Improvements!

[Urs]

I think the basic problem with too much choice on tags is, well, too much choice on tags. I think it's going to be fairly hard to throughly tag all presets if 20 or even more tags have to be evaluated.

A simple 2-3 tag scheme on the other side is easily applied and will rather be widely used.

As I said... we'll see... I'm currently too deep into Zebra 2.3 to even think this through :oops.

[hakey]

Hey Urs, I appreciate that you've likely got a hundred and one more important things to do at the moment. I wasn't expecting you to change preset management right away - I was really thinking further down the line, Zebra 3.0 or whatever. And I was just expressing my own preference - there's obviously many different views on the matter.

Looking forward to the new soundset Howard and, as the last soundset was 'Zebra Science', how about 'Zebra Art'?

[Howard]

I prefer the old fashioned directory structure. I can make a folder called basses, leads, etc. I like that I can organize them outside Zebra. I can select a bunch and move them etc.

+1

[Baz_Masterplan]

+1

So I can rename them to bass and lead also. I am a bit like that.

Howard your presets are the biz by the way.


Have you ever considered writing a video tutorial or book on programming synths? I think you wrote the Virus one if I am not mistaken.

Also after not having any experience in Analogue synthesis myself in your opinion is there any analogue patches from say a moog voyger that you cannot create in Zebra? I know there is loads the other way round.

[Urs]

Also after not having any experience in Analogue synthesis myself in your opinion is there any analogue patches from say a moog voyger that you cannot create in Zebra? I know there is loads the other way round.

Howard says that the Minimoog sound is the one thing he can't accomplish in Zebra (unlike the Moog Little Phatty for instance). We're working on it though. At some point we'll also get that one nailed.

[hakey]

Howard says that the Minimoog sound is the one thing he can't accomplish in Zebra (unlike the Moog Little Phatty for instance). We're working on it though. At some point we'll also get that one nailed.

You really think you can do it? I must say that I find the confidence inspiring. If you really think that you can absolutely *nail* that Moog sound, well forget preset management as far as I'm concerned. Do you think that you can improve on the best efforts of the various dedicated moog emulations? I don't mean that to sound sarcastic, it's a straight question. I mean there's aspects to both the Minimonsta and Arturia's Moog stuff that I really like, but I'm not sure that either absolutely captures all of the magic that I associate with vintage Moog gear (I think Howard also mentioned the Moog Modular too?).

[Urs]

(I think Howard also mentioned the Moog Modular too?).

Yes, he did.

Well, I can't say when and I can't say how close this will be. Considering that UAD need a whole UAD1 card to do just the filter in what is believed to be a quite good model, then I guess it might take some time and a lot of cpu.

And I don't think it's just the filter or the sound per se. It's also little details like constant rate portamento where Zebra does constant time.

Time will tell.

Urs

(can't wait till UAD has the Moog filter ready for UAD-2... wanna compare it to my Little Phatty )

[pdxindy]

The benefit of tagging is that one can (subjectively) place a preset into many categories and that the user can easily do this without having to manually move presets around the directory.

That is a drawback of tagging too... you end up previewing the same preset you already decided against

[adamszabo]

Can someone post some moog samples that "cannot be recreated" I would love to have a go

[hakey]

The benefit of tagging is that one can (subjectively) place a preset into many categories and that the user can easily do this without having to manually move presets around the directory.

That is a drawback of tagging too... you end up previewing the same preset you already decided against

I don't follow you there? That's not how I see it working at all.

I don't see why in principle there could not be a tagging function *in addition to* the preset directory as it stands. The tagging browser could be hidden until a user wanted to access it and if they didn't, then the view of the preset directory could essentially remain as it is now, presets could still be selected as they are now. So if you really hate tagging, don't worry, you wouldn't be forced to use it.

With a few hundred presets the present system isn't too difficult to use, but what happens when there are a few thousand (I'm hoping that one day there will be thousands of really good patches), when you've got say 1000 basses to search through, the system as is becomes distinctly unwieldy.

All I want is to be able to add my own tags (i.e. not from a predefined list - so ones that I've thought up, that mean something to me) to patches as I browse them, so that in later sessions I could search the database for all patches that I've appended the tags say, 'metallic', 'punchy', 'dubby' (NB, pdxindy, this does not give me 3 lists with some patches repeated in more than one list - I just get one list of patches that have been tagged with all 3 tags - so no danger of previewing the same patch twice).

Perhaps some means of searching the new preset description could do this? If it's not tagging per se, then maybe some other form of meta searching could do the job?

[hakey]

Can someone post some moog samples that "cannot be recreated" I would love to have a go

On GForce's website here there's an A/B comparison between their Minimonsta and the Minimoog it was modelled upon (it's the third audio demo down 'Minimonsta versus Minimoog'). I think that most people would agree that the two are very close, but, though they don't say which is which, I know which, in each of the two examples, I prefer. To my ears of the resonant sweep sounds one is a little bit more snorty, more 'electric', and of the bass sounds one is just meatier than the other*.

I have a listen see what you think.



*I prefer the first example in each case - I'd be delighted if I've got it 'wrong' and those turn out to be the Minimonsta.

[Polybius]

Since i never heard a real MiniMoog, or any other Moog in real life, i'm pretty satisfied with the VA qualities of Zebra, especially the XMF filter, which i recently delved deeper into. I created a basic saw patch, which to me personally is the "perfect sound" i'm looking for in a synth. To me, this is what "analog" is all about, i find it a bliss to play with this on a keyboard:

http://users.telenet.be/bogaard/temp/Singleton.h2p

Aftertouch controls the filter.

[pdxindy]

With a few hundred presets the present system isn't too difficult to use, but what happens when there are a few thousand (I'm hoping that one day there will be thousands of really good patches), when you've got say 1000 basses to search through, the system as is becomes distinctly unwieldy.

All I want is to be able to add my own tags (i.e. not from a predefined list - so ones that I've thought up, that mean something to me) to patches as I browse them, so that in later sessions I could search the database for all patches that I've appended the tags say, 'metallic', 'punchy', 'dubby' (NB, pdxindy, this does not give me 3 lists with some patches repeated in more than one list - I just get one list of patches that have been tagged with all 3 tags - so no danger of previewing the same patch twice).

All you have to do is put your basses into sub directories. You can already do exactly what you are talking about.

Perhaps in the future Urs will come up with a tagging system I like, but the NI one is annoying.

If you have a tagging system with user generated tags, then if you purchase on new bank from say Howard, or download some cool presets from some user, they might all have different labels and you would need to redo each one to fit your choices...

[hakey]

All you have to do is put your basses into sub directories. You can already do exactly what you are talking about.

No I can't. The advantage with tagging (sorry to repeat myself) is that a patch can simultaneously be assigned many different tags - for example a patch can be labelled as 'lead' and 'bass', 'analog', 'greasy', whatever at the same time. To achieve the same effect in directories and sub directories I would have to manually copy that one patch in to lead>analog and lead>greasy, bass>analog and bass>greasy - 4 different sub directories. Creating sub directories in this way, fast becomes extremely unwieldy, when you've got several nested sub directories open on screen it gets pretty messy. And manually sorting and making copies of patches seems to me much more work than simply appending tags to patches as and when I see fit.

Also, say I want to look for patches with the attributes 'analog', 'fat', 'funk', to find all patches that match that criteria would be a very laborious task if I had to manually search through various directories and nested sub directories.

If you have a tagging system with user generated tags, then if you purchase on new bank from say Howard, or download some cool presets from some user, they might all have different labels and you would need to redo each one to fit your choices

No I wouldn't - I could just ignore those tags and make up my own. It's not a problem to me. And if the tag browser is normally hidden and the usual preset browser stays more or less the same, there's no problem for you either is there? Look, I can see that Urs may have his own objections, he may feel that it would be inelegant, too much hard work, or he may have a better system - fair enough, it's his baby and I'm sure that what ever he decides it'll be usable, but I can't understand pdxindy why you're so determined to find fault with an idea that, as I have proposed it, would not affect your way of using Zebra at all.

I'm not saying that this is the perfect, or only answer, but I think even Urs has kind of admitted that preset management is an area that can be improved and some kind of user definable tagging/labelling/meta-search function is, for me, one way of doing this.

[hakey]

Since i never heard a real MiniMoog, or any other Moog in real life, i'm pretty satisfied with the VA qualities of Zebra

Yeah so am I, but - and I admit that there could well be a degree of wrong-headedness about this - I still want the ultimate digital analog emu that absolutely captures all that's great about classic vintage analog gear - without it's considerable disadvantages.