What's your favorite thing about Zebra?

[FarleyCZ]

Just the whole thing. Amazing piece of software.

[Igro]

The developer.

+1
I'm amazed the amount of quality stuff a 1-person team can do.

They make electronic music with the same high quality. Love them.

[Gino Cortesi]

The sound quality of the Comb Filters and the patches that use them is delightful.

Zebrify is a cool surprise addition, I find myself exploring it more and more.

Overall, it's the endless possibilities of Zebra that keep me hooked.

Best regards,

Gino

[pdxindy]

LP12 filter type...

[FarleyCZ]

The sound quality of the Comb Filters and the patches that use them is delightful.

True, uncoparable to Blue's comb filter, where you can't predict what you end up with.

[Sendy]

For me it was the oscillator section in general that pulled me in. I've always wondered things like "what would happen if you took a triangle wave and made it narrower and narrower until it became a pulse?", "what would a square wave look like if all it's odd harmonics were shifted to be even?" and "what if you do PWM with a pulse train instead of one pulse?". The user drawable morphing wavetable combined with the osc FX allows me to do all this and more.

Of course, everything else about Zebra is amazing, especially the sound quality and GUI, but it's unique oscillator section is basically what I was hoping someone would make for me, so that's what got me interested in buying it.

I can't look at synths with static unchangable waveforms now.

[FarleyCZ]

True, that waveform section is DELICIOUS! I love that you can do some random mess in that section, filter it somehow and you get some beautiful "never_heard_of" sound. Or you can experiment and shape sound harmonic by harmonic into anything you want. ...that possibilites are endless.

[arbee]

I love the flexibility and the sound quality. I almost always feel like I don't need any other SOFTsynth.

but really, I just love this software synthesizer.

[mcnoone]

Thanks for all the replies.
I like Zebra as a whole balanced unit, as others have stated also, but if I had to choose one thing, I would say the oscillator spectra fx (osc fx).
There is simply a wider variety of timbres that can be produced from only 1 oscillator with using them, and in combination with wave forms, the sonic possibilities become almost endless, using just one oscillator.

[AL321]

When i first made a wobble bass in Zebra CM, i heard that lush expressive filter, and realised none of my synths could sound like that.
I knew i just had to buy it.

I bought it for it's filter, and never realised i was buying my ultimate synth. Every new thing i learned was giving me a wtf moment. it's just perfect in so many ways. Even down to the way the mouse wheel scrolls controls in nice rounded values (2,4, etc).

The highlights for me, definitely the filters, oscillator wave morphing, and the comb filters. That comb filter really blew me away.
And obviously the osc fx, but i do feel like i'm working in the dark a little with those. I wish we had some kind of visual feedback, so we knew what was going on. But maybe it's good for me to have that one little random element in my sound design.

[Donner]

Oh dear, that's a tough question, there are so many loveable things...

The matrix is excellent, shows me immediately what goes on.

I always have had the feeling that this is a musicians instrument, where I can control almost anything and map it to my keyboard/knobs/wheels and so Zebra takes on an organic/acoustic quality (even though the sounds I'm using are strictly electronic).

[Sendy]

And obviously the osc fx, but i do feel like i'm working in the dark a little with those. I wish we had some kind of visual feedback, so we knew what was going on. But maybe it's good for me to have that one little random element in my sound design.

Do you run a sonogram/spectrograph when sound designing? I do this a lot lately and find it really helped with the Osc FX and some other sound design tasks.

For example looking at this I worked out that the Choplift effect works a bit like a simple noise reduction filter, in that it silences harmonics which are under a certain volume threashold, so as you sweep the parameter you are left with increasingly the most dominant spectral components.

[FarleyCZ]

Another thing: Need a bit more analog waveform? Let's draw it! I love that synth it has no bounders. Honestly which hw many synths (except Reaktor I guess?) you can work on physical modeling stuff and few seconds later doing some crazy analog hoovers? There is only one of them. Zebra! An that gives you even bigger wow if you realize it all happen in superior qualitty. URS is just dsp god.

I demoed Alchemy recently thinking about if Zebra wasn't mistake. Alchemy has that great sample manipulation thing which I only miss in Zebra. I opened Alchemy ... look a while into it ... turn 3 knobs ... and than return back to Zebra in seconds. I can't orient in any other complex synth sice Zebra, becouse it's soo easy to use even with so much possibilites. Sounds I get from Zebra in minutes would be hours in Alchemy or Blue. Mostly becouse of that genial matrix. Amazing.

[AL321]

Do you run a sonogram/spectrograph when sound designing? I do this a lot lately and find it really helped with the Osc FX and some other sound design tasks.

For example looking at this I worked out that the Choplift effect works a bit like a simple noise reduction filter, in that it silences harmonics which are under a certain volume threashold, so as you sweep the parameter you are left with increasingly the most dominant spectral components.

No, but i remember you talking about this in another post, and i'm definitely gonna try it. Is it a spectrograph or oscilliscope? Blue Cat analyzer is the only analysis tool i use at the moment, but hopefully FL Studio will have something that shows that. If not i'll have a look at some freeware.
Thanks for reminding me about that. And thanks for the info on choplift. Yeah i kind of knew some of the obvious ones, like how expander and brilliance are expanding limits and sharpening wave edges, but most of the time i'm just playing it by ear.
I think the manual should have some pictures, showing the results of each effect on a saw and square wave. That'd help a lot.

I demoed Alchemy recently thinking about if Zebra wasn't mistake. Alchemy has that great sample manipulation thing which I only miss in Zebra. I opened Alchemy ... look a while into it ... turn 3 knobs ... and than return back to Zebra in seconds.

I love Alchemy, for pads and sample based sounds, but i really don't enjoy it's sound as a synth. I don't know if it's the oscillators or the filters causing it, but for some reason the Alchemy filters just sound pasted on. It's as if i'm using an external filter on top of a synth. The sound just does nothing for me.
But with Zebra, the filter gels with the sound nicely and sounds like part of the synth. Maybe i should try putting Alchemy's oscillators through Zebrify, and see if it's the filters or oscs i don't like.

[Breeze]

The sound. Bottom line. After all the rhetoric, that's want counts the most.