Zebra pre-purchase questions (DSP & upgrades)

[99.9%emptyspace]

Hello U-He! I am a Diva owner who never had extensive experience with analog. Previously I was limited to Sylenth1 and Massive, and thought "virtual analog" was all the same. But I absolutely love the sound of Diva. Now I want to better understand the tonal differences between synths, and learn what is going on "under the hood". Please excuse my ignorance

I recently tried Zebra, and I'm intrigued. Some of the newer filters add smooth "air" to the sound (compared to Sylenth or Massive). On top of that, the waveforms seem to sound different. Is this just pre-EQ,or is there more harmonic content generated in some synth's waveforms vs others...?

Can somebody explain how this is happening? What are these filters doing that sound so different from each other? Why do plain waveforms in Sylenth sound different (more high fi...?) compared to Zebra? Where Sylenth sounds more buzzy, Zebra sounds more smooth, and less...digital/harsh/jagged? Is this mostly placebo ? Where do you even learn this esoteric DSP stuff



Questions about buying Zebra: Which Diva filters are included in ZebraHZ/DarkZebra? I absolutely lover the Oberheim/Digital filter. Where can I buy Zebra HZ on the site? And just to confirm: purchasing Zebra HZ enables a free upgrade to Zebra3, correct?

Thank you, and keep up the great work. You guys opened my eyes to Analog and great sounding synths

[EvilDragon]

All Diva filters before v1.3 update are in Zebra HZ (so, no Uhbie filter, as far as I understand - Urs, please correct me if I'm wrong). Also there's no digital filter in Diva, you're thinking of the JP8000 oscillator.

[fourthmanfire]

Great questions - I share the same ones! I bought Zebra2 a few months ago after using Sylenth/Massive for a while. I'd love to hear why they sound differently.

PS. If you didn't know, you can import waveforms from popular synths (Massive, Sylenth, Absynth, etc.) INTO Zebra2. You can also draw your own.

Question: When you import the Sylenth waveset into Zebra, IS IT exactly the same? Or are there subtle difference in sound/processing? I believe I tried this before, but couldn't hear much of a difference..

[EvilDragon]

Waveform generation is not the same between those VSTs, I think Zebra does its waveform generation on a granular level, it's quite unique and that's why it sounds so different from most other wavetable synths.

[aaron aardvark]

You have to buy Zebra before you can buy ZebraHZ/TheDarkZebra. I'm pretty sure the latest beta version of ZebraHZ has the Uhbie/Oberheim filter (Yes!!!). Also has the BITE (Korg MS20) filter, Ladder filter (Minimoog), Cascade (Jupiter Eight), Multimode (Jupiter 6).

You can purchase ZebraHZ/TheDark Zebra here:

http://www.u-he.com/cms/118-tdz-news

[re*MD9@3!Tm^]

Your'r talking about Diva, not ZebraHZ.

[Howard]

Your'r talking about Diva, not ZebraHZ.

Nope... he's talking about ZebraHZ
Uhbie is in the list of D-VCF modes, but is lowpass only (as the extra knob is missing).

[re*MD9@3!Tm^]

Also has the BITE (Korg MS20) filter, Ladder filter (Minimoog), Cascade (Jupiter Eight), Multimode (Jupiter 6).

My bad, haven't checked ZebraHZ for quite some time as I'm busy with Zebra, Diva and Ace..didn't know all these filters were implemented in ZebraHZ yet...

[EvilDragon]

Your'r talking about Diva, not ZebraHZ.

Nope... he's talking about ZebraHZ
Uhbie is in the list of D-VCF modes, but is lowpass only (as the extra knob is missing).

Booo, most of the fun with the Uhbie filter is then missing from ZHZ!

[fourthmanfire]

So let's get to the nerdy stuff in the OP!

Now I want to better understand the tonal differences between synths, and learn what is going on "under the hood".

I recently tried Zebra, and I'm intrigued. Some of the newer filters add smooth "air" to the sound (compared to Sylenth or Massive). On top of that, the waveforms seem to sound different. Is this just pre-EQ,or is there more harmonic content generated in some synth's waveforms vs others...?

Can somebody explain how this is happening? What are these filters doing that sound so different from each other? Why do plain waveforms in Sylenth sound different (more high fi...?) compared to Zebra? Where Sylenth sounds more buzzy, Zebra sounds more smooth, and less...digital/harsh/jagged? Is this mostly placebo ? Where do you even learn this esoteric DSP stuff

Who has answers!?!?!?

[Urs]

Who has answers!?!?!?

I do.

Some of the newer filters are based on pretty good analogue models. There's lots of harmonic distortion going on, hence that extra bit of Air.

Zebra's oscillators are indeed based on a granular approach. The waveform is usually recalculated many times per second and then smoothly crossfaded. This allows us to incorporate many degrees of freedom, e.g. wavetable morphing + oscillator-effects. If you switch them to "crisp" mode, you'll get a less smoother high end, much like that of certain notes of Sylenth. Some notes of Sylenth sound smoother than others, so there's no ultimate answer to that question

We never EQ our oscillators. There's no psychotic bullshitting such as added bass boost whatsoever. If you need more bass, use the right filter or the right EQcurve, and it'll come

Tip: Use a highpass filter with pretty low cutoff and add a bit of resonance. Bass-boost, Roland-Style.

ZebraHZ (expansion included in The Dark Zebra soundest, requires working Zebra2 license to run) features *all* of Diva's filters. However, it has not yet officially been updated to V2.7 to also include Diva's Uhbie-Filter. That'll happen once we've finished our current round of public testing.

Hope this answers the most pressing questions.

- Urs

[99.9%emptyspace]

Who has answers!?!?!?

I do.

Some of the newer filters are based on pretty good analogue models. There's lots of harmonic distortion going on, hence that extra bit of Air.

Zebra's oscillators are indeed based on a granular approach. The waveform is usually recalculated many times per second and then smoothly crossfaded. This allows us to incorporate many degrees of freedom, e.g. wavetable morphing + oscillator-effects. If you switch them to "crisp" mode, you'll get a less smoother high end, much like that of certain notes of Sylenth. Some notes of Sylenth sound smoother than others, so there's no ultimate answer to that question

We never EQ our oscillators. There's no psychotic bullshitting such as added bass boost whatsoever. If you need more bass, use the right filter or the right EQcurve, and it'll come

Tip: Use a highpass filter with pretty low cutoff and add a bit of resonance. Bass-boost, Roland-Style.

ZebraHZ (expansion included in The Dark Zebra soundest, requires working Zebra2 license to run) features *all* of Diva's filters. However, it has not yet officially been updated to V2.7 to also include Diva's Uhbie-Filter. That'll happen once we've finished our current round of public testing.

Hope this answers the most pressing questions.

- Urs

Awesome, hopefully we will see Diva-esque filters in Zebra 3 as well. Thanks for taking the time Urs.

[Urs]

Awesome, hopefully we will see Diva-esque filters in Zebra 3 as well.

Yes indeed. I've started exploring an improvement to the filter modeling method we used in Diva. It gives similar results at the expense of, say, Zebra's XMF. This method is not suited for perfect replica of analogue filters, but it seems to be useful for filters that perfectly suite Zebra.

We'll see

[hollo]

Awesome, hopefully we will see Diva-esque filters in Zebra 3 as well.

Yes indeed. I've started exploring an improvement to the filter modeling method we used in Diva. It gives similar results at the expense of, say, Zebra's XMF. This method is not suited for perfect replica of analogue filters, but it seems to be useful for filters that perfectly suite Zebra.

We'll see

GREAT!