Zebra 3 feature suggestions

[Urs]

So release is planned at summer?

I'll start working on it pretty much straight after Uhbik 2.0 comes out - which is my next project after Hive 2.1. We'll need at least 6 months without interruptions/distractions before we can start polishing things and before we can start building up a proper user interface and a factory library - which will probably take another few months. Fingers crossed!

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

So summer 2022! That counts as a summer release.

[Shiek927]

So release is planned at summer?

I'll start working on it pretty much straight after Uhbik 2.0 comes out - which is my next project after Hive 2.1. We'll need at least 6 months without interruptions/distractions before we can start polishing things and before we can start building up a proper user interface and a factory library - which will probably take another few months. Fingers crossed!

So Summer 2011 or 2022?

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

So release is planned at summer?

I'll start working on it pretty much straight after Uhbik 2.0 comes out - which is my next project after Hive 2.1. We'll need at least 6 months without interruptions/distractions before we can start polishing things and before we can start building up a proper user interface and a factory library - which will probably take another few months. Fingers crossed!

So Summer 2011 or 2022?

Urs has basically got to build a new synth from scratch, and needs at least six months from the release date of something that may not be completed for a couple more months [Uhbik 2.0], so I think we can safely rule out summer of 2021. Just trying to be realistic here. Let's say Hive 2.1 is officially out in March, Uhbik 2.0 follows in May or June, then add 6 months, now we're at winter 2021/2022 before there's anything to show. And software development always takes longer than anticipated as things crop up, so let's say winter 2022 before maybe there's an alpha. Then throw in some alpha testing, followed by an internal beta, followed by a public beta, which will probably be a long one as we all jockey for wishlist items to be incorporated...then preset design, manual/website creation (some of which happens in parallel).

This is just my own conjucture from the outside, non-employee/customer only, but yeah...summer 2021 just doesn't seem realistic. Whereas spring or summer 2022 seems far more realistic to me just kinda knowing how things go.

[Shiek927]

So release is planned at summer?

I'll start working on it pretty much straight after Uhbik 2.0 comes out - which is my next project after Hive 2.1. We'll need at least 6 months without interruptions/distractions before we can start polishing things and before we can start building up a proper user interface and a factory library - which will probably take another few months. Fingers crossed!

So Summer 2011 or 2022?

Urs has basically got to build a new synth from scratch, and needs at least six months from the release date of something that may not be completed for a couple more months [Uhbik 2.0], so I think we can safely rule out summer of 2021. Just trying to be realistic here. Let's say Hive 2.1 is officially out in March, Uhbik 2.0 follows in May or June, then add 6 months, now we're at winter 2021/2022 before there's anything to show. And software development always takes longer than anticipated as things crop up, so let's say winter 2022 before maybe there's an alpha. Then throw in some alpha testing, followed by an internal beta, followed by a public beta, which will probably be a long one as we all jockey for wishlist items to be incorporated...then preset design, manual/website creation (some of which happens in parallel).

This is just my own conjucture from the outside, non-employee/customer only, but yeah...summer 2021 just doesn't seem realistic. Whereas spring or summer 2022 seems far more realistic to me just kinda knowing how things go.

sounds good to me!

[cantaloupe]

Zebra 3 seems to be that carrot that is always out of reach, fueling a desire for other u-he products in the interim. I am wondering if it is even economically smart to actually release it, rather let people feel that it is "just around the corner" forever.

People talked exactly like this in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and now in 2021. Thats an insane amount of time. If it takes more than a decade to develop a new synth, there must be reasons for it - reasons of priority. And what decides priority?

From a post last week by a Z2 sound designer:
"Hybrids soundset was released in 2011 but removed from sale shortly after because i was informed that Zebra 3 was on its way and presets from Zebra 2 were not directly compatible with Zebra 3."

2011! On its way!
When the language is precisely the same in 2011, 2013, 2017, as in 2021 - why should it be different now?
IMO, at a certain point, it is almost bad form to continue to mislead like that.
If Zebra 3 is released within the next 3 years, i'll donate my Bazille license to the first one who messages me!

(If this seems snarky or indignant, it really isn't meant so serious, but my point still stands.)

[Urs]

I always felt quite ashamed that my October 2012 posting was easily misread as "it's coming soon", and then I never had the chance to follow through with it.

I just hope we can make it less than 10 years from "initially admitting that it is a thing" to "here it is".

[Shiek927]

In Urs' defense, Zebra fans are almost like sports fans. Even within the last page when Hanz Meyzer mentioned a summer release, it was taken as 'this year or next year' even though nobody from u-he said anything about a summer release at all. Mind you, I'm including myself there! there's a real fever for any Z3 news and I don't think this is something that anybody can really predict or workaround.

There's blame to go around and (not to imply anyone is doing it, of course) finger-pointing gets nowhere. What happened happened and the past ten years have seen all sorts of innovations and synths from u-he and elsewhere. I'm sure Z3 will come out and the community will have many years to enjoy it.

[Dirtgrain]

I'm rooting for you Urs, and the things you have done with Zebra to date have been fine by me.

[Shiek927]

This isn't really a suggestion, but Rhizomatic, a new synth by the creator from Absynth, was recently released and it sounds incredibly organic. It might be something worth looking into for inspiration

Other recent hardware synths in the past few years, like Novation Peak/Summit and those fancy NCO oscillators, Waldorf Quantum and those Kernals, Roland JD-XA, might also be a good place to look for inspiration.

Analog/Digital hybrids are starting to become more commonplace -- extremely high-rez oscillators with anti-aliasing running through very analogue filters and VCA -- and it's fun wondering what sort of really innovative things Zebra3 will have beyond the current feature-set being upgraded to a higher-quality sound .

[spunkmuffin]

If Urs added every feature and acted on every suggestion in this thread Zebra would be hooorrible!

[EvilDragon]

This isn't really a suggestion, but Rhizomatic, a new synth by the creator from Absynth, was recently released and it sounds incredibly organic. It might be something worth looking into for inspiration

It's called Plasmonic.

[Shiek927]

This isn't really a suggestion, but Rhizomatic, a new synth by the creator from Absynth, was recently released and it sounds incredibly organic. It might be something worth looking into for inspiration

It's called Plasmonic.

Oops!! you're right!!

[Shiek927]

This isn't really a feature suggestion so much as just as theory on how I think Zebra3 will fall in terms of sound-quality versus CPU intensity. I think it's gonna be in the middle and be better-sounding than Hive and Bazille, but not as much as Diva and Repro. The reasons are because of what each synth is: the reason Diva, and especially Repro, sound so good is because they are extremely simple synths that are made to have the highest-possible sound. They are also referencing real-world synths. Zebra though is neither: it's a purely digital synth with no real-world counterpart, so I'm not sure how something like component-level modeling would even work if there's nothing to reference. It's also immensely more complicated as a semi-modular synth, and it's all in stereo, which makes for vastly more CPU compensation. Hive sits on the other end of the spectrum and is designed explicitly to be very simple and CPU efficient at the same time for fast work, so it's arguably the "weakest" sounding synth even though anyone who has used it know it sounds tremendous.

So I think Zebra will be in the middle and end up being the best sounding purely digital-synth with a moderately amount of CPU compensation given the amount of modules it has, but not as 'good' as Diva or Repro.

It's not impossible, of course, to simply hot-glue Repro's filter onto Zebra3 and do what ZebraHZ did. But I think the results would be pretty similar in that any Diva/Repro filter's attached to Z3 would be strictly in mono-only and implemented in a way that shows it wasn't part of the original plan. Again, this is all due to CPU compensation in which, a synth as architecturally complicated as Zebra meshing with filters as high-quality as Diva/Repro, makes for an insane amount of CPU consumption.

Sure, you can just say to upgrade your processors and go forward with it. If there was a 'Zebra3HZ', people would buy it and I'm sure they would like it, but I'm kind of hoping this time around that there won't be any spin-off versions of Z3? It's a synth that's been waiting in the wings for almost ten years now and hopefully it can be something that everyone, including Hans Zimmer, enjoys without anyone requesting a special variant when it took as long as it did.

So, given what Zebra is and the amount of modules, not to mention that it's a purely digital synth with no real-world counterpart, I'm guesstimating it's gonna be the best sounding digital synth from u-he (more-so than Hive or Bazille), with the appropriate amount of CPU consumption, but not as 'realistic' as Diva or Repro

[nilhartman]

Why would Z3 not sound better than Repro ? It'll sound different obviously, but I bet that not having the constraint to imitate synth X or Y is incredibly liberating. Add all the knowledge acumulated from coding Repro, Bazille, H2 etc... and we could have a synth that sound absolutely fantastic in its own right.
I for one am drooling already trying to imagine how even the simplest patches will sound with Z3.