Hans Zimmer Loves Zebra

[pdxindy]

...the SB modules (which seem to be missing from the manual?)...

Go to page 41 (easiest way - click on the gens then sb hyperlinks at the bottom of every page.

Page 41 is blank on my version (latest I think)

[pdxindy]

But then, achieving realism may be an interesting exercise, a challenge, or a desirable component of some other end - but as an end itself? I dunno, it's like the photorealist oil paintings that were recently posted in another thread... surely a display of considerable skill, but that's pretty much all.
_

Physical modeling or the ability to emulate acoustic instruments.
Is it useful? Yes.
One thing is a sample takes more hd space.
Another is flexibility. Altering a sample is not half as effective as altering a sound using a synth.
Responsiveness. There is something more direct about playing a synth as opposed to samples that is hard to describe. Something about how the sounds respond, or how much better it is to control certain velocity settings.
The real instrument is not available to a user, or the sample they have is not better than the synth preset, or they can't afford a good sample of strings or something.
With Zebra you also have 4 xy controls, for quick-easy tweaking to get the sound in the position and tone needed. Something that I don't know of any sampler having. Which is a great benefit to getting sounds to fit in a mix.
I have PM synths that can only do one sound right, like clavinet, but nothing else. Even String Studio, which does excellent guitar, and bass, but can't do a clavinet or sitar.
With Zebra at least it can (eventually with enough effort) nail all of those and more.
Another reason why acoustic emulation is good, is that it can be great for layering with other traditional synth sounds, such as real sounding bells with an analog sounding string thing...etc.
The best reason to go for acoustic emulation is finding a sound that sounds acoustic, and similar to something heard before, but does not quite emulate anything. Something acoustic, but never heard of before.

all fine reasons...

and yes, there is something about a synth that samples don't have... an agility

[Urs]

Ken, you are most famous for making convincing orchestral sounds with synthesizers

We've even done a custom model of the Polymoog resonator you once demoed so impressively for Hans

Well "famous" might be a bit of a stretch... As for the Polymoog resonator, it's funny how me just ripping apart my Polymoog to make a coffee table and also a stand-alone Polymoog resonator led to so many different things, including COTK's coming out with a Polymoog Res module and Juergen Haible doing a PCB for people to build their own. It seemed to focus attention on a device that people either never paid much attention to or didn't really know much about. I keep telling people that there's nothing really special about the Polymoog Res since it's just 3 multimode filters in parallel with a lot of limits built in, but still it's taken on a life of its own.

-Elhardt

I think so too. Yet your example video showed what a gem it could be, if used on something that's not just a coffee table.

In absence of a Polymoog, we've based our model on Jürgen Haible's design, We could get pretty close to what you did, using same settings and similar input sounds. We also added a 4th band that goes from 60Hz all they way to 7.5k

[Elhardt]

Indeed, you are right about his skill... I just went and listened to some of his stuff. Some exceptional work there. He's earned the right to boast some. Doesn't mean I agree with him cause I've heard some very realistic percussion from various softsynths like Tassman and I stand by my comment about Zebra.

I'm wondering where people are going to listen to my stuff since most has disappeared off the web and now only a portion of my stuff exists spread across two different links on two different Skydrive accounts.

Just because nobody has done realistic percussion in Reaktor (or you haven't heard it), doesn't mean it's not more capable than Zebra for example. Reaktor has a lot more resources and it capable of more. It's easy to create realistic percussion sounds on all kinds of synths. But that doesn't mean that that particular percussion sound actually emulates a real-world known sound because that's harder to do. To this day I've never heard anybody synthesize a realistic drum kit or timpani on Tassman or Zebra. Also, some synths have certain features built in, like Tassman's physical modeling and modal synthesis, that makes it easy for people with little programming skill to create realistic percussion sounds because some of the modules do all the work for them. Same is true when somebody wants a realistic plucked string sound they use some form of Karplus Strong setup or string oscillator, but that's because they can't do it using subtractive synthesis. And it's kind of odd to say you've heard realistic percussion sounds on Tassman therefore you stand by your comment that Zebra is best at percussion sounds.

-Elhardt

[Urs]

There is so much talk about Hans using Zebra, but I am not seeing any evidence anywhere. I wish he could post just ONE sound made with Zebra, and tell us which track it was used in so we can say "ah damn, i can hear it, so that sound was made with Zebra??"

No worries, Hans has promised to place Zebra more prominently in the current project they're working on

IIRC all sounds in this video were taken from various patch sets Howie did for Hans:

[digitalboytn]

Not a big fan of Danny Elfman here. He's a great musician and composer, it's just that he doesn't seem to be evolving much. All his soundtracks basically go:

Paaa-Paaa-Paaa-Paaa PaPaPaPaPa-Paaraaraa PaPaPaPaPa-Paaraadeeu Pei-Pei-Pei-PeiPepepepepepep.......peperepepepeperepe duuuum duuum duuum duuum.

Buddabuddabuddabuddabuddabuddabudda Paaarapapapapapa Paaaa Paaaa Paaaan...

Know which one i'm talking about?

[Urs]

To this day I've never heard anybody synthesize a realistic drum kit or timpani on Tassman or Zebra.

Have you actually looked for any? - I've heard tons of extremely convincing drum, percussion and timpani sounds coming out of Zebra in recent years.

While I do agree that Reaktor may be the most flexible softsynth with a user-friendly gui out there, you'll have a very hard time to recreate the specific modeling techniques we used in Zebra. It may easily be possible that recreating the interpolation method used in Zebra's comb filters and one XMF in top of that uses up a full CPU if done in Reaktor. Reaktor of course outshines Zebra on a low level approach, which is something different. Which is exactly why we chose the approach we did, and which is still rather unique, despite its fast and efficient workflow.

But then you might think that the stuff in Zebra isn't all that special. Which I guess is a matter of taste.

[Elhardt]

Ken: "heard from" is important here, and the reason why I think you're VERY mistaken about Zebra. Instead of fiddling around with e.g. the ModularV GUI and (I guess) getting disenchanted with softsynths in general, you could apply your considerable talents to making sounds in Zebra. I don't think you'd regret it...

Hello Howard,

I'm think there may be some confusion. I'm not claiming that Zebra isn't good or excellent at percussion sounds, just that it's not correct for somebody to make the claim it's the best synthesizer ever in the entire world at percussion sounds especially when there are more advanced synths around. And I'm not disenchanted with softsynths as far as features go and their capabilities. It's all about their unreasonable rules of use that border on the illegal by the software companies, their copy protection schemes, their inability to actually finish their software, their trying to suck money from you for endless updates for the rest of your life, and endless headaches with compatibility issues, changing operating systems and audio drivers. I've been screwed over by every piece of music software I own.

I only have so much time, and adding yet another synth (Zebra) to mess with isn't something I'm wanting to do now. I've had Reaktor for probably 10 years and have barely even gotten started with it. If Zebra had a way to create user interfaces for patches like Reaktor does, I'd be tempted to pick up Zebra despite my boycott of softsynth companies.

On other topics, John Bowen sent me a Solaris for a few weeks to program some sounds on. While I can now call myself a professional sound designer having been paid to do so, I found the experience to be rather unpleasant. It didn't help that the Solaris is very slow to program on, and had missing features and bugs... Also, I visited your website not too long ago and still haven't seen any of those interviews there, including the one I filled out !

-Elhardt

[Elhardt]

Here's some stuff I did with Zebra, that I feel shows it can do many different instrument emulations.
They might not be up to your abilities, but for an average and hardly known sound designer as myself, they surely show some possibilities.

Some of those aren't bad. Some of the brass sounds were pretty good including the muted brass.

[mcnoone]

Here's some stuff I did with Zebra, that I feel shows it can do many different instrument emulations.
They might not be up to your abilities, but for an average and hardly known sound designer as myself, they surely show some possibilities.

Some of those aren't bad. Some of the brass sounds were pretty good including the muted brass.

Thanks for listening, and commenting on them.
Here's a classical electronic track by Mike Leghorn using my sounds in a mix.
http://soundcloud.com/mike-leghorn/the-river-of-life
btw...Urs doesn't charge for Zebra upgrades, and I've never had a problem/bug using Zebra in the almost 4 years I've used it.
The only copyright protection is a code, mines worked with no problems since I owned it. The are no copyright restrictions regarding doing ones own sounds on them and what you do with those sounds.
The demo is fully functional, and only needs to be re-loaded every 10 minutes or so. It loads and saves sounds too. Check it out, as it might just click with you.
Take care.

[Elhardt]

To this day I've never heard anybody synthesize a realistic drum kit or timpani on Tassman or Zebra.

Have you actually looked for any? - I've heard tons of extremely convincing drum, percussion and timpani sounds coming out of Zebra in recent years.

While I do agree that Reaktor may be the most flexible softsynth with a user-friendly gui out there, you'll have a very hard time to recreate the specific modeling techniques we used in Zebra. It may easily be possible that recreating the interpolation method used in Zebra's comb filters and one XMF in top of that uses up a full CPU if done in Reaktor. Reaktor of course outshines Zebra on a low level approach, which is something different. Which is exactly why we chose the approach we did, and which is still rather unique, despite its fast and efficient workflow.

But then you might think that the stuff in Zebra isn't all that special. Which I guess is a matter of taste.

Hello Urs,

When I go to various company's websites and look for demos, there's almost nothing when it comes to people doing realistic sounds. People don't use synths for that. They're lazy and use samples and/or are not capable of realistic sounds. In all the years on the web, I've only heard one attempt at timpani and it sounded like it was half snare drum. I've never heard anybody do a full drum kit, but only a snare here or a kick there. That's about it. If there's some hidden place where these can be heard, I'd like to know. Most sounds that people are creating on analog style synths these days are simplistic cheesy sounds or trashy ghetto type sounds, and that kind of stuff has put me off from trying to hear everything. I can only take so much of that awful stuff before my anger kicks in and I stop searching and wish the world would come to and end as soon as possible.

As for Reaktor vs Zebra: I keep hearing that your u-he stuff is pretty heavy on the CPU. That's another thing that limits complexity and realism for certain kinds of sounds. I can set up a 100 band filter bank in Reaktor, but something tells me that would be impractical in Zebra, and without a Reaktor user GUI to apply to it, it would be impractical to use and dial in values. So Reaktor is good for really complex stuff that other synths can't handle.

-Elhardt

[trimph1]

Indeed, you are right about his skill... I just went and listened to some of his stuff. Some exceptional work there. He's earned the right to boast some. Doesn't mean I agree with him cause I've heard some very realistic percussion from various softsynths like Tassman and I stand by my comment about Zebra.

I'm wondering where people are going to listen to my stuff since most has disappeared off the web and now only a portion of my stuff exists spread across two different links on two different Skydrive accounts.

Just because nobody has done realistic percussion in Reaktor (or you haven't heard it), doesn't mean it's not more capable than Zebra for example. Reaktor has a lot more resources and it capable of more. It's easy to create realistic percussion sounds on all kinds of synths. But that doesn't mean that that particular percussion sound actually emulates a real-world known sound because that's harder to do. To this day I've never heard anybody synthesize a realistic drum kit or timpani on Tassman or Zebra. Also, some synths have certain features built in, like Tassman's physical modeling and modal synthesis, that makes it easy for people with little programming skill to create realistic percussion sounds because some of the modules do all the work for them. Same is true when somebody wants a realistic plucked string sound they use some form of Karplus Strong setup or string oscillator, but that's because they can't do it using subtractive synthesis. And it's kind of odd to say you've heard realistic percussion sounds on Tassman therefore you stand by your comment that Zebra is best at percussion sounds.

-Elhardt

What happened to your pieces? I was trying to find something and found nothing...I'd love to hear what you came up with myself..

[Elhardt]

Thanks for listening, and commenting on them.
Here's a classical electronic track by Mike Leghorn using my sounds in a mix.
http://soundcloud.com/mike-leghorn/the-river-of-life
btw...Urs doesn't charge for Zebra upgrades, and I've never had a problem/bug using Zebra in the almost 4 years I've used it.
The only copyright protection is a code, mines worked with no problems since I owned it. The are no copyright restrictions regarding doing ones own sounds on them and what you do with those sounds.
The demo is fully functional, and only needs to be re-loaded every 10 minutes or so. It loads and saves sounds too. Check it out, as it might just click with you.
Take care.

Hearing them used in the context of a piece of music sounded quite good. It sounded like something that could have come from a movie score.

Perhaps u-he isn't as bad as others when it comes to the things I don't like about software. But are some things about its GUI that I don't like which also didn't exactly pull me in, including having modules in two long columns that I'd have to keep scrolling around to adjust parameters. I wish one were free to lay out modules freely like in the Nord Modular editor... Knowing that the demo is fully functional, I might download it and give it a try.

-Elhardt

[mcnoone]

What happened to your pieces? I was trying to find something and found nothing...I'd love to hear what you came up with myself..

Here's some great examples.
http://soundcloud.com/solaris-synth/set ... -demos-set

@elhardt:It uses less cpu than most soft synths.
Trying the no hassle demo out will let you see that.
(edit) Okay, I see you've already tried the demo.
I thought the same way at first about the GUI, but it only takes the initial hurdle over the learning post to get it, then it becomes the best gui ever...well to me anyway.
It's the Osc Fx within the oscillator modules that can really get things going.

[pdxindy]

Just because nobody has done realistic percussion in Reaktor (or you haven't heard it), doesn't mean it's not more capable than Zebra for example. Reaktor has a lot more resources and it capable of more. It's easy to create realistic percussion sounds on all kinds of synths. But that doesn't mean that that particular percussion sound actually emulates a real-world known sound because that's harder to do. To this day I've never heard anybody synthesize a realistic drum kit or timpani on Tassman or Zebra. Also, some synths have certain features built in, like Tassman's physical modeling and modal synthesis, that makes it easy for people with little programming skill to create realistic percussion sounds because some of the modules do all the work for them. Same is true when somebody wants a realistic plucked string sound they use some form of Karplus Strong setup or string oscillator, but that's because they can't do it using subtractive synthesis. And it's kind of odd to say you've heard realistic percussion sounds on Tassman therefore you stand by your comment that Zebra is best at percussion sounds.

-Elhardt

Yup, I stand by my comment... cause it is my comment and my opinion... For percussion, I like Zebra better than Tassman because it is easier to work with and has more flexibility in various ways like finer control of envelop shape, additive osc's etc... and I do not really consider Reaktor a synth but more a development platform so I do not include it in my assessment. Sure Reaktor is more powerful overall than Zebra, but so is Max or C++... no thanks. I'm not a coder and not interested in being one.

And I could care less about your snobbish attitude. I would much rather have a softsynth that was easy to make realistic sounds than hard. That is why I like Zebra so much. It is relatively easy to use, yet has a sizable set of innovative tools to work with. I don't care about ultimate capability but rather useable capability. I'd say Zebra is exceptional for useable capability.