u-he @ Musikmesse 2013

[Urs]

Are you trying to push for a release on May 4th?

Aha... if so, we could use that famous phrase.

Well, that's still a pretty tough call... Dunno how far we'll get with Diva within just two or three weeks after Messe...

[mellotronaut]

Bazille is going to be a lot of synth. Anything like DIVA's beta & amateur [e: well, not amateur but more enthusiast in cases] patch accumulation likely?

If you can do with Bazille what you did with your Uhbik patches, you should be on the official Bazille preset team.

+1 xh3rv's Uhbik patches are

[tommyzai]

Start loading up your Paypal account! .

[tommyzai]

. . . I'm fairly sure we'll have introduction offers. We always do for new plugins.

The Diva update with Seq/DigitalOsc/Uhbie will be free.

I think Satin will settle in the 129$ ballpark, intro offer probably 89$ - somewhere below its main competitors, not because it's worse but because we can (no distribution cost, no iLok fees whatsoever). Yet it's alltogether a full man-year of work, hence we can't be cheap.

Bazille being a bit "niche" is going to be 149$, intro at 99$.

We might start a general discount for good customers at that point. I've meant to establish this for a while, maybe shop vouchers or something.

- Urs

Oops, didn't see this. It's wonderful that U-he offers introductory specials. .

[noiseprovesnothing]

I have money set aside for Bazille - also hugely excited for Zebra 3. If I may ask one favor of the team - can you please "refresh" the GUI for Zebra? You did such beautiful work with the GUI on Ace, and I'd love to see a GUI like that for Zebra. I understand you work from a very long list.

[Urs]

I have money set aside for Bazille - also hugely excited for Zebra 3. If I may ask one favor of the team - can you please "refresh" the GUI for Zebra? You did such beautiful work with the GUI on Ace, and I'd love to see a GUI like that for Zebra. I understand you work from a very long list.

There's another thread here where I kind of talked about this.

I've redesigned Zebra several times in the past, and each time it became so tedious that I simply stopped at some point - which was the point of "good enough" rather than "here we go!"

The main problem is, there's loads of modules that need individual background graphics. This requires a workflow where things are prepared in 3D-software, refined in Photoshop and laid out in our editor. Usually it starts with the layout in the editor, then recreating it in either 3D-software or Photoshop and then wading through an endless journey of swapping files between each. In other words: It's tedious.

So throughout the years I developed a concept for our user interface framework that incorporates most of the functionality of Photoshop we need, and basic 3D-rendering among a few other things. We can now gather user interface elements in layers with various standard effects and alphablending modes. We can fill things with gradients, do high-quality bitmap resize and colour/gamma corrections. We can render spheres and boxes with multiple light sources and a sufficient range of material options. I'm still working on soft shadows on cylinders and cones required for knobs though, and I haven't mastered anisotropic shading for brushed metal surfaces yet.

Anyhow, the idea is that bypassing 3D-software and Photoshop makes for a phantastic workflow. Changes can be implemented and viewed within seconds. This and some other improvements will make things much better for Zebra.

I'm working like mad on Bazille's interface because this is the first one to take full advantage of this. it won't be there 100% for Messe, but it will be in the weeks thereafter

[glasgene]

Fair to say anything Uhbik is on the back burner?

Your turn around on development and resulting quality is faster than many Urs; all I see with Uhbik is maybe this or maybe that but no commitment to this.

I don't wish to be negative but Satin could have easily become a module in Uhbik. Discussions on additions to Uhbik have been going on a long long time now and definitely longer than mention of some of these products.

[Urs]

Fair to say anything Uhbik is on the back burner?

Your turn around on development and resulting quality is faster than many Urs; all I see with Uhbik is maybe this or maybe that but no commitment to this.

I don't wish to be negative but Satin could have easily become a module in Uhbik. Discussions on additions to Uhbik have been going on a long long time now and definitely longer than mention of some of these products.

Hmmm, you do realise that we did Uhbik Rack Extensions? Thus we spent about a third of 2012 on Uhbik. Unfortunately this hasn't brought much benefit to the VST/AU plugin world yet. We are determined to e.g. add the new design we made for RE at some point. Maybe alongside with a compressor or something.

[glasgene]

I do realise that Urs. I don't know how much of your time it takes to convert your product to RE ; to be fair this also made commercial sense that you do this and why not, little benefit to be seen anyone who initially brought into the effects past maybe a gui and another "maybe"

Without going back from initial release posts and advertising what was the proposed final effect count of Uhbik or was it to be ever growing?

From the initial effect count how many have since been introduced?


A hot new line up there

[sascha]

I don't wish to be negative but Satin could have easily become a module in Uhbik.

Erm... nope.


We already considered that, but, frankly, Satin doesn't fit the uhbik concept at all.

Moreover, *Presswerk* was considered first as an uhbik member. But also turned out to be far to big. It was started as my first in-house project when I joined the team (last June), and while I started to get a hang on the u-he side of things, DSP, framework and such, we ended up with a huge beast that could easily do more than compression. It was more a complete 'dynamics framework', so we thought we'd rather create the 'big thing' first, so that everything runs smooth and does all we want it to, and then see what we can do with it concept-wise for a new uhbik member. Thing is, with compression, every tiny bit counts, and quite often you've neglected something less obvious and the thing sounds 'not right' in the end. That's what we wanted to avoid. I wanted 'perfect modules' right from the beginning, be it sidechain, gain-control modules, whatever. I hate 'industry standard', at least with dynamics compression. I want things to sound great even at the most heaviest abuse, at extreme settings, idiot-proof, so to say. When a unit does so using a big, complex architecture, you can strip that down quite easily. But never the other way round.
So, for an uhbik member, the main job would be to check for proper modules and put them all into a workflow that fits the uhbik regime and architecture.

Satin, to be honest, was a happy accident. Presswerk has a 'warmth' feature which sounds sort of 'like tape', but doesn't do the tape thing at all on the inside (something that resembles some aspects but works differently, and highly interactive with the gain-reduction process).
Can't remember when, but somewhere in the middle of the Presswerk implementation, I tried out a couple of text-book approaches to magnetic recording, and - bingo! - there we had tape, at least to some extent. But the whole process was far too complicated (DSP cycles, lots of parameters etc.) to be implemented into Presswerk, let alone stuff like rec & repro eq, so I persuaded the guys we should do a seperate product, a tape-machine plugin. Which is now Satin.

That doesn't mean the 'other' algo in Presswerk doesn't sound less convincing. Au contraire While Satin is designed to be 'real' and possibly 'subtle' (otherwise it'll be a 'cartoon' of tape which I don't want when we explicitly label it 'tape'), Presswerk has no implicit real counterpart, hence we can do anything.

A problem with new things, as a developer, remains: you have to get to know your stuff. It's like a newborn child. You expect certain behaviour or properties but it starts to be different. This you need to learn with every new project.

That being said, once the 'big picture' clears up with Presswerk and the underlying dynamics framework, we'll see how to proceed with uhbik candidates (which could be more than one).

[Urs]

From the initial effect count how many have since been introduced?

Well, initially it was 8 Uhbiks and I wanted to do two more. One of them was Uhbik-G whioch has been added. The other one was Uhbik-X which has been impossible until certain features were implemented. Most of these features have been done, e.g. switchable modules that share resources. One feature hasn't been done, and that's a UI template module that lets me reuse the existing Uhbik-GUIs in Uhbik-X on the fly. This module is still missing, and it's needed for two more products we have in the pipeline. Uhbik will stay on its 149$ introductory price tag until this is done.

In the meantime numerous ideas came up for Uhbik, and I hired Sascha specifically to work on these. In the meantime one thing followed the other, and as we're an agile team, we let Sascha explore Tape and big dynamics. This doesn't mean it won't happen, but it means that it hasn't happened yet.

[glasgene]

Fair enough .. can I echo previous requests for Uhbik V ..a benefit for RE/VST/AU (commercially) and something that could go into further realms with being an additional paid for /free module for ACE, Bazille, Diva, Zebra users with the architecture of that synthesizer. A vocoder would round that bundle off nicely .a compressor maybe but there are a lot out there good and very good.


All the best ahead

[K-Slash]

I like how you see things Sascha.

I hope many more happy coding accidents happens to you in the near and far future .

By the way, Vandal is still the best bass amp I have. Love it !

PS : Please have a take on parallel analog mastering EQ. It's something I'm missing in the plugins realm (at least native). A great mastering EQ with top-notch curves, easy to use, and a solid analog "color" (tube+transfo in/out, band-interactions).

[antithesist]

"Alas, poor Uhbik!" At least it wasn't me leading the asking, lobbying, pleading, etc. this time. Thanks, glasgene. I thought you guys announced that you were going to have an announcement about announcing two new Uhbiks? So, 2014 may be "The Year of the Uhbik? Perhaps at least a non-beta version of 1.3 will sneak out this year. I'll settle for that at this point. OK, I've posted plenty about this in other threads. I'm not as bitter as I probably sound, either, just sad.

[Urs]

"Alas, poor Uhbik!" At least it wasn't me leading the asking, lobbying, pleading, etc. this time. Thanks, glasgene. I thought you guys announced that you were going to have an announcement about announcing two new Uhbiks? So, 2014 may be "The Year of the Uhbik? Perhaps at least a non-beta version of 1.3 will sneak out this year. I'll settle for that at this point. OK, I've posted plenty about this in other threads. I'm not as bitter as I probably sound, either, just sad.

Pressure has no effect if factors beyond my control don't allow for a solution.

I try to do things right, but it isn't always possible - time being the biggest issue at hand.