Uhbik-X box Jelly?

[tehlord]

Yet, our market is still fully open. We can easily sell a tenfold of what we have, because there are numerous people out there who would love the stuff - if they ever knew about it. We're getting them, sooner or later

Your biggest issue (imo) with Zebra is the learning curve. Now I've tried the beast myself on 3 occasions, and also bought the Cubase Guru synthesis tutorial as it features Zebra fairly heavily. I'm not a programming novice (i'm doing a simple soundbank for another popular VA) but Zebra baffles me every time I fire it up, although I'm by no means an expert either.

I would imagine that if I spent a solid week or two learning the ins and outs, or perhaps was already a synth programming wizard then these issues wouldn't exist, but that's not the case.

Perhaps an update for the future could include some GUI front ends to hide the technicalities (like Reaktor is capable of). I fear you're scaring off the majority otherwise.

I'm a big fan nevertheless, Uhbik is one of my got FX solutions

[Urs]

Hehe... the learning curve. I think the tutorial videos we've produced will be eye openers.

Zebra is really not difficult to work with. To the contrary. However, the paradigm has to sink in. There will once be a moment where it all clicks, and you'll wonder why you hadn't seen it before. As in, not seeing the woods for the trees.

We'll be working on it.

Also, dedicated skins for dedicated presets/settings have been on my wishlist for a long time. A reduced skin will of course not show all modules possible, but it may also be big help for certain types of patches.

Urs

[fmr]

Hehe... the learning curve. I think the tutorial videos we've produced will be eye openers.

Zebra is really not difficult to work with. To the contrary. However, the paradigm has to sink in. There will once be a moment where it all clicks, and you'll wonder why you hadn't seen it before. As in, not seeing the woods for the trees.

We'll be working on it.

Also, dedicated skins for dedicated presets/settings have been on my wishlist for a long time. A reduced skin will of course not show all modules possible, but it may also be big help for certain types of patches.

Urs

Virsyn did that for Tera. It could help. But then skinners would have a hard task in front of them.

[bmrzycki]

Hehe... the learning curve. I think the tutorial videos we've produced will be eye openers.

I can't wait to watch them knowing Howie is behind the camera twiddling the knobs.

Zebra is really not difficult to work with. To the contrary. However, the paradigm has to sink in. There will once be a moment where it all clicks, and you'll wonder why you hadn't seen it before. As in, not seeing the woods for the trees.

Zebra2 was my first synthesizer and it clicked with me very quickly. So much so now that I'm spoiled by its clear signal flow. Other synths make me learn their routing and I have to keep it in my head. It's one of the main reasons I still prefer Zebra over ACE (and many, many other products).

I'm always puzzled by comments saying Zebra2 is confusing. I can understand that if you're trying to reverse-engineer a preset by someone else; but building a sound from scratch exposes so little of the interface that it's easy to keep track of it all...

A reduced skin will of course not show all modules possible, but it may also be big help for certain types of patches.

As long as it's something that can be turned off; I don't want each preset to bring up a different UI skin. The way it stands today I can very quickly "read" a Zebra preset...

[xx JPRacer xx]

About Uhbik-X, why don't you create something similar to DDMF Metaplugin where we can load our vsts (u-he or others) and route them how we like and provide generic LFO and envelopes folowers to control them? I don't have a modular DAW and maybe I'm wrong but there's not a lot of plugins like DDMF Meta.

What do you think?

[Urs]

What do you think?

Hmmm... the problem therein is, the modulations within a plugin work at a much higher resolution than automation could... and of course the gui wouldn't be as integrated as I would wish.

[tehlord]

Zebra is really not difficult to work with. To the contrary. However, the paradigm has to sink in. There will once be a moment where it all clicks, and you'll wonder why you hadn't seen it before. As in, not seeing the woods for the trees.

I totally agree, but sadly you're still working against the psychology of the people who it hasn't sunk in with yet. I'd guess that 75% of people who buy and use VST plugins are preset searchers and then tweakers rather than those that build from scratch and understand synthesis, and firing up an alternative VST plugin (albeit not an infinately tweakable modular) will always choose this latter option I think.

I really, really look forward to the videos though, as my hankering to buy and actually use Zebra is large!

I think it's also worth investigating a few EDM friendly youtube vids as that market is large. I think you've got the hardcore experimenter market nailed already!

Hell, once i've figured it out i'll do a few tutes with it as well

[bmrzycki]

I totally agree, but sadly you're still working against the psychology of the people who it hasn't sunk in with yet. I'd guess that 75% of people who buy and use VST plugins are preset searchers and then tweakers rather than those that build from scratch and understand synthesis...

Ah yes, that does make sense and jives with my experience too.

It's a lot like Propellerhead Reason; if you build up your own sounds then the devices seem almost trivial. But if you purchase a ReFill and open a large Combinator Instrument you can spend over an hour tracing cables and audio paths trying to figure out what is doing what (*especially* if the designer didn't label the devices with meaningful names).

I agree 100% that Zebra is much easier to program but much harder to "read" a preset. You not only have to understand Zebra but you also have to get inside the head of the sound designer. If you're doing anything more than moving XY panes you'll be digging around and carefully examining each device.

I don't think there is a way to completely eliminate this problem. However. the beta team has made a few suggestions to Urs to assist users with this. One of my favorites is a way to open a window (like the Info window) that will quickly show all modulation source and targets. Much like the audio signal flow it'd be a nice way to see the other half of what make a sound special. Here's to hoping it gets implemented in the future.

[ezelkow1]

However. the beta team has made a few suggestions to Urs to assist users with this. One of my favorites is a way to open a window (like the Info window) that will quickly show all modulation source and targets. Much like the audio signal flow it'd be a nice way to see the other half of what make a sound special. Here's to hoping it gets implemented in the future.

+1 on that request, would love that. I do find myself trying to duplicate some patches that I love to figure out whats going on, and it seems the majority of the time its very close, but just a small little something missing somewhere. I think its usually related to some mod value being off, or me missing a small one somewhere

[gentleclockdivider]

Hey Mark,

No worries, I'm not going anywhere

I would have tackled Uhbik-X last year if I had had the chance to do so. A loss in the family and various other issue prevented me from doing X, and the promised Filterscape update. At least we're not ditching products. In fact we're updating the whole product line this month.

Meanwhile u-he has become a completely different beast. The studio, the guys and the advertisement cost a considerable amount of money. And that's okay. It's a big plus for future development, but it requires more responsibility on my side. Trade show booths just for fun are not on, neither is binding resources in hard to tackle product developments.

However, the weakest spot has always been this: f**king nobody knows who or what u-he is, outside KVR and a few other websites. Everytime I meet musicians on parties or else hardly anybody knows about stuff. Some say "a yeah, Zebra, uhm, yeah, heard of that...", merely to cheer me than anything.

It's not that my products are worse than any of the competition, it's just that they are less known. Hence we focussed on appearance, reaching customers and spreading the word. I believe that TyrellN6 and Zebralette have become great weapons against lack of popularity.

Thus, milking existing customers is pointless compared to creating new ones.

Cheers,

Urs

HHmm that's strange ..In another topic here on kvr you say that we would be amazed at the famous people that are using u-he zebra.
It was a topic about some guy asking what artists like squarepusher etc...were using ..and he wasn't convinced that zebra could do the job .
Quite the opposite of what you are saying here .
Don't get me wrong ...I love zebra , i'll try and look for the topic

[Urs]

Hmmm... can't follow...

[Howard]

..In another topic here on kvr you say that we would be amazed at the famous people that are using u-he zebra....(snip)Quite the opposite of what you are saying here.

Illogical, Captain. The fact that u-he products aren't as widely known as e.g. NI is 100% compatible with the unrelated fact the some extremely famous people use them.

[Nielzie]

I was wondering, is there also a geographical aspect in marketing with software synths/effects? I mean, are there synths that are particularly more used/known in Europe, USA or Asia for instance?

[VSTJuNkiE]

Doesn't Hans Zimmer use Zebra? If so, that's some serious cred there. Dude is like on every huge movie soundtrack....

[Urs]

Had to delete some posts. Keep it civil.