Zebra 2.9 released

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Would it be possible to reduce the output volume on the factory presets?

Hi Evil Twin,
that already happened for this 2.9 release. Off the top of my head I'd estimate that roughly half of the factory library was edited to reduce the output volume so that the sound wouldn't exceed the 0dB line with regular playing. It's still possible that full XY-abuse or triggering 20 notes in your DAW might still do that, of course.
Did you go through the edited factory library yet?

Viktor

I went through several but found some were still a bit hot. As I notice more I can begin making note of which ones are still a bit too hot. Velocity seems to play a bit part in getting a preset to clip.

[GruvSyco]

If you have a coupon code, you can use it towards any u-he synth, effect or soundset. Including The Dark Zebra. The only things the coupons won't work for are bundles, merch and transfer tokens.

Sad face... I would have immediately dropped in on the soundset bundles. Also would have liked to do all 3 bundles. I get it though.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Would it be possible to reduce the output volume on the factory presets?

Hi Evil Twin,
that already happened for this 2.9 release. Off the top of my head I'd estimate that roughly half of the factory library was edited to reduce the output volume so that the sound wouldn't exceed the 0dB line with regular playing. It's still possible that full XY-abuse or triggering 20 notes in your DAW might still do that, of course.
Did you go through the edited factory library yet?

Viktor

I went through several but found some were still a bit hot. As I notice more I can begin making note of which ones are still a bit too hot. Velocity seems to play a bit part in getting a preset to clip.

Replying to myself, but also as an FYI to Viktor, I may have been in the folder 4. Keys instead of 4. Pianoids. Now that I'm consciously aware of this, I'm seeing better levels. I don't remember how the English and German versions of the folder names got there, but I think it's been there for a while (don't remember if I did that or at one point a change was made).

[Viktor [TUC]]

Replying to myself, but also as an FYI to Viktor, I may have been in the folder 4. Keys instead of 4. Pianoids. Now that I'm consciously aware of this, I'm seeing better levels.

My guess is that you renamed the folder at some point, and the 2.9 update didn't overwrite it but placed the level-balanced "Pianoids" folder next to it during installation. So your Keys folder contains the old loud versions, the new Pianiods contains the more balanced versions of the presets.
They should be okay now, I hope.

Viktor

[EvilDragon]

I would definitely suggest to rename the folders to something that is more immediately obvious to people.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I would definitely suggest to rename the folders to something that is more immediately obvious to people.

While I obviously agree, the problem with doing that is you'd end up with duplicate folders like I did. Would greatly benefit new users though.

[Viktor [TUC]]

I would definitely suggest to rename the folders to something that is more immediately obvious to people.

That would "break" too much, I'm afraid.
We won't keep it for any potential future version upgrades of course, but I can't change it for Z2 anymore. I also don't want to because I like that playfulness.
Is it really that obscure? Most contain almost the entire word of what it really is, Bass..., Lead..., Piano..., Org..., Lu(oo)p..., Perk...
Certainly not an uncrackable code.
In any case, it'll stay in Zebra2, but in Zebra2 only, I promise.

Viktor

[waltercruz]

A minor issue: When browsing presets, if the preset starts with 2.0 (or a number, need to test), the presets doesn't display the selected background. The bank from plugmon, has a lot of presets like this. Well. there's a weird jump when I try to access these presets with the arrow keys too.

[btw]

...there's a weird jump when I try to access these presets with the arrow keys too.

I’m also getting this behavior. Seems to happen when periods or commas are present in the preset name.

[surreal]

I already have.. diva, hive, repro and ace.. does it make sense to get zebra as my next synth or should I rather look at Bazille?

The genre of music I want to create is pop, synthwave and cinematic music

[surreal]

Or should I get something like Sytrus rather

[Hanz Meyzer]

Hm, well I don't really know how to capture this, will that work using a video capture software? As I said, it is not the end of the world, but I cannot say that it looks like GPU acceleration. With 2.8, it looks to me like at least at scaling 100% (at 4k), the gui was a tiny bit snappier, now it feels like 120% all the time, slightly a bit slower. Surely I am somebody which seems to be very sensitive to framerates (I also clearly can differ between 60 and 100 Hz), but my argument here always is that a smooth framerate / low lag actually highly improves the user/workflow experience a lot. And I think I am right that the framerate actually matters a lot for live capturing/recording mouse-controlled gui controls movements. At least I coded such a tool for Renoise, and it clearly depends on the framerate of the plugin (the framerate of the plugin in Renoise actually also depends on the buffersize, since audio and gui are not process separated). And I think it is not different in Bitwig. Or do you fire interpolated VST parameter changes in-between the gui frames? I don't believe that. Summa summarum, the higher the resolution, the more fun. That's why I am so anal about this, if it looks to me that the framerate now actually dropped a bit. But please do not feel forced to anything, it is not meant as critic on your very outstanding products. So there is no need for anybody to jump in to fight for UHe, since the reputation is not questionable at all. I still can use your products, and also won't die if the knob recording is a bit lower in resolution. That said, let's say Falcon in OpenGL mode, Melda GUIs, Avenger, all those plugins run in nice 60fps and are a bliss in usage and recording that's why. I know you have a limited amount of time and surely do not want to waste your time with Apple's extremely bad information about GPU acceleration in 2D. Seems to be a mysterium still, even to the JUCE developers.

I will try to make some recordings. Which app can I use for it? In 10.13.4, video recording is not yet included. Also I think it is a bit hard to see the difference on a tiny knob for people which are not sensitive.

[diaper@ky]

Thanks for the new oscillators.
My only concerns are sound enhancements and new additions.
I just play these and spend little time recording or staring at the GUI.

Looking forward to Z3 and those better than Diva Filters I heard about.

Thanks Urs

[Urs]

Hm, well I don't really know how to capture this, will that work using a video capture software? As I said, it is not the end of the world, but I cannot say that it looks like GPU acceleration. With 2.8, it looks to me like at least at scaling 100% (at 4k), the gui was a tiny bit snappier, now it feels like 120% all the time, slightly a bit slower. Surely I am somebody which seems to be very sensitive to framerates (I also clearly can differ between 60 and 100 Hz), but my argument here always is that a smooth framerate / low lag actually highly improves the user/workflow experience a lot. And I think I am right that the framerate actually matters a lot for live capturing/recording mouse-controlled gui controls movements. At least I coded such a tool for Renoise, and it clearly depends on the framerate of the plugin (the framerate of the plugin in Renoise actually also depends on the buffersize, since audio and gui are not process separated). And I think it is not different in Bitwig. Or do you fire interpolated VST parameter changes in-between the gui frames? I don't believe that. Summa summarum, the higher the resolution, the more fun. That's why I am so anal about this, if it looks to me that the framerate now actually dropped a bit. But please do not feel forced to anything, it is not meant as critic on your very outstanding products. So there is no need for anybody to jump in to fight for UHe, since the reputation is not questionable at all. I still can use your products, and also won't die if the knob recording is a bit lower in resolution. That said, let's say Falcon in OpenGL mode, Melda GUIs, Avenger, all those plugins run in nice 60fps and are a bliss in usage and recording that's why. I know you have a limited amount of time and surely do not want to waste your time with Apple's extremely bad information about GPU acceleration in 2D. Seems to be a mysterium still, even to the JUCE developers.

I will try to make some recordings. Which app can I use for it? In 10.13.4, video recording is not yet included. Also I think it is a bit hard to see the difference on a tiny knob for people which are not sensitive.

Thing is, there is no framerate at all. Unlike OpenGL or Metal based UIs, we only update the rectangles which are "dirty", and we do so when they become dirty. When there's mousing we counted as many as 150 updates a second for the moused control. When there's no mousing we rely on a timer which is conforming to plug-in standards and which I think is set to somewhat between 30 and 50 Hertz, I don't really recall.

Also, as I said, not everything is hardware accelerated, Quartz does whatever it does. The "sluggish UI" problem we previously encountered from Mojave on was related to bitmaps not being cached on the GPU anymore. That's fixed - we won't go back to what it was before.

[Hanz Meyzer]

I sent Viktor now a video. But maybe you could consider/find a way how to actively force GPU acceleration or so, or adding some way of drawing as Apple it loves to see? Or optimizing the drawing algorithm? Use another PNG lib? Maybe Quartz also now is considered to be outdated? I understand your situation. Ok then let's move on