Does Zebra allow user Wavetables?

[rockin1]

1) Making the Galbanum Architecture Waveforms collection available in a format that was directly read by Zebra.

Option 1 also requires input from Urs to give me the file format specs to make it work. I worked with Camel Audio on Alchemy in this manner, and it is not hard to do if Urs and I communicate about it.

Summary: it's Urs decision. If you are interested, please continue to make requests.

BTW, I am thinking of making a 2012 collection of new waveforms. These would focus on some other areas and uses...

I am really interested in option 1 including 2010 and any new 2012 waveforms you come up with. Hopefully Urs will chime in here and offer some thoughts on helping you out.

One thing you might want to look it is how Zebra allows 16 waveforms per oscillator preset which can be swept. You might want to offer single waveform presets for all of the waveforms as well as some "wavetables" that fill in several slots in Zebra's oscillators to support sweeps, etc.

Also, can you offer thoughts on using your waveforms in a pack of presets? If this happens with Zebra I imagine several sound designers would be interested in using them in commercial sounds if you're willing to offer them for that purpose. Would you consider that? What kind of terms might you look for?

[Andrew Souter]

Interesting. Generating wavesets, sounds like a function similiar to what I have gotten from Galbanum. The structure bank of 25600 waves generated in Meta Synth.

BTW, this is not entirely true regarding being generated in/with MetaSynth. The vast majority of these were made purely via C code (well C# scripting with sound forge to be specific in this case)...

A small number of the early ones where made/edited/tweaked with MetaSynth and/or other synth engines... for example, import and complex waveform, and transform it via another complex waveform...

but the raw waveforms come from pure code/math...

[Andrew Souter]

Also, can you offer thoughts on using your waveforms in a pack of presets? If this happens with Zebra I imagine several sound designers would be interested in using them in commercial sounds if you're willing to offer them for that purpose. Would you consider that? What kind of terms might you look for?

From the bottom of page here:

http://www.galbanum.com/products/archit ... forms2010/

Galbanum has become one of the world's leading authorities on waveform design for synthesizers and musical instruments. Part of the goal of releasing this collection publicly is to contribute to the community as a whole by making this library available for licensing for use in other 3rd-party products. In 2006 Galbanum licensed a part of this collection to Native Instruments for use in Massive. It did the same again in 2008 for Future Audio Workshop's Circle, and again in 2009 with both Camel Audio's Alchemy, and KV331's SynthMaster 2.0. Additionally Galbanum maintains co-marketing and distribution arrangements for its Architecture Waveforms products with companies such as Cakewalk, U&I Software, and others. The majority of these products have subsequently won major industry awards, and Galbanum Architecture Waveforms are heard by millions of people every day in one form or another.

Galbanum is always open to exploring new partnerships, and is currently discussing several arrangements with additional software and hardware manufacturers. Additionally, Galbanum is now opening up licensing to third party professional sound-designers who would like to include and redistribute a sub-set of the Galbanum Architecture Waveforms together with their commercial preset and sound expansion products. Interested parties should send inquires about the details via email to: Licensing Inquires (Edit address before sending).

...So yes, it is possible to make a commercial preset expansion that includes some Architecture Waveforms. In fact, I encourage it. It just requires a small license fee or other arrangement between me and the sound designer. This is worked out between me and the sound-designer. Interested parties should contact me. I realize that individual sound designers are not NI, and I try to make this as reasonable as possible depending on the nature of the project. I wish I had more time myself to make some more preset expansions for various synths using this content, and I hope to do so again sometime. Things are just very busy with 2CAudio.

[TwoToneshuzz]

Interesting. Generating wavesets, sounds like a function similiar to what I have gotten from Galbanum. The structure bank of 25600 waves generated in Meta Synth.

BTW, this is not entirely true regarding being generated in/with MetaSynth. The vast majority of these were made purely via C code (well C# scripting with sound forge to be specific in this case)...

A small number of the early ones where made/edited/tweaked with MetaSynth and/or other synth engines... for example, import and complex waveform, and transform it via another complex waveform...

but the raw waveforms come from pure code/math...

I had sort of realized I'd made an error there, should have caught that. Sorry! I'll go back and add a note.

Regards

Wade

[TwoToneshuzz]

I would like to point out that for me the Licensing of waves is somthing of a side issure. I have the Waveforms. I want to work with them on my own. So what I'm still looking for is simple waveform import into Zebras "drawable" waveform slots.

I can see though that having these waves added on to the Zebra package is more user friendly as I would expect that someone would topshelve the wave types that are most useful in this kind of application. A huge time saving benefit compared to sorting through the waves on your own.

This is already done for other synths like Alchemy, Metasynth and Rapture so I suppose for a start it would just be amatter of converting this material to Zebra readable format.

I also sense from what I read that the Zebra waveplayer has to have certain refinements to bring out the greatest detail.

Finally there's no reason that Urs or anyone else couldn't just develop there own resource library of waves generated in C but time is short for everybody so if the resources "waves" are already pretty comprhensive and useful, and the license fees are at an acceptable level for both parties then why not use them, Add the price of the license to the Zebra package. Then get on with designing other aspects of the Synth. Like those Diva inspired Filters!

One final note I'm pretty sure I will get Zebra one way or the other so it's not a deal maker or deal breaker for me either way.

Regards

Wade

[Andrew Souter]

I would be interested in either:

1) Making the Galbanum Architecture Waveforms collection available in a format that was directly read by Zebra.

2) Including a sub-set of these waveforms in the factory-standard Zebra product.

BTW, I don't mean to suggest this is a mutually exclusive choice. Both of these things could happen... that would be the ideal.

It's up to Urs.

[News From The Sky]

Thanks for chiming in, Andrew. I would happily pay for a Zebra-format version of the Architecture library, especially if it included logically-organized wavetables in addition to the single waves. The sample waves sound great, and they'd be even better in combination with Zebra's wave mangling capabilities.

[PietW.]

Thanks for chiming in, Andrew. I would happily pay for a Zebra-format version of the Architecture library, especially if it included logically-organized wavetables in addition to the single waves. The sample waves sound great, and they'd be even better in combination with Zebra's wave mangling capabilities.

+1

[TwoToneshuzz]

Been working with my Wavetable instrument. It's fine for checking out the possiblities of the Architecture library. 8 waves at a time just drag and drop.

I've also setup a sister to the Wavetable instrument. I call it the Drumkit Wave FO it uses the single cycle waves fed into Envelope Followers and paramodules to create Lfo and other effects..

These setups are found at Numerology at Five12, look under Projects. You can download them if you join the forum. Then download a demo of Numerology pro 3 to try the Wavetable synth and the Drumkit to Wave FO. You will need your own waves or download the Architecture Demo Waves from Galbanum.

Regards

Wade

[TwoToneshuzz]

Back then I deliberately limited the number of waveforms to 16. To me that still is the sweet spot where it's not too tedious to edit them all, while being diverse enough to allow for interesting sweeps.

Not to forget, the spline based waveforms literally morph, they don't just crossfade. Thus you get complex transistions with nearly unlimitted steps inbetween - which no classical wavetable synth can offer.

On top of that you have those rather unique oscillator effects, which can bend the waveforms in all sorts of directions. That goes well beyond wavetable synthesis, it gives you multiple degrees of freedom to sweep waves, at a minimum cost of effort/time to put into it.

However, we'll be working on higher resolution wavetables, wavetable/sample import, wave<->spline / wave<->spectrum conversion etc. etc. for some of the next updates. Whatever makes those oscillators happy, makes us happy

Urs

This seals the deal for me. Zebra with Wave<->spline wave<-->spectrum conversion is making me happy.

[Urs]

Those conversions won't be exact though... especially waveform to spline is a tough one that'll try to approximate things as good as it gets.

(thank god I'm on vacation, I couldnt comprehend the maths just yet...)

[rockin1]

Those conversions won't be exact though... especially waveform to spline is a tough one that'll try to approximate things as good as it gets.

(thank god I'm on vacation, I couldnt comprehend the maths just yet...)

What do you think of the discussion with Galbanum, Urs? Might it be possible to have these waveforms officially converted to Zebra through collaboration between the companies (whether as factory content and / or an add-on)?

[Shabdahbriah]

Those conversions won't be exact though... especially waveform to spline is a tough one that'll try to approximate things as good as it gets.

(thank god I'm on vacation, I couldnt comprehend the maths just yet...)

What do you think of the discussion with Galbanum, Urs? Might it be possible to have these waveforms officially converted to Zebra through collaboration between the companies (whether as factory content and / or an add-on)?

Towards that eventuality: I'm not a "script-kid", but if a "Wave<->spline" script were provided for Sound Forge (v9 or v10) I'd gladly take on the conversion, even if it were one at a time.

I enjoy making single cycle waveforms and/or "wavetables" (using the term loosely), for days and weeks on end.

[2c]

[TwoToneshuzz]

Those conversions won't be exact though... especially waveform to spline is a tough one that'll try to approximate things as good as it gets.

(thank god I'm on vacation, I couldnt comprehend the maths just yet...)

Please do forget all about math. Think Koala like, vegetate, eat single eucalyptus leaves, chill.

We are freezing our behinds in Copenhagen..

Regards

Wade

[trance_lucent]

Those conversions won't be exact though... especially waveform to spline is a tough one that'll try to approximate things as good as it gets.
(thank god I'm on vacation, I couldnt comprehend the maths just yet...)

Waveform2Spline is truly hard but interesting task! Of course there is no need to make exact conversion. Quite the contrary, it would be cool to make conversion using only several spline nodes, but placed unevenly at key features. So it would possible to convert 2 waveforms far from perfectly, but with possibility to make morphing between key features of the waveform without just blending!

Uneven placing nodes is the key to such morphing, because it is easy to perfectly convert waveform to spline using 128 evenly placed nodes, but it will make morphing impossible and the whole conversion pointless.

Geoblend2Spectrablend and Vice versa is very useful tool, but needed phase information besides of amplitude. So you planned to present an advanced harmonics editor with phase information?

And as for Geoblend (and may be for Spectrablend) mode. Please increase resolution! I mean not Osc time resolution, but detail resolution. Or made user-selected resolution modes (128, 256, 512, 1024).