U-he. Comments, suggestions, praise...

[pheeleep]

Hello.

Last night I demo'ed a couple of the u-he plugins. I had a lot of fun! Now I understand what all of the fuss is about regarding Zebra. The first time I tried the demo a while ago, I didn't understand much about synthesizers and it was a bit overwhelming. I thought the presets were nice but not particularly outstanding. I decided that it wouldn't be the right synth for me. Since then I understand synthesizers much better and have messed around with many of them and also have been using ZebraCM for a few months (Love it). Now that I understand how synthesizers work and the features that I like having at my disposal, I can truely appreciate the full featured Zebra and I have to say that I am impressed. It's pretty much all there.. There are certain things I don't know about it yet because I have to go over the manual (can we load our own single cycle waveforms in the OSC, for example)

Great filter too!

1) Suggestion: When installing the Zebra demo I saw that several new plugins were installed, including one named "Zebrify". I checked it out and oh my god. Seriously, when I end up buying Zebra it will be just as much to get Zebrify as to get Zebra. The Zebra product description page does not indicate that Zebrify and Zebralette are included with Zebra. On the screenshots page, Zebralette is mentioned with a short description, but there is no mention of Zebrify, I would add this info if I were you, Urs. Something like "the effects section of Zebra is also included as a separate plugin". I notice that there is a screenshot of all three plugins on the Zebra product page but for someone not familiar with Zebra it's not clear that these are 3 different plugins. Anyway, in my opinion Zebrify is a strong selling point to get Zebra. It may entice more people to try out the demos if they know that a multi effects processor is also included in the package.


2) Question: I didn't have a minute to try out Filterscape last night. I was too busy having fun with Zebra and Zebrify. Are the filters the same in Filterscape as in Zebrify? What are major differences between the two? What can Fitlterscape do that Zebrify can't do? I will check out the demo when I can but it might be a few days so I'm just curious to get some feedback in the meantime. I already own many excellent filters (Volcano2, Quadfrohmage, Camelspace, MFilter) so I am a little reluctant to even consider getting one more dedicated filter. If I did it would be way down the line anyway.. But I am interested nonetheless in what users have to say..

3. Question: Do u-he products go on sale sometimes? Do we get a discount on other products once we own one or more of your plugins? Just curious.

Thanks for the great plugins. I will become a customer at some point (Zebra2.5!). Not sure when... Hopefully by Christmas. I also love that I can make the Zebra GUI bigger by the way. Ace was fun demo'ing as well but the Zebra features make me salivate more..

Congrats on making excellent tools.

One little comment that I know is going to sound a little cheezy, but in ZebraCM I can see the LFO at work as there is a graphical representation of the LFO moving. Any chance of adding a mini graph like this in the Zebra LFO's? When you have got many LFO's going at the same time, it makes it easy to visually see which ones are which, since they are usually moving at different speeds with different amplitude setting, etc.. maybe a button on the LFO to show or hide this little graphical representation..

[Urs]

Guilty on all accounts & thank you very much! &

Regarding Zebrify, I'm a bit stunned myself that I havn't mentioned it much. I think it was hyped quite a bit during the days before release about a year ago, so I simply forgot to keep up any further info.

As "u-he" is moving to become a "real" company with not just "me" on this side of the electronic fence, we're also moving to more condensed and to-the-point information on the website. At the same time we strive for a much, much more comprehensive set of background information and tutorials within the "social network". There'll be videos and all, and I think they'll be eye opening. Zebrify can be an amazing tool for vocals for instance, if used so and so.

Filterscape is a dream plugin in many ways. Although I must admit that some of its features are a little outdated (no gui resize yet, rudimentary MIDI implementation, only "clean" filters), it has been a *very* stable product that simply hasn't asked for many updates yet. It isn't for everyone, but if you ever "click" with the Snapshot EQ it may become indispensible. What Zebra is for film music, Filterscape has been for Hip Hop, R&B and what not. Generally anyone who wants to "unstatic" his beats may find a good solution in Filterscape. Think modulated EQ rather than filter. It can't compete with Volcano on filter sound, and it can't compete with UAD on EQ sound. But neither of these do what Filterscape does on the dynamic modulation side (for which a clean sound is preferrable IMHO)

Regarding the visual feedback for modulations... I'm still reluctant to do that in Zebra. You could waste a whole core of your i7 just redrawing your gui with all the moving bling. I've always had it in the back of my mind though and eventually it'll happen. The scope in ACE is one step in that direction, and the possibility to tap into any modulation source or any modulation target is another step on the way. However, some steps require *weeks* of preparation, hence I'm reluctant. I hope I'll have more time for these things some time next year.

Urs

[pheeleep]

Thanks for all the info. I can't wait to finish demo'ing your stuff.

Do you have sales/group buys sometimes?

Thanks again

[Urs]

Oh... regarding sales... I'm sorry, no.

There's two ways of handling this:

1. customer aquisition model

One can do sales and promos and group buys and what not to create as many customers as possible. This however pisses existing customers off who have bought things for the full price. They might not buy again.

Example: My phone/dsl contract with Telekom costs 69€ or so a month. Every now and then they offer a free mobile phone or 10€ less to new customers who sign for new contracts. When I ask them if I could have a free phone too, they say that I'm already a customer and I can't get it.

2. existing customer centric model

One always puts existing customers and early adopters first. Thus anyone who buys a license at any point will always have an as good or better deal than anyone who jumps in later. Thus prices will never go cheaper later, and even updates will cost less than the difference in price to the new version. This promotes customer loyality even though it may slow down sales a bit. Latter is compensated for because the customer knows that the price is *set*. He doesn't have to fear that a he'll be hit by a price drop next week.

Even though 2. is the opposite of so-called "successful" marketing strategies, I think it's the right one for me. I have minimized impulse buys and thus unsatisfied customers. The less unsatisfied customers, the less grey hair for me - happily at the expense of a few less customers who do not see the benefit of the scheme just yet.

However, anyone who asks not only for sales but also for typical update policies will easily see the advantage

[Urs]

Thanks for all the info. I can't wait to finish demo'ing your stuff.

Do you have sales/group buys sometimes?

heheh, sorry, needed a separate post...

[pheeleep]

Thanks for explaining. No problem at all. I like cheap updates. I'll start saving

[mcnoone]

Thanks for explaining. No problem at all. I like cheap updates. I'll start saving

There is this too.
http://www.u-he.com/zebra/index.php?item=DC

[pheeleep]

Yeah I saw that but I don't own any dinosaur's

Oh, and I found my flashy graphical LFO in Zebra! All I have to do is select the user wave

[xh3rv]

There's a trick that can be done with the MMap module, I forget the exact terms but you'll want it to put it in the mode where it reads from a modulation source. The x position indicates where the modulation is, the height of the bars doesn't mean anything (unless you're using the MMap to as a modulation source somewhere). Not useless but I've only ever used it in experiments ...

[pdxindy]

Thanks for explaining. No problem at all. I like cheap updates. I'll start saving

FYI - I purchased Zebra when the initial V2 was in beta. Since then there have been the equivalent of 2-3 paid upgrades worth of features (from many companies) in free upgrades. And the added features are really useful and not just something to sell an update.

Zebra is by far the best dollar value of any synth I purchased for this reason.

[pheeleep]

Thanks guys!

I've been playing with the Filterscape demo for an hour. It's a lot of fun using it I don't have the budget for it, but it's really nice. Easy to use. Cool features.

Zebra 2.5 is first on the list..

[mcnoone]

Thanks guys!
I've been playing with the Filterscape demo for an hour. It's a lot of fun using it I don't have the budget for it, but it's really nice. Easy to use. Cool features.
Zebra 2.5 is first on the list..

U-he also has a preset design competition every month, where if you win, you can get any U-he software for free, as a prize.
The demos, save and load presets, so maybe you can enter something in that.
Although the competition is currently for ACE, maybe more Zebra ones again sometime.

[Donner]

Regarding the visual feedback for modulations... I'm still reluctant to do that in Zebra. You could waste a whole core of your i7 just redrawing your gui with all the moving bling.
Urs

One solution to that problem would be to make it a feature that you can turn on and off.

[Urs]

Yeah I saw that but I don't own any dinosaur's

Try a cake like this - a good fake with a bit of an effort is always a welcome giggle and thus deserves a crossgrade coupon.

[pheeleep]

Hahaha that's awesome!