Improvements!

[Urs]

Urs, can we get some way to change the pitch tracking in Diva?

Its currently too rigid, all the key are centered to their relative pitch variating by the voice detune parameter, that's not how some analogue synths behave, some have a tendency towards flat or sharp the higher or lower you go on the keyboard.

Best regards

We've considered adding .tun files for this purpose. We didn't because if some presets used them some people would consider this a bug. Also because Diva and MIDI controllers have a far larger range than any of the original hardware synths (3-5 octaves), and there's a good chance that wherever the octave switch of the MIDI controller is positioned, the whole tuning will be off by a few semitones.

It his much more sensible to do such tuning for hardware keyboards with a range of 73 or 88 keys, such as is common for piano models afaik.

Nevertheless, tuning files would easily support your request. Our online tools have a generator for this, if someone happened to know the offsets in Cent that are desired, it's as easy as filling in a spreadsheet:

https://u-he.com/tools/

[Lucastyle]

Urs, can we get some way to change the pitch tracking in Diva?

Its currently too rigid, all the key are centered to their relative pitch variating by the voice detune parameter, that's not how some analogue synths behave, some have a tendency towards flat or sharp the higher or lower you go on the keyboard.

Best regards

We've considered adding .tun files for this purpose. We didn't because if some presets used them some people would consider this a bug. Also because Diva and MIDI controllers have a far larger range than any of the original hardware synths (3-5 octaves), and there's a good chance that wherever the octave switch of the MIDI controller is positioned, the whole tuning will be off by a few semitones.

It his much more sensible to do such tuning for hardware keyboards with a range of 73 or 88 keys, such as is common for piano models afaik.

Nevertheless, tuning files would easily support your request. Our online tools have a generator for this, if someone happened to know the offsets in Cent that are desired, it's as easy as filling in a spreadsheet:

https://u-he.com/tools/

Thats exactly what I need but is there a way to change the note editor from Note frequency (Hz) to cents?

[Urs]

Just download the .tun file and open in a text editor. IIRC the values for each note are listed in Cents. Like, A=440Hz is listed as

note 69=6900.0000

If you want to use it up by 12 cents, you edit it to

note 69=6912.0000

Let me know if this helps - I'll happily suggest cent offsets to the people who wrote this, just can't say when/if they have time to implement such.

[Lucastyle]

Just download the .tun file and open in a text editor. IIRC the values for each note are listed in Cents. Like, A=440Hz is listed as

note 69=6900.0000

If you want to use it up by 12 cents, you edit it to

note 69=6912.0000

Let me know if this helps - I'll happily suggest cent offsets to the people who wrote this, just can't say when/if they have time to implement such.

Thanks for the awesome support Urs!

[kodnin]

Are 'regular' oscillators (like the ones in ACE, Diva, Hive and Repro) on the table for Zebra 3?

[Urs]

Are 'regular' oscillators (like the ones in ACE, Diva, Hive and Repro) on the table for Zebra 3?

I'm torn about that. If the wavetable/spline oscillators can process FM and sync nicely, they might not be necessary.

OTOH it might make sense to blend "regular" oscillators into the FMOs, i.e. make FM oscillators versatile with a triangle core analogue oscillator, which do either DX-style Phase Modulation (sine and sine derivatives) or analogue FM (saw/tri/square)

[kodnin]

Are 'regular' oscillators (like the ones in ACE, Diva, Hive and Repro) on the table for Zebra 3?

I'm torn about that. If the wavetable/spline oscillators can process FM and sync nicely, they might not be necessary.

OTOH it might make sense to blend "regular" oscillators into the FMOs, i.e. make FM oscillators versatile with a triangle core analogue oscillator, which do either DX-style Phase Modulation (sine and sine derivatives) or analogue FM (saw/tri/square)

Oeh, I like the idea of blendig. Curious to hear what others think!

[Urs]

Well, you know, the process of deliberations between those different options will be draining and mind boggling. Much like the inner fight of adding or not adding a knob to Hive. I don't think there's much else that keeps me awake at night as much as the thought process of balancing the feature set in ways as optimal as I could possibly figure it out.

[exmatproton]

OTOH it might make sense to blend "regular" oscillators into the FMOs, i.e. make FM oscillators versatile with a triangle core analogue oscillator, which do either DX-style Phase Modulation (sine and sine derivatives) or analogue FM (saw/tri/square)

Seems like a very easy decision +1 on a 'regular osc section' in Z3

[FAS122]

Well, you know, the process of deliberations between those different options will be draining and mind boggling. Much like the inner fight of adding or not adding a knob to Hive. I don't think there's much else that keeps me awake at night as much as the thought process of balancing the feature set in ways as optimal as I could possibly figure it out.

Do you have any examples of features that have been left out of your other products in the past cause they didn't balance nicely? As I said, very understandable, so I'm not mad, just curious.

[Urs]

Do you have any examples of features that have been left out of your other products in the past cause they didn't balance nicely? As I said, very understandable, so I'm not mad, just curious.

Yes. There are more examples than I can recount - e.g. whenever I'm explaining why we won't do a feature that's been requested. It happens a lot.

Often, features are requested on the grounds that some other plug-in has them, and "it would be nice to have this in here, too". But everyone has their own habits and wishes, and surely the one plug-in that does it all for everyone is something utopian. Dystopian, possibly, because it would be so packed with features, nobody could ever use it.

So yeah, carefully "curating" the feature set of a synth like Zebra is a pretty full on task. The main wish we have for its next major upgrade is to condense some of its features into fewer modules, and to consolidate the ways of doing similar things into mere fundamental concepts (consistency!). So we're actually striving to do fewer types of oscillators, filters or wave shapers - instead of adding more.

For example, we'll probably bake VCF and XMF into a single type of filter module. In Zebra2 this was not possible because the standard filters did not react well to FilterFM. But today we can compute them in a way that this is possible (technobabble: due to the funky ways of solving equation systems and implicit integration method we introduced in Hive). So we can have all filters with FilterFM, and we need fewer types of modules to offer it.

[pdxindy]

So yeah, carefully "curating" the feature set of a synth like Zebra is a pretty full on task. The main wish we have for its next major upgrade is to condense some of its features into fewer modules, and to consolidate the ways of doing similar things into mere fundamental concepts (consistency!). So we're actually striving to do fewer types of oscillators, filters or wave shapers - instead of adding more.

That is music to the ears!

[SynthasaurusRex]

... I don't think there's much else that keeps me awake at night as much as the thought process of balancing the feature set in ways as optimal as I could possibly figure it out.

Are you familiar with ZzzQuil?

[Urs]

... I don't think there's much else that keeps me awake at night as much as the thought process of balancing the feature set in ways as optimal as I could possibly figure it out.

Are you familiar with ZzzQuil?

I have quite suspenseful nightmares on Melatonin, but often I'm drowsy the next day. I still take it sometimes.

[tasmaniandevil]

I still take it sometimes.

Just for the thrill of the nightmares.