Improvements!

[loquat]

I was wondering about the Midilearn function in ACE. The other day I was playing around with an old Oxygen8 and I tried to use Midilearn to map ALL of the knobs to everything in ACE using different Midi Channels. One for each module. Unfortunately I didn't get very far. Can ACE recognize different MIDI channels or is one CC# the same regardless what channel it arrives on? It could be my Live acting weird too, but I'm wondering. It would be so much fun to be able to tweak everything (well except for the patch cables) view my little Oxygen8.

[Urs]

I was wondering about the Midilearn function in ACE.

Sorry, listening to multiple MIDI channels is on the todo list

But you *can* MIDIfy the patch cables... it's a bit of a hack but it's explained in some thread in this forum somewhere

[loquat]

Thanks for the quick reply and for having multiple MIDI channels on the todo list. ACE is a ton of fun already. With even more real-time tweakability I doubt I'd even get out of the house.

[runray]

Here's a quickie.

With all the OSC waveforms we have in the patchlib (and many more being added by PietW.) it'd be nice to be able to copy and paste a single wave into another slot.

For example:
1. Osc 1, wave 4 -> copy
2. Osc 2, wave 1 -> paste
3. Osc 1, wave 16 -> copy
4. Osc 2, wave 16 -> paste
5. Osc 2, interpolate waves 1 to 16.
6. osc 2, save new osc preset

Or even easier:
1. Osc 1, drag wave 4 into slot 1
2. Osc 1, clear slots 2-15
3. Osc 1, interpolate waves 1 to 16.
4. osc 2, save new osc preset.

I dream about it!
+ 1 000 000 !!!

[AL321]

A few suggestions for Zebra then.

First, i know this is already planned for Zebra, but i'll mention it first, because it's the one i'm looking forward to most. The osc grid with grid snapping nodes. This will be great for experimentation, because we can easily go back to the previous wave, if we know we only shifted a certain node two notches, or whatever. And if we can choose different snap resolutions, like with MSEGs, then it would be awesome to be able to snap the osc nodes to harmonics.
And hopefully the MSEG snap bypass (shift-move) is still there.

Next, i would like to be able to bypass osc fx, without having remove them. Sometimes when i'm happy with a sound, i wonder what it would sound like without the osc fx, but i know that if i remove it, i'll come back hours later and forget which osc had which fx. So a little bypass button would be great. Or even alt-click, like the modules have.

Also it would be nice if we could right-click an MSEG, and get a list of all it's destinations. Many times, i go to work with a new MSEG, and i see the little time bar moving across it, meaning the MSEG is already routed to something. I then have to go searching through Zebra to see if the assignment is actually being used.
In all honesty though, this is a small issue to me. I know Zebra is a deep synth, so things like this happen.
Also, i would like to see more MSEGs. Often, when i'm working on a delicate sound, i like to copy an MSEG to another MSEG slot, in case i decide later that the new MSEG just isn't sounding right in another part of the song. Then i just copy the original MSEG back. The problem with this though, is i often only have 2 MSEGS to build my patch with, because the other 2 are being used as backup. Yeah i know i can save MSEG presets, but that can get messy and confusing, if you cant actually see the MSEG pattern. And you're also having to mix your saved MSEGs with the temporary ones.
So 8 MSEGs would be nice.

And +1 to the posts above me for copying single osc slots to other oscillators. The more control we have in that section, the better, i think.

[Breeze]

I got deeper into Zebra recently and I've come to appreciate what a wonderfully complex and flexible beast it is. I would personally opt for a complete moratorium on new features and just do a debug and expansion of existing features with an emphasis on clarity and reliability. Here are some observations:

1. Complete Documentation: I think this has been mentioned enough times. There's still many things that have to be deduced by experimentation, or searches on this formum.

2. MSEG: under some circumstances there seems to be some instabilities with these (inaccurate behavior).

3. ModMixer: while this can be done in the Matrix, subtraction of one mod source by another with a constant would be useful here.

4. Visibility: It would nice for precision work if you could go to a wider page for closer editing of Osc Wave, MSEGs, and Arpeggiator Modulation, like the Mapper in ACE.

5. Arpeggiator: In one of my patches, I sometimes get a double time sequence from an ArpMod in the latter part of the 16 steps that simply shouldn't be possible; could it be part of the copy protection? Otherwise it's either a bug or I'm doing something I'm not aware of.

6. Osc Detune: This isn't currently explained in the manual: when using Unison modes does Detune bias the randomness of the pitch up or down based on the Detune setting, or does it detune around the target range? Perhaps a second level to the Detune mode could be introduced that opens the gui control like a butterfly to indicate variation within the target range.

As for AL321's suggestions about MSEG mod sources , which is in fact a very good idea (the context-sensitive info concept could be easily expanded to all other modules), it comes down to a philosophy of design and division of labor. You make a machine that makes things, you have users that use the things the machine makes, and then you have those who learn to use the machine to make those things. If Urs has the time, energy and inclination to bridge the gap between users and makers, great. But personally I'd rather Urs concentrate on making the machine do everything it does properly and to find ways of improving it.

Fun fun fun! Thanks Urs.

[filulilu]

Tune and Microtune

I realized that the Tune or Transpose menu in Zebra and ACE moves the pitch up or down in steps of the existing scale and not in actual semitones. Of course if one uses an equal tempered scale it is the same. If one uses a scale with more than twelve degrees though and especially if it is not equal tempered this menu can be confusing and insufficient. For example the scale I mostly use has 35 degrees so the +24 transposition gives me something like a minor 6th. I guess that it is very easy to add the transposition number to the midi key number before the microtuning modification but I don't know whether there are other reasons it is done this way. On the other hand the fine tuning knob is not affected by the microtonal scale and always works in the range of plus or minus a semitone.

About the .tun files
I use a tuning program for the mac called LMSO (http://www.nonoctave.com/) whitch is extremely flexible and can apply alternative tunings for almost all softsynths. The .tun files it produces have this header:

; VAZ tuning map file
; Created by Li'l Miss' Scale Oven -- http://www.nonoctave.com/tuning/LilMissScaleOven/
[Tuning]

and when I load them on u-he synths they crash. Other synths work fine. When I substitute the header with this one:

; AnaMark section
[Exact Tuning]

everything works ok. It is not a serious problem, just an inconvenience.

[Perimeter Sound]

This may have been suggested before, in which case just ignore it if it's in the works.

I was using (or trying to at least ha-ha) Ableton at a friend's place the other night, and for fx plug-ins, it shows a little X/Y pad which is easy to quickly assign any 2 parameters to (ie = just select them from a drop down menu, for instance, cutoff & resonance).

So my 'feature request' for Zebra 2.75 or 3.0, or whichever version with new features is next, is for something simple and similar. After seeing how simple it is in Abelton, the X/Y pads in Zebra (or any synth where they are not easily assigned, and by easily I mean within 30-60 seconds and a couple of clicks), are really just kind of annoying or at best a tease, like yeah, it's kind of a feature, if you have an extra 30-60 minutes to spend filling in all the blanks. (Don't get me wrong, having 4 of them is pretty darn cool when they are all set up, I'm just talking about the times when there's a preset that doesn't have them set up, or if I am making one from scratch.)

Perhaps even better could be a small *library* of even just 10-20 pre-made X/Y set ups (for various uses/modules/combos) that could be chosen on the Performance page right next to or under, the corresponding X/Y pads. Of course in most cases people would want to -customize- them and do some range limiting etc. But it seems like a no-brainer for a quick start, or just to have something instantly available for the non-programmers.

After that's dealt with, I'll bug you about *linking* all 4 X/Y pads, so they can all be altered at once via one control ha-ha.

[xh3rv]

(or any synth where they are not easily assigned, and by easily I mean within 30-60 seconds and a couple of clicks)

I guess I'm a little curious here - I think it takes time to fine-tune an xy-mapping, but I think the trickiest thing is just figuring out what will make sense to map. I don't find actually assigning the mapping very time-consuming.

You can right-click a knob and get a dialog which will set it up as an XY target. Assigning parameters via the menu in the XY tab is a bit slow, just a consequence of deep menus with lots of choices, I think right-clicking is much quicker 80% of the time.

Within the XY-configuration tab, you can double-click a bar to get the arrows to cycle through min/max, max/min, and zero-movement. This is a pretty easy way to get a full-range sweep.

For fine-tuning, if you set all the targets of a particular xy-knob to zero by double-clicking the bar, twist the knob to min or max, you can then move the arrows to figure out exactly where you thing the modulation range should end. I think this is quite a bit faster, easier, and more accurate than any other way.

Also, in Ableton it's pretty quick to set up an instrument rack with Zebra where the XYs are mapped to the 8 rack macro knobs - this rack can be saved to the file browser and doesn't have to be recreated, just drag that rather than the hard link to Zebra into a project. The drawback here is not being able to see the text description of the XY mappings.

I guess my request would be, some way of matching XY-mappings and velocity, AT, MW/PW etc. - I'd love to be able to configure modulations in the XYs and have those controls modulate the XY pucks. I can see this getting complicated, but maybe preferable to the complication of a patch where e.g. velocity alters filter cutoff, and an XY alters filter cutoff. Just an idea /shrug.

I'm not a big fan of the way e.g. Alchemy handles it's 'snapshots', I think it's just building complexity in a way that's impressive at the end but not really usable - I'd rather just tweak or program the controls individually. That's entirely my opinion though, and I can see how it might make sense with a different workflow. Just not mine [e] Well, maybe a desire to control Alchemy and Zebra the same way motivates that a bit too.

[mcnoone]

This may have been suggested before, in which case just ignore it if it's in the works.

You could set up presets with certain modules included then set their XY settings up, and use it as an init patch.
Basically, make many different templates with the xy pads already mapped out.
might help a little.

After that's dealt with, I'll bug you about *linking* all 4 X/Y pads, so they can all be altered at once via one control ha-ha.

You can get close to that with your daws automation.
or just cram as many modulations you can into one XY pad, an all in one XY pad if you will.

@xh3rv: You might like tweaking without using xy's but using the xy pads, is a faster way to find a potential sound within a given preset. If you find something great, then it's possible to reverse engineer it looking at the xy settings to determine whats changed.
They actually serve 3 different purposes.
1. They can be used in automation to greater effect.
2. They can be quickly moved around for slight changes to make a sound fit into a mix better.
3. They can create a whole new preset in a matter of seconds. Occasionally creating a better (more desired sound) than the original patch.
If desired you can reverse engineer them too.

[xh3rv]

@xh3rv: You might like tweaking without using xy's but using the xy pads,

I just mean, if you've seen Alchemy's 'snapshot' morphing on the lower right of it's UI, which is a way to have a snapshot of 8 independent controls in one position, then as you move around the morphing pad, it interpolates until you get to the next snapshot. So it's not XY-mapping, it's like an xy-mapping of xy-mappings. It's got recursive complexity going on, and I just can't find it useful. It's sort of spectacular when browsing through patches but not fundamentally usable, is the very firm impression I get from it.

XYs in general I like though. Not always essential, but very useful. And I like Alchemy, I don't mean to rag on it but someone brought it up

[rexlapin]

Actually I use that function in Alchemy to generate new snapshots
from two (or four) already existing ones. I sometimes get a new
semi-random set of possibilities I would not have thought about
otherwise. I have suggested have a snapshot bank with save and
load for each of the eight slots as this would allow for more
ability to experiment with this without having to give up slots
which I want to keep. It can also be fun (depending on what you
have in the various slots) to map it to a physical XY controller
and do the morphing in real time while playing, or while Alchemy
is being driven by a sequencer (I use Numerology a lot for this
and come to think of it I think I could probably get it to modulate
the snapshot slot positions...I'll have to try that ). Actually,
one of the challenges I've had in designing presets for Alchemy is
not knowing how the end user is going to be interacting with the
program. Using a keyboard gives a different response than does a
drum pad (or a breath controller, or an XY pad etc.) and it hard to
know if what I intended for a patch will actually be heard that way
in the end. All a part of the fun, I guess! I appreciate your point
of view by the way and this ended up being longer than I expected
but I do think that it is an interesting topic. Now if I could just
find a physical controller with four XY pads!
Cheers,
Scott
Dangerous Bear Underground

[pd]

After that's dealt with, I'll bug you about *linking* all 4 X/Y pads, so they can all be altered at once via one control ha-ha.

I think it would be useful if the first X/Y pad could control the other three. I would even suggest this modulation matrix be separate from Zebra's main modulation grid so that you can save and load presets for how the first X/Y pad controls the others. Of course the default INIT preset would be to do nothing so that all existing patches continue to work as they currently do.

I guess you have to deal with the problem where the other X/Y pads are also being manipulated by MIDI at the same time. Not sure what the correct behavior would be for that.

It probably makes more sense to just build a special purpose wrapper to handle all of this so that Zebra doesn't need to change. The wrapper doesn't even need to be specific to Zebra -- just one X/Y pad that can modulate several X/Y pads through a modulation grid similar to the way Zebra handles X/Y pad modulation.

Maybe this wrapper already exists. It would be cool.

[blurk]

Within the XY-configuration tab, you can double-click a bar to get the arrows to cycle through min/max, max/min, and zero-movement.

Holy crap! You learn something new every day.

At least, I do with Zebra. There's always another subtle feature I've never encountered. As well as the blindingly obvious features that I've never understood. And yet, I'm still kept more than busy with the subset of features I do understand.

[mcnoone]

@xh3rv: You might like tweaking without using xy's but using the xy pads,

XYs in general I like though.

Oh...okay understood.
Thank you also for the Zebra Vanilla drum/perc presets also.
I can see they took a lot of work, and using the XY pads is a good extra feature of them. Good stuff. Thanks.