u-he

pdxindy · Post by **pdxindy** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 2:36 am

Rat 41 wrote:
Urs wrote:Sorry for resurrecting an old thread, but would anybody check out the "renderer" options on the "more Osc" tabs of this otherwise top-secret build:

http://www.u-he.com/Zebra232MacInstall.zip
http://www.u-he.com/Zebra232Winstaller.zip

Can you hear/feel/see any difference?
Yes, and it sounds much better!

Out of interest, what's the difference between render mode 1 and 2?

my guess on one difference is that 2 has some extra over-sampling cause it uses more cpu...

mcnoone · Post by **mcnoone** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 4:43 am

I for one would not welcome oversampling, unless there was an option to turn it off. Why?
Memory usage increase?
Wouldn't it effect older presets tone?
Would it help the sound quality enouph to justify it's implementation?
An on/off switch would be useful for it.

ZenPunkHippy · Post by **ZenPunkHippy** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 4:50 am

There is a selector for each oscillator on the Osc More pages. Render settings are 0 (off), 1 - more, 2 - MORE!

I wasn't sure I could hear a difference after a quick test ... but my hearing aint what it used to be. In the EQ, there was definitely a huge difference in the high frequencies.

Then, I was distracted by Zebrify

That is freakin' awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!11!!!!!!!!1!!!

Peace,
Andy.

red37 · Post by **red37** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 7:08 am

Hi Urs

I have this grey bar with the word 'Renderer' underneath.....but i have no options selectable there. What am i supposed to see or where?

Thanks

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 9:46 am

Just a quick note:

I've planned to leave the renderer in there as it is (but with more meaningful names). As you got right already, 0 is the default mode that you've always had in Zebra, where oscillator harmonics in the highest octave get attenuated. Setting 1 takes this attenuation away and setting 2 adds oversampling to that.

I recommend using these modes with caution though. The oversampling in 2 will naturally cripple the bass department to 512 harmonics, which may cause artifacts ("Gibbs effect") in subbasses below 50 Hz. The overall brightness will increase aliasing artifacts from follow up processes such as strongly driven XMF filters.

So I can mostly recommend option 2 for lead sounds and especially for Hardsync. I'd recommend option 1 for bass sounds and whenever you miss "that bite".

Urs

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 9:49 am

red37 wrote:I have this grey bar with the word 'Renderer' underneath.....but i have no options selectable there. What am i supposed to see or where?

You may have installed the plugs into the wrong Vstplugins directory. That is, what you see are still the old .dlls but with the latest user interface. Just isntall again and make sure you choose the right Vstplugins directory in the first step.

Cheers,

Urs

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 9:56 am

MCnoone wrote:An on/off switch would be useful for it.

The Renderer parameter is teh on/off switch. The old style 0-setting will be on by default, so you won't hear any difference in old presets.

#---

To prevent the question "Can we have this on by default with all presets?", there's a clear "no". But it's not that clear because I'm working on a way to let you add an "on-load script". This would be an optional preset that's loaded after each time you load a normal preset. A script like that could be used for instance to switch the Osc Renderer for each preset. It could also be used to turn off certain effects. One major goodie would be a script that lets one automatically map i.e. BreathControl to anything that's controlled by ModWheel etc.

Later (gotta implement that missing knob in Z'fy),

Urs

tetsuneko · Post by **tetsuneko** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 10:04 am

Man oh man I sure was in need of sleep last night.. Totally missed zebrify :p

Thank you Urs! You make it hard for me to get any work done today

Cheers

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 10:09 am

Hehe, another thing... there will be some more major changes before this gets released. Zebrify is technically still in alpha state... (LFOs not syncing properly, no auto-gate yet)

I also think that the user interface will get a major overhaul...

lazerkind · Post by **lazerkind** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 10:30 am

Urs wrote: I recommend using these modes with caution though. The oversampling in 2 will naturally cripple the bass department to 512 harmonics, which may cause artifacts ("Gibbs effect") in subbasses below 50 Hz.

Hmm, This does not really make sense in my head.
The gibbs effect is that "ringing" stuff on sharp wave form edges (example the edges of a square wave) right?

If I oversample a signal then I would expect the ringing to be less?
And the ringing, isn't that mostly high harmonics? Sow how can those affect the bass department?

Or will I be pointed to DSP course 101 now?

//L

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 11:16 am

lazerkind wrote:Or will I be pointed to DSP course 101 now?

Yes.

Oversampling (2x) means: Run things an octave lower for twice as long. Then kill the upper octave and ditch every other sample. In other words a wavetable that's 2048 samples long will appear like one that's only 1024 samples long, but the interpolator becomes better. Thus the effective maximum number of harmonics within that wavetable isn't 1024 but 512.

Take 500 harmonics at 20Hz. That means a sudden "end of harmonics" at 10kHz. So the Gibbs ringing will be beeping around at 10kHz, which is audible. It would be at inaudible 20kHz if we had 1000 harmonics.

You see, the "jagged" edges that you see with any *proper* sawtooth/squarewave on softsynth or sampled analogue oscillator, are ringing at a frequency close to Nyquist (half the sample rate) and thus they are not audible. But if you cut the spectrum at a certain point, the ringing transposes down, making it audible.

My favourite test for a digital synthesizer thus always is playing a sawtooth with a very low note. When it rings, I drag the binary to the trash immediately. Well almost. I've resurrected one for a simple demonstration:

[removed upon request of the developer - will add another demo if you really need it] with ugly high chirp

Zebra normal - no chirp

Zebra oversampled - ugly chirp

Actually, there might even be a bug in the renderer... the chirp in sample 3 sounds more like a constant highfreq buzz.

Cheers,

Urs

Howard · Post by **Howard** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 12:23 pm

Urs wrote:Actually, there might even be a bug in the renderer... the chirp in sample 3 sounds more like a constant highfreq buzz.

Indeed it does!

fgimian · Post by **fgimian** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 12:33 pm

Love the new modes, but please note they are not available in the Dark Horse skin which is my favorite skin

Urs, I beg you, please consider adding the distortion algorithm from the Vintage2 filter (and some similar to this) to the shaper unit, ppllleeeassssee

Also, it would be awesome if you could remove the ringing from the XMF filters at high cutoffs, is that hard to do? These are my 2 wishes for Zebra2!

PaulSC · Post by **PaulSC** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 2:10 pm

Urs wrote:Hehe, another thing... there will be some more major changes before this gets released. Zebrify is technically still in alpha state... (LFOs not syncing properly, no auto-gate yet)

I also think that the user interface will get a major overhaul...

The Zebra interface? (fingers crossed)
Or do you mean the Zebrify interface?

thelizard · Post by **thelizard** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 6:29 pm

this zebrify is extremely cool. I love how you post wonderful goodies like this in completely unrelated threads hahah. some days it's like finding hidden treasure.

u-he

KVR Audio

oscillator brightness