KVR Audio

Howard · Post by **Howard** » Mon Sep 17, 2018 10:27 am

Delta Sign wrote:It definitely gets you there. Check out pretty much every single Bigtone preset, for example. He uses this technique a lot.

I hadn't noticed that!

SciFiArtMan · Post by **SciFiArtMan** » Mon Sep 17, 2018 10:29 am

EvilDragon wrote:It's his statement, verbatim. He obviously went through a lot of VSTi and they didn't work out for one reason or another.

Obviously Zimmer's on the take from big syntha (U-He)!

TrojakEW · Post by **TrojakEW** » Mon Sep 17, 2018 10:31 am

Well it may sound weird to praise Zebra since I don't have it and use it but I have used alot Zebralette (mini Zebra). Just one oscillator but ... this thing is incredible.

So if this mini is that cool I can't even imagine what you can do with full Zebra. I'm talking from sound designer perspective and not as preset browser user. Most of time included presets and even third party preset bank doesn't show capability of what instruments can do. It doesn't mean that those presets are bad but it mostly doesn't fit in category somebody else want. And if there is no such a sound you need to make it. Statement that it is not good for this and that style is nonsense. It is matter of person who use it and what he can do with it and not what he expect to synth make for him

.

Zebralette wasn't look that nice at first but when I spend little more time with it I find it very user friendly regarding logic behind sound design. Easy and intuitive and I have worked with many synthesizer and again not as (included) presets user. So I expect same logic in full Zebra too. You can ask me, why do you not upgrade to full Zebra then? Question is simple, because I can do almost everything I need with this mini Zebra (sorry u-he

).

But maybe one day who know I will get full version when I need to make sound/instrument from other dimension.

S0lo · Post by **S0lo** » Mon Sep 17, 2018 10:35 am

EvilDragon wrote:FM itself isn't particularly hard on CPU, but combating the aliasing it can create is.

The thing with FM aliasing is that cleaning it is like trying to polish a car wreck. If you reach the aliasing point in FM, It's already so filthy and inharmonic that removing the aliasing would hardly make any difference. And even it did, the difference can be to a less interesting sound. To me, it's just a waste of CPU.

voidhead23 · Post by **voidhead23** » Mon Sep 17, 2018 10:39 am

Urs wrote:And if you listen to the sounds used in Dunkirk, Inception, the recent Blade Runner...

i would shell out another chunk of cash for those presets...

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Mon Sep 17, 2018 10:42 am

SciFiArtMan wrote:
EvilDragon wrote:It's his statement, verbatim. He obviously went through a lot of VSTi and they didn't work out for one reason or another.
Obviously Zimmer's on the take from big syntha (U-He)!

LOL. He bought so many licenses (plus dinners/tickets/whatnot) by now, I can't count. He also sent me vintage analogue synthesizers to analyse, so I can improve things.

If you think we gave him freebees or money to buy his opinion, think again.

I take quite a bit of offense here because we are the company that doesn't plaster their marketing with paid for statements. You'll literally find no artist statement bullshitting you on our website, and we have a big website with lots of space.

Howard · Post by **Howard** » Mon Sep 17, 2018 10:42 am

S0lo wrote:
EvilDragon wrote:FM itself isn't particularly hard on CPU, but combating the aliasing it can create is.
The thing with FM aliasing is that cleaning it is like trying to polish a car wreck. If you reach the aliasing point in FM, It's already so filthy and inharmonic that removing the aliasing would hardly make any difference. And even it did, the difference can be to a less interesting sound. To me, it's just a waste of CPU.

You're right about that, but EvilDragon wrote "combating". I assume he means spending CPU on guarding against aliasing so that there is so little "car wreck" that it doesn't require polishing.

recursive one · Post by **recursive one** » Mon Sep 17, 2018 10:46 am

Urs wrote: Zebra itself may be old, but it's not outdated by any means. And if you listen to the sounds used in Dunkirk, Inception, the recent Blade Runner, even the good old 2006 Dark Knight ones. Or half of those choirs in Angels & Demons. Which synth is gonna deliver those instead? Certainly not any of those mentioned here.

Thing is, it more and more occurs to me that the reason Zebra is underrated for some musical styles, has nothing to do with Zebra but everything with the people who want their tools to be a certain way - i.e. unlike Zebra.

There is no "one size fits all" synth. Of course, these Blade Runner sounds are awesome but I don't need such sounds for my own music.

I think I could use Zebra2 as the only synth for trance/psytrance if I had to, but I have other options that get the job done faster and in a more comfortable way.

Anyway, if Zebra3 is going to have the same sound quality as Diva/Bazille/Repro, i.e. if it is capable of having the same presence, fatness and integrity in its sound it will be a perfect tool for the above genres.

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Mon Sep 17, 2018 10:52 am

voidhead23 wrote:
Urs wrote:And if you listen to the sounds used in Dunkirk, Inception, the recent Blade Runner...
i would shell out another chunk of cash for those presets...

I would love to publish them, but... some things are meant to remain secret.

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Mon Sep 17, 2018 10:55 am

recursive one wrote:Of course, these Blade Runner sounds are awesome but I don't need such sounds for my own music.

A hell fo a lot are titled "EDM this" and "EDM that". There are those dives, those risers, those basses, those leads, all of it. It's quite spectacular how "Zebra can't do this" they are.

voidhead23 · Post by **voidhead23** » Mon Sep 17, 2018 10:57 am

recursive one wrote:
Urs wrote:Anyway, if Zebra3 is going to have the same sound quality as Diva/Bazille/Repro, i.e. if it is capable of having the same presence, fatness and integrity in its sound it will be a perfect tool for the above genres.

i hope not. You just listed u-he's three heaviest hitters of my CPU, and one of the things that makes Zebra so useful to me is its CPU efficiency (since i use the CPU shithouse that is Ableton Live) while being insanely flexible and easy to program. ZebraHZ was a nice demonstration to me of what would happen if Zebra3 went down that road, and as a result, i usually just use regular Zebra.

anomandaris1 · Post by **anomandaris1** » Mon Sep 17, 2018 10:57 am

I think that developers, not only u-he, should release more edm preset expansions. Every time I see a new edm preset soundbank, it's Sylenth, Serum, Massive, Spire or some Refx product. I guess that (in theory) "supersynths" like Zebra and similar can spawn whole new edm genres - some kind of hybrids between organic/realistic type sounds and more synthetic/regular simple synth sounds.

ATS · Post by **ATS** » Mon Sep 17, 2018 11:06 am

There are a lot of good EDM banks for Zebra out there.

Delta Sign · Post by **Delta Sign** » Mon Sep 17, 2018 11:10 am

Howard should make a few EDM presets for the next update

Edit: There are some trancy presets in Bigtones Chronopheres soundbank: https://u-he.com/songs/zebra2/bigtone-c ... qleads.mp3

How anyone can say this synth sounds "thin" or something is beyond me, honestly.

S0lo · Post by **S0lo** » Mon Sep 17, 2018 11:30 am

Howard wrote:
S0lo wrote:
EvilDragon wrote:FM itself isn't particularly hard on CPU, but combating the aliasing it can create is.
The thing with FM aliasing is that cleaning it is like trying to polish a car wreck. If you reach the aliasing point in FM, It's already so filthy and inharmonic that removing the aliasing would hardly make any difference. And even it did, the difference can be to a less interesting sound. To me, it's just a waste of CPU.
You're right about that, but EvilDragon wrote "combating". I assume he means spending CPU on guarding against aliasing so that there is so little "car wreck" that it doesn't require polishing.

Maybe I shouldn't have said "polish". It is pretty much a preventive measure as in "guard". Bad metaphor

Most of aliasing in FM happens when feedback is used. I'm sure your aware. If we completely strip the aliasing part from it, it will end up sounding just like a wavetable. Like a static arbitrary waveform, usually a nasty one. (hence "car wreck"). Which we might as well just do with a wavetable. Much more CPU efficient. The aliasing part in FM is what adds the dirty movement to it. Which at least, is doing something different than a wavetable.

Notice FM is usually very clean when feedback is not used. Unless you push it really hard up to nyquest. In both cases, I see no big point in aliasing free FM. It's probably more viable to just limit feedback to a workable level. Which is what I believe the DX7 did (not sure). Still, I do agree with EvilDragon that it is CPU intensive to handle that kind of aliasing, if we wanted to.

Your opinion about Zebra 2