Zebralette 3 Public Beta Announcement (Revision 15573)

[tasmaniandevil]

Having a dedicated thread for sharing patches would be really helpful to see what tricks others are figuring out, but I'll leave that to U-He's discretion...

We already have a dedicated Zebralette 3 tips & tricks thread.

[exmatproton]

I don't like the way UI scaling is implemented. It's the same as Minimal's Current synth and many other modern plugins. It's like scaling a photo in photoshop (grabbing a corner and dragging bigger). Check out Steinberg's Backbone, this is a better way to scale. So, editing areas get bigger, buttons and faders don't. Or some combination of the two would be better. So ideally you would have one % to tweak that would change UI elements size, and also be able to drag a corner so that the plugin gets bigger, editing areas get bigger, but elements stay the same size. Because this "photoshop" style scaling gives unnecessarily massive knobs, buttons and faders when you scale the plugin really big. It's like when you buy a 17" laptop, they don't make the computer keys bigger!

yeah..i don't agree at all. When i resize a plugin, i want everything to get resized. Not a fan of those which only resize certain areas (e.g. Maximus)

[mabian]

I don't like the way UI scaling is implemented. It's the same as Minimal's Current synth and many other modern plugins. It's like scaling a photo in photoshop (grabbing a corner and dragging bigger). Check out Steinberg's Backbone, this is a better way to scale. So, editing areas get bigger, buttons and faders don't. Or some combination of the two would be better. So ideally you would have one % to tweak that would change UI elements size, and also be able to drag a corner so that the plugin gets bigger, editing areas get bigger, but elements stay the same size. Because this "photoshop" style scaling gives unnecessarily massive knobs, buttons and faders when you scale the plugin really big. It's like when you buy a 17" laptop, they don't make the computer keys bigger!

yeah..i don't agree at all. When i resize a plugin, i want everything to get resized. Not a fan of those which only resize certain areas (e.g. Maximus)

Indeed, what if you have a GUI that is fine on Full HD and then move to a 4k monitor... wouldn't you also like to have faders and text zoomed? It could be challenging to use if the GUI widgets stay at the original size.

- Mario

[Mr D]

It makes no sense that when you have a bigger version of something, everything scales proportionally. You almost never see that in the real world (electronic devices, cars, implements & tools, clothes, books, the list could go on and on).

But i understand that coding-wise, it's probably the easiest to implement and requires no thought about how scaling effects the interface.

[Urs]

Expandable envelope editor is vertically too small.

We can't make it bigger without adding a lot more CPU. Certain CPU spikes are caused by the enlarged editor and we currently do not know exactly how to get rid of those CPU spikes.

In any case though, our plug-ins have a built-in UI editor. This editor has been vastly improved to make Zebralette. I'm sure there'll be plenty of of alternative skins which will meet all sorts of requests.

[paramita123]

Expandable envelope editor is vertically too small. So much dead-space above and below.

Perhaps this is addressed in the thread, but it's too long and i don't have time to go through it all!

For example, i would almost never need the keyboard at the bottom, and don't need to see the matrix editor all the time. Can we get a button to close this and give us that vertical area for the envelope?

It would be great to have a value editor for the selected envelope point. Like the info line in Cubase, so if you click on a point, you can manually enter (or drag or mouse scroll) the x, y or rotation numerical value of a point. If multiple points are selected, the value box will show the values of the first selected point.
This doesn't need to take up much UI space.

I don't like the way UI scaling is implemented. It's the same as Minimal's Current synth and many other modern plugins. It's like scaling a photo in photoshop (grabbing a corner and dragging bigger). Check out Steinberg's Backbone, this is a better way to scale. So, editing areas get bigger, buttons and faders don't. Or some combination of the two would be better. So ideally you would have one % to tweak that would change UI elements size, and also be able to drag a corner so that the plugin gets bigger, editing areas get bigger, but elements stay the same size. Because this "photoshop" style scaling gives unnecessarily massive knobs, buttons and faders when you scale the plugin really big. It's like when you buy a 17" laptop, they don't make the computer keys bigger!

Sorry to be negative on this brand new baby, but this is supposed to be the synth of the future, so these things must be said before it's too late!

Very valid points !!
On my PC I find 100% actually a bit big, 90% works for me.
Maybe a button to show/hide the bottom keyboard/matrix could help many users to control screen estate. It could be located either in the top menu, or make some wide button just under the MSEG editor button to fold/unfold.

[exmatproton]

It makes no sense that when you have a bigger version of something, everything scales proportionally.

to me it does (depending on the situation, plugin, display res, etc)

[hakey]

Sorry if this has been covered elsewhere, but how do we assign a sub-section of the Curve Set to a given function as briefly mentioned in the intro video at about the 35:00 mark?

[HcDoom]

Downloaded, played it - fell of chair - played it again - fell of chair one more time...my God, this thing sounds amazing. So powerful, what can you achieve with just one osc and mseg is crazy. I can just imagine what kind of synth the Z3 will be, probably the only synth that you will ever need till the end of your life. Well done Urs and team, great job.

Anyway, I only have one question, maybe I am doing something wrong - but I tried to create a supersaw lead - 16 voices, fair amount of detune - no lfos, no msegs, no automations of any kind - but when you press a long note, after a second or so, you start to hear heavily "lfo-ed" sine sound below the main saw sound - and as long as you hold the note that lfo type of sounds gets more pronounced then slightly fades away, etc etc. Then I played with detune and noticed that when I increase a detune, that lfo sound increase in speed. This is not how supersaw sound should sound at all - am I doing something wrong or its an bug of some sort?

[paramita123]

but I tried to create a supersaw lead - 16 voices, fair amount of detune - no lfos, no msegs, no automations of any kind - but when you press a long note, after a second or so, you start to hear heavily "lfo-ed" sine sound below the main saw sound

My understanding is that multiple detunes voices will have varying frequencies, therefore there will be moments when they add up and have louder sounds and other moments when they're more down and be quieter of sorts.
I tried doing what you did and yes there is some kind of slow "wobbling" but that seems normal to me. Works the same on Vital too.

[Urs]

Sorry if this has been covered elsewhere, but how do we assign a sub-section of the Curve Set to a given function as briefly mentioned in the intro video at about the 35:00 mark?

The idea is you do your waveform morph from, say, 0-40 and your OscFX morph from, say, 50-80 of the respective Curve Morph parameter. That is, if you really need things to morph on multiple levels. I haven't even tried to use 3 or even 4 morphing curves in a single patch. The cost on CPU would certainly be quite high.

Generally however one would try to get as far as possible with the 3 Guide Curves because they are pre-computed and just crossfade. That saves CPU and still offers quite some mileage.

[zaphod betamax]

Dumb question. I have zero experience with VSTs or DAWS but do have experience with Audio-term 2.27 and WaveEdit for Modwave.
I unzipped and installed the Zebralette 3 and see some files installed on my C: drive.
Does this program (app) require a VST or a DAW to work, as I could not find this being installed as a clickable program (standalone)

I do have VITAL standalone on my machine.

[martiu]

Dumb question. I have zero experience with VSTs or DAWS but do have experience with Audio-term 2.27 and WaveEdit for Modwave.
I unzipped and installed the Zebralette 3 and see some files installed on my C: drive.
Does this program (app) require a VST or a DAW to work, as I could not find this being installed as a clickable program (standalone)

it needs DAW that host VST3, is not a standalone synth

[Worldwave]

Oh hell yes. Been waiting since Z2. Good luck!

[martiu]

however you can play it standalone if you use vst3 wrapper like Element, it is free and has standalone option