Can Someone Answer a few Questions for me regarding a few Parameters on Zebra 2.5 Please!

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HI Guys,

I have just released i dont actually know what these parameters do and i cant find mention of them in the manual so any help will be very much appreciated.

1. The Glide 2 Knob in the Global section.
2. The Voice Drift Button
3. The Mode button (which changes to Time & Rate)

Many thanks,

Mark

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1. The Glide2 parameter which offsets Glide for modules with an even number (Osc2, Osc4, FMO2 etc.). Allows you to do interesting things where the odd numbered sound sources are snappy but the even ones don't have to be. It stemmed from Urs adding duophonic mode in 2.5.

2. From Urs, "Voice drift pretty much boils down to slightly detuned voices. Just like the Virus does, or a well tuned analogue synth." http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 99#3386699

3. Time vs Rate changes how glide works. In Time mode, every note takes the exact same amount of time set by the glide knobs to transition from one to another. In Rate mode the distance of the notes also play a factor. Try this: set the glide knob to about 64. Now listen to hitting C3-C4 vs C3-C#3 in both Time and Rate modes. You should hear quite a difference in how the glide is applied.

Urs has said he plans on using his Australian vacation to update the documentation. No doubt this will be added to the new manual. :)

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bmrzycki - thanks a lot man you have helped me loads.

I am just finishing my Synthesis course and i use Zebra 2 a lot in it and couldn't find an explanation for these parameters anywhere, thanks again.

Mark

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Hi Mark,

bmrzycki illuminated most things, so am just including part of my post that is relevant. And yes, there is a lot of udating to the manual required, you are right, but hopefully Urs will have a little time while in Australia to catch up with that stuff

Voice drift is affiliated with a characteristic of old hardware analog systems. Due to the nature them being electrical, they naturally heated up and this heating caused different things to happen to the resulting sound. It would explain in part why it was so hard to get exact duplication of a sound, even if it appeared as if all of the controllers were in exactly the same position and even on the same machine. One of the most obvious properties though, was that this caused the oscillators to go out of tune, hence the term drift. In order to emulate that "feature", a lot of software developers- no names mentioned, like Urs-did I write that?- gave us that option, which goes under various names such as analog, or in Zebra's case, drift.

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Thanks for your answers guys they are very much appreciated.

Now for another question : What about the SB1, what doe sit do?

thanks

Mark

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The voice drift sounds great if you have Zebra playing on one channel with voice drift on, and another copy of Zebra (with voice drift off, or another synth) both set to the same oscillator type e.g. saw, playing the exact same note, on another channel. You will hear the oscillators from each synth slowly go out of tune / phase. Some very useful effects can be achieved that way.

The SB module is for creating side band frequencies, based on the input signal (I think).

Peace,
Andy.
... space is the place ...

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This thread has some info about the SB modules:

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3737420

Peace,
Andy.
... space is the place ...

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Thanks again Andy,

Seems you are my "goto person" today lol

Mark

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rockmachine wrote:Voice drift is affiliated with a characteristic of old hardware analog systems. Due to the nature them being electrical, they naturally heated up and this heating caused different things to happen to the resulting sound.
The "Drift" parameter in Zebra isn't that kind of heat-dependant pitch change. It's slight pitch change at every note on.

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Hi Howard,
No I knew what you are saying is true; all I was doing was posting the historical context as to why developers included it as a parameter. Otherwise, one could well have the right to ask why something like that would be implemented into a synth.

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Hi guys thanks for your help.

Another question for you if you dont mind :)

On the new Oscillator in 2.5 there are 3 little diagrams below the OSC1 voice selector, they look like Diode diagrams. Can someone tell me what they do, one sounds like an extreme HP Filter but what are they actually doing?

thanks again,

Mark

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in left to right order (I think!!!!!)

invert, sync, reset osc


these also confused me :)

Subz

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zircon covered these excellently in his recent youtube tutorial:

Start around the 2:55 mark.

The first symbol enables and disable phase/pulse witdth. It essentially copies the waveform and inverts it, so the default saw wave will sound like a square wave with the Phase/PW knob set at 50%. Modulating that knob gives you a traditional PWM sound.

The second symbol is oscillator sync. Z2 only supports self-sync and you can get the traditional "tearing" sounds by modulating the Sync knob.

The last knob is Osc reset. With it off, the oscillator is "free-running". With it on, the wave always starts when the key is pressed. This is another useful way to get really digital vs virtual analog sounds.

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