Zebra PC blog

[danielmm]

Aaaah, thx Urs....

that feels much better!

dano

[Midiworks]

All this sounds very promissing !
I am quite currious.

[Urs]

I'm curious as well

Urs

[danielmm]

OK Urs, it's not Friday yet but it's getting close.
any news on that Zebra for PC??

dano

[Urs]

Ok, it's not Friday, but here's the latest:

As you might have seen, the new engine is on a good way. It's out in the wild, driving the Filterscape preview.

Filterscape is in preview state, because some features of the engine are not yet fully implemented, such as MidiLearn, preset management, module presets etc. There are also some bugs to be solved which honestly double the amount of my hair turning grey every other day.

Nevertheless, Filterscape shows some cool things that will also find their way into Z2, i.e. the EQ side of things, the idea of snapshot morphing and a visual feedback engine that won't bring your cpu down even if 20 VU meters etc. need to be drawn frequently. This is probably one of the first plugin user interface technologies that do cpu load balancing

One of the really good things is, despite the complexity of Filterscape (499 parameters, over 550 GUI Elements), dealing with platform specific things still happens in roughly 2-4 cpp-files. These files are admittedly not the shortest I've ever written, but they're also not rockit science (functions like DrawLine, DrawImage, openTextInput, openFile, fireParameterChangeEvent etc.), so, once the engine is fully implemented and stable as hell, any sort of conversion (writing the Interface to VST, writing the Interface to Windows UI stuff) should be easy to accomplish!

And yes, I've promised somewhere else that I make myself a certain x-mas gift of the weirdest kind: A pc.

Cheers,

Urs

[Beardedone]

Yay!

[Sargon]

And yes, I've promised somewhere else that I make myself a certain x-mas gift of the weirdest kind: A pc.

Now that's really weird ... Don't forget to place it in your junk room before someone may notice you have one.

I have bought myself Zebra last weekend. This is something _I_ would call a gift!

[Urs]

And yes, I've promised somewhere else that I make myself a certain x-mas gift of the weirdest kind: A pc.

Now that's really weird ... Don't forget to place it in your junk room before someone may notice you have one.

Well, I will just not let any visitors in my room anymore. I'll label it *company secrets*...

I have bought myself Zebra last weekend. This is something _I_ would call a gift!

Yep! Hope you enjoy it!

Urs

[Sargon]

Yep! Hope you enjoy it!

More and more. I am growing into it. The first days after I have discovered the demo (many weeks ago) I didn't had any clue how to make anything usefull out of it. But in the last few weeks I have learned how to build simple patches (with the configuration after "init"), and I think they are getting better every time I try again. (I rarely make more than 2 patches a day, and not every day, so it will take its time ... ). The next weeks will show if I am able to build more complex patches.

BTW, what do these "delay" module and the "scope" module actually do?

[Urs]

BTW, what do these "delay" module and the "scope" module actually do?

That's quite simple (hopefully):

The delay/comb modules are essentially delays that have very short delay times. When set to "50.00", the tuning of the delay is exactly that of the note you play. At "0.00" it's one octave below, at "100.00" it's one octave above.

So, when modulating the tune a little bit, you get a flanger/chorus like effect *per voice*, with the actual sound depending on the feedback.

Now, the clou is, you can add the accompanying "aux" modules anywhere in the signal path. These just output the delay feedback somewhere else, and *bingo* it's possible to insert it anywhere *before* the actual delay/comb unit. With that, you can create circuits that are typical for physical modelling techniques, like inserting a lowpass filter (best: LP Allround) into the delays feedback. If you look at the infamous "flute" preset, there's a bandpass filter that does the trick (Caution: keep the resonance of the filters *low*)

A special setting ("Grain Flange") doesn't let them act as delays, but abuse their data model for a grainy (= crappy ) type of pitch shifter. I think, in that case the aux modules don't do anything.

Many presets by Biomechnoid use the delays for weird lo-fi effects, while some püresets in the Factory folder use them for non-typical sounds, such as the flute, the plucked strings or that weird flanged saw bass.

The scope modules don't do much. They measure the current signal level at the place they are inserted. When you click at the "level" on top of Zebra's gui (typically showing Zebra's output level), you switch between the normal vu-meters and the scopes. They are useful for situations where stuff gets too complex and you want to know where the noise comes from

Cheers,

Urs

[Beardedone]

Urs wrote:
And yes, I've promised somewhere else that I make myself a certain x-mas gift of the weirdest kind: A pc.


Now that's really weird ... Don't forget to place it in your junk room before someone may notice you have one.

I have bought myself Zebra last weekend. This is something _I_ would call a gift!

Now that's not PC!

If you get a Carillon Audio Systems PC maybe you might want to ditch your Mac!

[Urs]

If you get a Carillon Audio Systems PC maybe you might want to ditch your Mac!

Wow... you get two dual cpu G5s for one of these...

Urs

[Beardedone]

Maybe but Carillons are rock sold and sure look better than any MAC IMO. I have had mine for over two years and I have klutzed it to death and it hasn't even hiccuped. Quality like this is rare these days. In the past I have burned out several Macs just running normal word processing and graphing software. Not impressed with their quality. My wife has gone through two already.

[Urs]

Hehehe, well, my mileage varies

Urs

[Beardedone]

I sure hope so. My confidence in Apple products is completely shot.