u-he

3ee · Post by **3ee** » Sat Feb 01, 2014 6:56 am

Well, there are some hints scattered across this thread but to sum it up into a short list:

-from the start, DCO waves have a particular character to them. They can either sound sharp or blurry yet still solid.
-practically have 2 oscs into one, adding up to 8 "virtual" oscs, can be seen as a trade among quick access and x2 multiplication vs having more flexibility of setting up a fixed phase relationship every time you want a DCO sound (which takes time to program)
-waveforms are complex and give a alternative and smooth PWM sound once in PWM mode and richer superwave sound once in superwave mode.
-waveforms can be used with self-hard-sync to quickly make them more complex and if finetuned with the phase knob, you'll get like the equivalent of having 3 DCO waves into one (works well like that when tuning sync from say 0.5 to 11.8 ) (interesting to try tuning a perfect 5th sounding wave to same or another interval via sync tune)
-oscfx on these waveforms give different effects VS having 2 oscs in a phase relation with the same oscfx.
-etc

Combining all of these Zebra features results in new and cool sounds that tend to keep the sharp or smooth character better.

pdxindy · Post by **pdxindy** » Sat Feb 01, 2014 7:16 am

Thanks for the waveset! That sounded like a lot of work!

They have an interesting crisp sound... I look forward to playing a bit more with them.

3ee · Post by **3ee** » Sat Feb 01, 2014 7:39 am

Your welcome, have fun!

Sendy · Post by **Sendy** » Sat Feb 01, 2014 3:14 pm

Sounds really good! I've always been a fan of phase locked octaves and intervals (especially with square waves). Must have taken quite some planning to get the waves to flow into eachother. If you set a very slow LFO to scan around the entire table you get monster morphin' PWM sounds

If I have a go at something like this, I'll try throwing in some triangle waves and big octave intervals. My plan is to use an additive synth to construct the waves and then build the resulting shape in Zebra.

EDIT: You get a more crisp digi sound if you turn, well... "crisp" on for the oscillator

3ee · Post by **3ee** » Sat Feb 01, 2014 9:33 pm

Yeah, hopefully there will be another one with other waves that will perfectly compliment this one.
Not in the very near future that's for sure!

If you want to build the partials try the demo IL Harmor and/or LinPlug Spectral. They have some pretty cool pattern/edit options.

was on crisp while modeling... but decided it's a bit too "crisp" for the init patch ..anyway, the very high partials aren't so accurate anyway, did the best I could tho!

Sendy · Post by **Sendy** » Sat Feb 01, 2014 10:04 pm

Kinda makes me feel sorry for most wavetable scanning synths. Where you get to choose between 90% of the wavetables which are arbitrary "collections of differently shaded buzzing" with no thought put into how the wavetables could be designed to exploit their underlying architecture or open up synthesis avenues. I get the impression most of the wavetables in Massive were just thrown together randomly - which has it's uses, but, yeah. Zebra and it's user created intelligent wavetables for the win!

ho66it · Post by **ho66it** » Sat Feb 01, 2014 11:19 pm

3ee,
Thanks for sharing your efforts! I will be exploring these soon.

clangorous · Post by **clangorous** » Sun Feb 02, 2014 3:56 pm

3ee, these sound fantastic! Thank you for sharing this. In the interest of getting the most out of your hard work, had a couple of questions (newb questions).

3ee wrote: -from the start, DCO waves have a particular character to them. They can either sound sharp or blurry yet still solid..

Does this mean each wave has a sharp or blurry character, or does it depend on the OSC Invert-Phase Mod/Hard Sync/Reset settings?

3ee wrote:-practically have 2 oscs into one

The selection patch had two OSCs, but the final init patch has only one active. Do I activate more OSCs to get the different sounds? Hope this is not a dumb question but I am still learning and have focused more on combining OSCs and filters so am not clear on this DCO stuff.

3ee wrote:-waveforms are complex and give a alternative and smooth PWM sound once in PWM mode and richer superwave sound once in superwave mode.

As I understand it, to use PWM, I turn on "Invert" and then adjust the Phase knob to get PWM sounds. Also understand that this works with one or two OSCs (not sure about more than two). If this is not correct please help my understanding here.

As for "superwave mode", do I get this by going from "single" to all 11 voices?

Not wanting to be a pain in the ass, so if there is somewhere I can go to get the answers, feel free to point me there...I just have not found the answers via google searches yet - maybe I am not searching on the right words.

3ee · Post by **3ee** » Sun Feb 02, 2014 10:00 pm

clangorous wrote:3ee, these sound fantastic! Thank you for sharing this. In the interest of getting the most out of your hard work, had a couple of questions (newb questions).

Your welcome, enjoy!

Does this mean each wave has a sharp or blurry character, or does it depend on the OSC Invert-Phase Mod/Hard Sync/Reset settings?

They sound sharp or blurry. Take wave 14 and 16 for example. They both have the same set of harmonics yet one sounds sharp and the other blurry. One is better for bass and leads, monophonic stuff... and the other of poly or richer superwave/PWM

The selection patch had two OSCs, but the final init patch has only one active. Do I activate more OSCs to get the different sounds? Hope this is not a dumb question but I am still learning and have focused more on combining OSCs and filters so am not clear on this DCO stuff.

Basically, I modeled the resulting waves of 2 phase-locked OSCs into one wavetable (based on the selections), you don't need to activate any other OSC, theoretically they are 2 already inside OSC3.
"DCO" = digitally controlled oscillator The selection patches are "useless" now

As I understand it, to use PWM, I turn on "Invert" and then adjust the Phase knob to get PWM sounds. Also understand that this works with one or two OSCs (not sure about more than two). If this is not correct please help my understanding here.

This may be already deduced from the answer above. simply turn on the "invert" PWM mode for OSC3 and adjust or modulate the phase parameter.

As for "superwave mode", do I get this by going from "single" to all 11 voices?

Try dual and quad also.... Because the nature of the waves, PWM mode already gives "superwave" results so, in some cases you may not want the overkill of having 11 voices superwave mode into play but dual or quad instead.

Hope this answers your questions, if you have more, feel free to ask.

clangorous · Post by **clangorous** » Mon Feb 03, 2014 3:09 am

3ee wrote:Hope this answers your questions, if you have more, feel free to ask.

You answered all my questions! This is a big help. Thanks so much 3ee.

3ee · Post by **3ee** » Mon Feb 03, 2014 3:12 am

No problem.. have fun patching!

aaron aardvark · Post by **aaron aardvark** » Mon Feb 03, 2014 6:12 am

3ee,
Thank you for replying. I'm an engineer, but a lot of this wave stuff is above my head, but I have not spent loads of time tinkering with it.

3ee · Post by **3ee** » Fri Feb 14, 2014 1:20 pm

Hey all!

I'm hard at work on my new Zebra patch bank based on the DCO waves.
Please go to this SoundCloud link:

Code: Select all

http://soundcloud.com/3eesounddesign/battery-leak-crude-sketch/s-T8kgV

...read the description there and leave feedback on the timeline.
Many thanks!

aaron aardvark · Post by **aaron aardvark** » Sat Feb 15, 2014 5:46 am

Mr 3ee,
~1:40 & ~2:20 & ~2:30 & 3:20 & 5:30 were cool at times. For the first minute, were you zooming through patches really fast or adjusting a few patches here & there? I'm sure I'd put some effects on most of the ones I liked.

3ee · Post by **3ee** » Sat Feb 15, 2014 6:13 am

^ Thanks for the feedback, will check it out!

1st 30 seconds or so, was just a quick switch of presets to get a glimpse of the sounds, than when I was going backwards presenting most patches in more detail.

All patches will be topped off with effects, usually saving that for last stages of progress. The patchbank as it is atm, it's about halfway done and by the end of the month should be scheduled for a release if all goes well.

u-he

KVR Audio

DCO Majic (wavetable inside)