Rumoured Zebra 3 Improvements?

[VitaminD]

I would like u-he Zebra to stay u-he Zebra. I'm more concerned with all of our wishes and additions that it is going to become bloated with everything under the sun added.. I hope it stays focused.

[rockin1]

I would like u-he Zebra to stay u-he Zebra. I'm more concerned with all of our wishes and additions that it is going to become bloated with everything under the sun added.. I hope it stays focused.

I think if there is one thing we know about Urs it is that he knows how to bring keep a design focused and coherent. He won't ever allow Zebra to become bloatware. I believe he will opt to leave ideas out before including something in an inelegant way. So I understand why you'd be concerned u-he was a more corporate "design by focus group / committee" kind of operation, but with Urs leading the team I don't think we need to worry...

[pdxindy]

I would like u-he Zebra to stay u-he Zebra. I'm more concerned with all of our wishes and additions that it is going to become bloated with everything under the sun added.. I hope it stays focused.

I think if there is one thing we know about Urs it is that he knows how to bring keep a design focused and coherent. He won't ever allow Zebra to become bloatware. I believe he will opt to leave ideas out before including something in an inelegant way. So I understand why you'd be concerned u-he was a more corporate "design by focus group / committee" kind of operation, but with Urs leading the team I don't think we need to worry...

+1

And Zebra is just so good as is... I am in no hurry for v3... Here is the sound I was just tweaking for a visual project I am working on...

http://draigathar.org/sounds/Pluckde.mp3

[voidseeker]

Has a request for a granular OSC like in Absynth come up?

[VitaminD]

I would like u-he Zebra to stay u-he Zebra. I'm more concerned with all of our wishes and additions that it is going to become bloated with everything under the sun added.. I hope it stays focused.

I think if there is one thing we know about Urs it is that he knows how to bring keep a design focused and coherent. He won't ever allow Zebra to become bloatware. I believe he will opt to leave ideas out before including something in an inelegant way. So I understand why you'd be concerned u-he was a more corporate "design by focus group / committee" kind of operation, but with Urs leading the team I don't think we need to worry...

You are asking for sample support then speaking for U-he to say that they will keep the design focused and coherent. hehehe

[fateamenabletochange]

Would be cool if each updated dll had a unique name...don't know whether that is feasible....for different versions to coexist in a vsti folder.

[I have some kind of percussive artifact presets that don't have the same clicks with the latest 2 versions of zebra [I keep the old dll's].]

[Urs]

I would like u-he Zebra to stay u-he Zebra. I'm more concerned with all of our wishes and additions that it is going to become bloated with everything under the sun added.. I hope it stays focused.

Most ideas we have go in the opposite direction of ZebraHZ. We're going to merge modules and simplify the overall workflow. The modules themselves will become more flexible. As an example, Oscillators will do FM, dedicated FM-Oscillators will provide for other percs.

The main focus is on unifying the curve editors for waveforms and envelopes. We hope to develop great tools to do all sorts of things with those.

But before any of that, we've collected a comprehensive list of bugs and niggles that we want to squash for good (it has become embarrassingly long, but thankfully we have no marketing department that tells us what to do)

[Liero]

As someone who only discovered and tested Zebra for the first time less than a month ago, I thought I'd share some of my first impressions

1) My very first feeling was that I didn't like the GUI, specifically the knobs and colours and style (where stuff was actually placed was very good). I later found out that there were some skins available for zebra that looked a lot better, so maybe it might be an idea to change the default skin of Zebra 3. I still don't like the knobs (I'd prefer more 'realistic' looking knobs).

2) The first awesome feature to hit me was that zebra only shows the components you are using, and I still think this is one of the best features. Colour-coding the different components with different background colours would be nice for better glancing.

3) Extremely good modulation options and flexibility, but I was often wondering why it seemed like modulating a paramater with a sine wave sounded like I was modulating it with something close to a square wave. Setting the modulating depth parameters seemed difficult, I would have really liked to see the knobs move or somehow display how they were being modulated in real time.

4) I don't know anything about digital/analog signal processing. I just compared Zebra oscillators with other synths by just running a basic saw, square and sine wave without any filters or any effects against ElectraX, Twin, Omnisphere and Alchemy. To my ear Zebra sounded "clean" and maybe a bit "hard", somewhat similar to what Omnisphere sounded like. ElectraX and Twin both sounded better to my ears by being more "smooth" and "fuzzy". I don't know why this is so, and this is just my very subjective opinion, but my favourite was FabFilter Twin, with Zebra maybe being in 3rd or 4th place after ElectraX and maybe Omnisphere. Alchemy's basic VA sounds sounded the worst to me, very harsh and unpleasant. I don't know if anything can or should be done about it, but I personally would have liked the basic, raw oscillators to sound a bit different.

5) I love noise oscillators and, again, for reasons unknown to me the noise oscillators didn't sound as "good" as on other synths like Massive. Even the white noise sounded different on the synths. More noise types for Zebra3?

6) Many +++ points for small system footprint and for making doubleclick reset knobs to default value.

_For me_ Zebra wins every other synth in modulation, flexibility and sound design possibilities, is tied with other synths in terms sound pleasantness and ease-of-use and maybe loses in terms of good GUI looks. Maybe it would be nice for Zebra3 update to focus on weaknesses instead of even more stuff where Zebra is already super strong?

Just my very subjective 2c.

All the best to U-he developers, I will surely be buying their products one of these days.

[rockin1]

You are asking for sample support then speaking for U-he to say that they will keep the design focused and coherent. hehehe

I'm not "asking for sample support", just commenting on the sample support Urs has already discussed. I thought I posted a pretty cool example of how far you can go with a few cycles of a single sample, although I'm not sure anyone actually bothered to check it out.

Also, I don't see how adding sample import to the oscillators (while possible adding higher harmonic resolution and / or additional morphing stages) does anything to compromise focus and coherency of the current Zebra design. Do you?

[VitaminD]

You are asking for sample support then speaking for U-he to say that they will keep the design focused and coherent. hehehe

I'm not "asking for sample support", just commenting on the sample support Urs has already discussed. I thought I posted a pretty cool example of how far you can go with a few cycles of a single sample, although I'm not sure anyone actually bothered to check it out.

Also, I don't see how adding sample import to the oscillators (while possible adding higher harmonic resolution and / or additional morphing stages) does anything to compromise focus and coherency of the current Zebra design. Do you?

You might have missed the laugh and the attempting to signify I was kidding with you.

[rockin1]

You are asking for sample support then speaking for U-he to say that they will keep the design focused and coherent. hehehe

I'm not "asking for sample support", just commenting on the sample support Urs has already discussed. I thought I posted a pretty cool example of how far you can go with a few cycles of a single sample, although I'm not sure anyone actually bothered to check it out.

Also, I don't see how adding sample import to the oscillators (while possible adding higher harmonic resolution and / or additional morphing stages) does anything to compromise focus and coherency of the current Zebra design. Do you?

You might have missed the laugh and the attempting to signify I was kidding with you.

I must have!

[Echoes in the Attic]

I would like u-he Zebra to stay u-he Zebra. I'm more concerned with all of our wishes and additions that it is going to become bloated with everything under the sun added.. I hope it stays focused.

Most ideas we have go in the opposite direction of ZebraHZ. We're going to merge modules and simplify the overall workflow. The modules themselves will become more flexible. As an example, Oscillators will do FM, dedicated FM-Oscillators will provide for other percs.

That's great to hear! I was always afraid you guys were just going to keep addi modules. One thing I was never crazy about was all the different modules for similar things. 4 Oscs and 4 more fm Oscs and 4 filters and 2 more XMF filters etc. always thought it would be plenty to have just 4 Oscs overall with fm and just 4 filters with the XMF functions. I don't thinks anybody needs more than that. Having less modules is good for mapping out controls too and still be able to use presets. Much more manageable.

[pdxindy]

I would like u-he Zebra to stay u-he Zebra. I'm more concerned with all of our wishes and additions that it is going to become bloated with everything under the sun added.. I hope it stays focused.

Most ideas we have go in the opposite direction of ZebraHZ. We're going to merge modules and simplify the overall workflow. The modules themselves will become more flexible. As an example, Oscillators will do FM, dedicated FM-Oscillators will provide for other percs.

That's great to hear! I was always afraid you guys were just going to keep addi modules. One thing I was never crazy about was all the different modules for similar things. 4 Oscs and 4 more fm Oscs and 4 filters and 2 more XMF filters etc. always thought it would be plenty to have just 4 Oscs overall with fm and just 4 filters with the XMF functions. I don't thinks anybody needs more than that. Having less modules is good for mapping out controls too and still be able to use presets. Much more manageable.

The nice thing about 2 modules that are similar is that you can put them in separate channels... all the functionality in 1 module and you only have the one output... so you lose some functionality in routing too...

[mcnoone]

That's great to hear! I was always afraid you guys were just going to keep addi modules. One thing I was never crazy about was all the different modules for similar things.

I guess the idea of modular synthesis is not your thing.
If you have 4 different sounds on 4 separate outputs, you have a layered sound of a combined 4 different sounds into one.
What's not to be crazy about with those options.
Similar modules become dissimilar, once you give them all different settings, as well.

[hakey]

I don't think Echoes was arguing against using more than one instance of the same module, or combining four lanes of audio in the voice grid.

Rather, adding new modules with similar functionality - eg, the VCF vs XMF modules - could be confusing.