Stupid questions about the evergoing not warm enough Zebra debate

[LFO8]

RedChameau, no offence intended. But I think it's your programming skills that are lacking which leads you to come up with inferior pad sounds.

There are a lot of pad patches in Zebra (from Howard for instance) that are not complex at all but sound real smooth and rich.

[Echoes in the Attic]

I specifically like that Zebra can sound good when making 'thin' sounds... Like lots of beautiful acoustic instruments

So called 'warm' and 'phat' is over-rated.

Well, a good acoustic bass is quite warm and fat. So is a classic guitar. Maybe not in the "Moog-esque" way, but they are far from thin.

I didn't say every acoustic instrument is thin... but plenty are, especially compared to the relentless effort towards more and bigger... like the loudness wars... I like music with dynamic range and instruments with diverse character

Zebra can easily be big and round and full... and it can easily be thin and sparse... and can sound organic and lively at both. Zebra starts at a neutral place, leaving it up to the artist to shape it into what you want. Then it provides a remarkable set of tools for doing just that.

I think why people tend to see Zebra as a thinner sounding synth is because despite what's possible, there are almost no presets showing off it's big/round/full side. I can probably only point to a few and there have probably only been a few times I've made anything that I would describe that way. I've heard tons and tons of presets and videos for it, and played with it for many years now. I see it as primarily useful for thin but cutting/punching sounds. I do like it for analog style punchy arps/sequences but not really into it for huge monosynth sounds or really lush/sparkly type pads etc. I've heard many nice sounds, including great pad presets, but they do always tend to be on the thinner side, so I do understand why it's not regarded as having that same range of lushness as many other synths. But that's ok! Everything synth has it's place.

[RedChameau]

RedChameau, no offence intended. But I think it's your programming skills that are lacking which leads you to come up with inferior pad sounds.

There are a lot of pad patches in Zebra (from Howard for instance) that are not complex at all but sound real smooth and rich.

None taken !
That's the very reason why I posted a few presets of mine to get some advices on how to improve at programming Zebra for that kind of purposes !

[LFO8]

Ok, that's cool. Then I would suggest going through some of the great pad patches of Zebra and study them. See how they are set up. Figure out what makes them sound the way they do.

[pdxindy]

I specifically like that Zebra can sound good when making 'thin' sounds... Like lots of beautiful acoustic instruments

So called 'warm' and 'phat' is over-rated.

Well, a good acoustic bass is quite warm and fat. So is a classic guitar. Maybe not in the "Moog-esque" way, but they are far from thin.

I didn't say every acoustic instrument is thin... but plenty are, especially compared to the relentless effort towards more and bigger... like the loudness wars... I like music with dynamic range and instruments with diverse character

Zebra can easily be big and round and full... and it can easily be thin and sparse... and can sound organic and lively at both. Zebra starts at a neutral place, leaving it up to the artist to shape it into what you want. Then it provides a remarkable set of tools for doing just that.

I think why people tend to see Zebra as a thinner sounding synth is because despite what's possible, there are almost no presets showing off it's big/round/full side. I can probably only point to a few and there have probably only been a few times I've made anything that I would describe that way. I've heard tons and tons of presets and videos for it, and played with it for many years now. I see it as primarily useful for thin but cutting/punching sounds. I do like it for analog style punchy arps/sequences but not really into it for huge monosynth sounds or really lush/sparkly type pads etc. I've heard many nice sounds, including great pad presets, but they do always tend to be on the thinner side, so I do understand why it's not regarded as having that same range of lushness as many other synths. But that's ok! Everything synth has it's place.

I'd say those terms are somewhat vague and different people use them a different way... exmatproton gave the example of a classical guitar and said it is not thin. I've heard (and made) many presets in Zebra that are smooth and organic like a classical guitar. Such a sound is very different from a big lead sound that fills the audio spectrum

I think one of the reasons you don't hear as many huge sounds in Zebra is because it does not have unison. Diva with the Triple Osc and a unison of 3 means every note has 9 Osc's! Most of the time when I'm creating sounds in Zebra I am using 1 or 2 Osc's. So I agree that Diva is better for that than Zebra.

That said, an acoustic bass is also not a huge sound... it's a lovely round sound, very organic and warm... that sort of sound Zebra is excellent at.

[Gone soft]

I think one of the reasons you don't hear as many huge sounds in Zebra is because it does not have unison. Diva with the Triple Osc and a unison of 3 means every note has 9 Osc's! Most of the time when I'm creating sounds in Zebra I am using 1 or 2 Osc's. So I agree that Diva is better for that than Zebra.

What do you mean Zebra doesn't have unison, surely Zebra 2 has the equivalent of unison at oscillator level? No unison mode for the filters no, but try the "single / dual / quad / eleven" switch in the Zebra 2 oscillators to stack anyone of the four "regular" ones. Add detuning to taste for degree of detuning between up to eleven copies of the chosen oscillator.

Zebra 2 osc 1 - eleven - detune marked_.jpg

[RedChameau]

Ok, that's cool. Then I would suggest going through some of the great pad patches of Zebra and study them. See how they are set up. Figure out what makes them sound the way they do.

That's what I've been doing before I decided to open this thread, but could not find any pad that would match what I wanted to achieve. (They're all great on many other levels though and are rich learning material).

However, between Howard's mini tutos, 3ee tips and tricks and my own "research", I'm already maturing my programming

PS : I should have specified from the beginning that I started my journey through synthesis with Bazille and ACE (and Diva to a lesser extent). Zebra is the latest U-he synth I bought.
So, going from full modular thinking to an allaround synthesis workhorse could be destabilizing at first and requires to shift your mindset a little

[chk071]

I think one of the reasons you don't hear as many huge sounds in Zebra is because it does not have unison. Diva with the Triple Osc and a unison of 3 means every note has 9 Osc's! Most of the time when I'm creating sounds in Zebra I am using 1 or 2 Osc's. So I agree that Diva is better for that than Zebra.

What do you mean Zebra doesn't have unison, surely Zebra 2 has the equivalent of unison at oscillator level?

As far as i understood it, some people consider unison to be a copy of the full voice, including oscillators and filters. Considering there's so many synths out there, which call it unison on the oscillator level, i tend to consider that as unison, not the whole voice. Many of my synth plugins don't have unison of the full voice, but only do it on oscillator level.

Wikipedia also only speaks about oscillator level: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unison#Synthesizer

[Etienne1973]

In my experience for example driving the input of the XMF-filters (LP4/single/same/analogue) in Zebra2 with the knob Overload makes the sound warmer.

[zerocrossing]

So, I know I love Zebra and whenever I want something fat, analogue, bold, you name it, I just go with Ace or Diva or even TN6 rather than spending way too much time eqing, exciting, chorusing, within and/or outside of Zebra via send tracks etc for an always more disappointing result, because, it's just not the way it's supposed to sound from the beginning.

But there's something somewhat frustrating about it cause you just can't have the fun of zebra OSC's within those other VA uhe plugs.... Vicious circle.

So I was thinking :

• Now that Zebra3 is on "high priority", Zebra2 can, conceptually, be considered as a "vintage" digital synth.
• Diva started with very old dinausors emulations and progressively integrated "younger" beasts with the JP80xx digital OSCs.
• And now my question - sorry for the boring preamble - : wouldn't the "emulation" of Zebra2 OSCs be the logical follow-up of this approach ?
  Aside from the fun concept of some sort of meta UHE plugin, plus, a way to celebrate Zebra3 when it's out ?

Just my few cents. But I needed to share, sorry in advance if it already has been covered !


Cheers !

You should try thinking less.

[Cyoon]

since this new distortion modul i think it's pretty easy to get fat and warm sounds..

[RedChameau]

Just found out that the all pass phaser ( 4 or 8 ) of any VCF module could be you used as an alternative nasty distortion module focused on basses and low-mids.

Set cutoff to max or near, adjust res to 50% or + to taste and voilà.
As long as you take into consideration the fact that it also alters the whole spectrum, you can come up with nice things.
I use it either on a secondary lane not unlike a send effect for a more subtle "boost", or full whack, or just after the tone generator(s) for pure waveshaping purposes, depends on context as always...

[RedChameau]

double

[3ee]

a general tip would be to use distortion, XMF or other filters and other modules within the effect section if you plan to not kb track them as a main example... will save significant CPU with polyphony.

[RedChameau]

Indeed, Thanx 3ee I did not considered the CPU hit issue.
(Aside from KbTrack, there's also the possiblity of using an FMO or a Comb after this boost/waveshaping thing)