One Synth Challenge #104 - Zebralette by u-he (Photonic Wins!)

[stunkit]

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Ok now few poison questions / things I don't get =)

1. why there is no link to this thread on https://sites.google.com/site/kvrosc/osc-104-zebra is it so difficult to put it there to not manually search it (I've lost on this froum and never watch other threads than this, osc )?
2. Why there is no results or links to, at least, SC playlists related to the previous challenges? Do we really need that google page if there is no actual information just contests list.
3. Why is it Zebra Challenge if it actually is Zebralette challenge. Or why do both, what the point?
4. this synth was a subject of challenge 32. Aren't there tones of yet another synths to choose from?
5. can voting results be putted into the first forum post after 15th of a next month? Why to lurk through the whole thread to search it.
6. can the next synth be a subject of voting to choose at least out of three or four variants, for those who care?

What I am saying we need to improve the UX of the OSC to make it more friendly and logic. Cuz now everything is scattered all over the internet and causes butthurt to anyone except oldfags.

Why not host it on GitHub pages at all, where any volunteer could maintain or keep things up to date? At least it will be not blocked in China and out of policy. Who knows who will block Google next. SC is also blocked in china, but there is not alternative for now.

[Dee.P.Tree]

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 1&t=203929

Randomizer utility for U-he Zebralette and others. May be useful to some of us.

[Taron]

Boy, oh, boy, you need to work on your attitude, though, stunkit, honestly! This is not your TV competition where the poor sheepish contestants are asked to say "I'm not here to make any friends". You call people "oldfags", really? Here's my suggestion: Edit your post, edit your tone and you might just be forgiven. Here's how:
1. Don't ask pressuring questions, but make some friendly suggestions instead! I know that during voting time it has a proper link. Anyway, KVR / Forum / Instruments /... and there you are! No need to be a
"homosexual senior" to find out about it, but I'm not even sure, if that was beneficial for that search?

If you ask questions, ask them from the position that you're actually in, which is: The Beggar! OSC is not selling anything, it's an offer, hosted by a brilliantly diligent and patient BJ, who's keeping this up for years now, but who's always ready to listen to requests and suggestions. He has to go out of his way to make them happen, though, so... some courtesy from the users is really advised!
2. It would be great, if there was a SC playlist back on the google OSC page like it used to be. Even if it wasn't sorted by results, but sorted would be ideal, of course.
3. Cry me a river!
4. There are only very few brilliant VSTs for free and after a set of exotic experiments it's always nice to come back to more excellent synths we may know already, just to relax and have a fun month again. It brings balance and happens more or less regularly that synths get used again.
5. That's a great question I fully agree with, though! I was going to suggest that for months and months, but never got around to it... Good one! (Voting Results on 1st page of the OSC thread, when all is done)
6. no! Must and should be more or less a surprise! That's a big part of the fair "fun" in it!

[stunkit]

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Oldfag is not an offense. Is it? IMHO the challenge loses it's attention constantly, at least doesn't become more popular for sure. It's 8 years old already.
Aren't you agree that most of people here are from an old times and the challenge doesn't attract newfags that could say a new word in this contest? If I saw the current state of things 4 years ago I first met it, I would move on. It has no aesthetic attraction to me. Not because OSC became worse but because it doesn't change. Did anybody raised a questions about changes \ improvements \ changing a paradigm. Nowadays being the same means regression. The only change I see is a voting website that replaced Google Docs.

If you ask questions, ask them from the position that you're actually in, which is: The Beggar!

A beggar of whom? Does we have a maintainer? Does we really are a community or just a bunch of people that came here to post their track and leave.
Event BB forum in 2017 are paint to my eyes because it's really hard to keep track on what's going on and what related to what.

Tones of things can be improved
- why not make the whole OSC based on onesynthchallenge.org domain that host voting page now. Make some simple but understandable engine for that purpose. With tree like comment system (reddit like)
- host there history and migrate from google.sites
- add results and leader board
- buy advertisements to promote it
- host a next synth suggestion page
- host a from for a developer to suggest his VSTi
- improve voting system
- involve big companies to make something big like CM competition once
- donations page
- collect presets for the developers to ship with their plugins and deploy it on a synth's kvr database page

And make it easier to suggest a pull request for all that stuff. TO SEE WHO THE BOSS, for god's sake.
Now OSC looks like a lonely boat in the ocean with foggy future.

And my post is not a suggestion. It's a rant. I am not waiting something gonna change. I want to show that there are dissatisfied people who does care.

I've been promoting KVR OSC for years among my friends and nobody consider it worth of attention. Despite this is the greatest way to improve yourself as an artist, imho. At least because it has deadlines.
I think the reason is that current platform and routine are far beyond nowadays UX and convenience. Like Linux — for geeks. Never polished but works.

PS: challenge page in an old days. Less unnecessary info no one ever read, more useful links.

[Taron]

You do have some very nice ideas that sound great, Stun. It's always easier to ride on the back of a big site like KVR, though, rather than trying to establish a brand new domain. Naturally, it is possible, but with only one focus, advertisers likely have no reason to expect enough traffic to make sufficient offers. Certainly worth a try, but I'd be worried that this might have the opposite effect and could harm the stability of the OSC instead.
As far as I can tell, the OSC keeps rolling steadily from what I can see since I've joined. Depending on the synth or the occasion, we have up to 60+ artists for those months. I constantly see new people joining, too. I can't see any reason to panic like that, you know.

I'm sure it's very selfish of me, but I'm very happy with how things are going here and it has become a beautiful part of my life to be part of the OSC. Surely some things can use some improvement and shouldn't be too much of an effort, but I totally trust Brian to know what he can and wants to do.

There's also something endearing about the occasional quirkiness of it all, but that mostly comes just from us, really. It's not easy to wrangle such a diverse crowd. We obviously come from all ages and all walks of life and likely cover most human archetypes when it comes to characters, hahaha.

But all those things should MOST CERTAINLY go into the GENERAL DISCUSSION thread!

Anyway, "fag" is hardly a cute way of calling people. It's disrespectful and arrogant. "farts" would be almost fine, I imagine, but possibly just "veterans" would be totally perfect and most understandable, how about that?!

[] Peter:H []

Please don't kill the messenger - the link of the synth picture on the first page still takes you to the noisetar page.

[RuediRena]

snares are a curious challenge for me thus far

Hey Taron, hey guys!

I am tempted to join in this month. If so then certainly not with "ordinary" patches . So here is a little present you might use as a starting point:

RuediSnare1 for download

Tune it with FX2 and if you want to use reverb try U-He's Protoverb with Drumroom1 preset and reduced wet amount.

Greets
Ruedi

[stunkit]

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You are certainly right Taron. Wise words.

Meh, 'fags' - that's a /b slang. I really didn't consider it as offensive. Didn't want to offense anybody. Your variants are much better though

[] Peter:H []

First thing to do in any case, coming from a "lazy guys handbook": ask google for everything and it must be free...
Oh, look! Surprise, there's some presets available: https://www.u-he.com/PatchLib/zebra.html#zlette

If you hit this page: Search for "wav2" and you even find some wavetable even for zebralette.
I think you can have a pretty good white noise for snares this way...heheheh...
Have tried for instance: https://www.u-he.com/PatchLib/presets/m ... tables.zip
Open the archive and store it in zebraletts wavetable folder and voila there you go with new wavetables.

I bet with wav2zebra somebody could do some white and pink noise for snaredrums.

Have fun
Peter

[Taron]

Ah, Thanks, Ruedi, that's awesome! Very cool starting point, too! A bit challenging to work dynamics into it, but the general idea is brilliant!!!
You Rock!

stunkit, it's all good!

Peter, thanks! Though, ironically I'm most looking forward to creating my own wavetables. It takes a moment to realize how to put everything into action, especially that FX section, which is where the real magic happens, I find.

[] Peter:H []

Funny, and that's here probably the tool for creating your own Wavetables: Anyone can give it a try and create some whitenoise for us?
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 9#p6147139

Drum Patches: https://www.u-he.com/PatchLib/presets/z ... dities.zip

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My point here is: We have here a wavetable synth, that is basically some sort of "sampling" capability and it seems easily accessible, or am i wrong? Could it be, that I can go and create sounds elsewhere and kind of export it to zebralette? Probably - I haven't checked that out - you can even create stuff with AudioTerm?

Can anybody help me - where is the thin border between creativity and cheating in such an setup?
Will reply later, because I go and export stuff from Tone2 Icarus and try to import it in Zebralette Just kidding...

Best Regards
Peter

[Taron]

Hah, hmm...yeah, I would think there is no thin line whatsoever. You'd be showing off Zebralette's abilities.
Anything "within reason" should be ok. You won't be able to have a rapper in there, I'd imagine...or would you?!?

[Taron]

Here's a little choir patch I just made.... dang, I'm saying... dang!

[bjporter]

Ah yeah, that was a link to a different page. Not sure what else you're talking about @stunkit, but thanks for the heads up. It's fixed

[mmGhost]

so, is Zebralette the synth or is it Zebra? or both...?