV advertizing is at least twice as loud as the movie?

A final point: I find it ridiculous that ear plugs are absolutely necessary at rock gigs these days, otherwise you can damage your ears. I find it difficult to play with most under 30-year-olds because of the sheer volume they (in their ignorance) insist upon.

/rant - I need a cup of tea...

+ a whole bunch

I don't go listen to live music nearly as much as I would like cause it freakin hurts my ears it is so damn loud.

mcnoone · Post by **mcnoone** » Wed Oct 08, 2008 3:20 am

Howard wrote:I find it difficult to play with most under 30-year-olds because of the sheer volume they (in their ignorance) insist upon....

Let's not forget that ingnorance can not be judged by age. Proof of this is found from a fine example of ignorance, by someone 60+ years old.
...President Bush.(not yet in command of the English language, but a country is ok)

tetsuneko · Post by **tetsuneko** » Sat Oct 11, 2008 7:59 am

Oh man, if I want a modular synth I want the default sound to be 'flat'. nuff said.

Use other plugins for variety. or build your own templates.

kuniklo · Post by **kuniklo** » Wed Nov 05, 2008 1:38 am

I think Urs has made his opinion pretty clear here and that's fine but I do want to take issue with one claim made here - that these brighter oscillators are just catering to a desensitized modern sensibility with an artificial sound.

From what I've seen a lot of classic analog oscillators have a similar brightness and Zebra 2 is dark in comparison to, say, a stock Arp 2600 saw wave. That's fine with me and there are workarounds but as I go about dutifully punching up oscillator brightness on basses and leads I'd just like to feel that we're clear that it's Urs' preference and not some kind of absolute ideal we're working with.

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Wed Nov 05, 2008 1:45 am

Fair enough.

I'll consider options, including oversampling, but it'll probably be a year until this can happen.

Urs