Zebralette 3 Spline Editor & UX Discussion

[tasmaniandevil]

I'd prefer a draggable value field instead of a looong popup menu

You can use the mouse wheel to scroll through those values without having to display the popup menu.

[sauceversace]

click and scroll through options on menus with allot of options. and prehear modulation before it gets applied.

[uhoenig]

You can use the mouse wheel to scroll through those values without having to display the popup menu.

Thanks! I wasn't aware of that. Vertical two finger scrolling on the Macbook trackpad. Works nicely.

[midi_transmission]

I have the same problems as with the mod matrix in Hive.

Sometimes it take some time to find the parameter which is modulated.

What about a highlight or indicator at the parameter that is modulated when you hover over a parameter in the mod matrix?

One day later and I would ask for even more. I think it could be helpful to see every modulation directly at the knob. Is there a reason it's limited to the LFO? Again, I have the same thoughts in Hive, where I found it sometimes difficult or inconvenient to understand the mapping with the Matrix.

[wilx]

I have the same problems as with the mod matrix in Hive.

Sometimes it take some time to find the parameter which is modulated.

What about a highlight or indicator at the parameter that is modulated when you hover over a parameter in the mod matrix?

One day later and I would ask for even more. I think it could be helpful to see every modulation directly at the knob. Is there a reason it's limited to the LFO? Again, I have the same thoughts in Hive, where I found it sometimes difficult or inconvenient to understand the mapping with the Matrix.

Logic's Alchemy does this nicely - it's very easy to see what's being modulated at a glance, and to quickly change the settings and add modulation too.

[drzhnn]

I have a small UI/UX suggestion: an indicator on the Timeline showing our current position in the wavetable while using Curve Morph. This indicator could be like that vertical red line shown in the screenshot. It doesn't have to reflect the modulation of the Curve Morph knob. Just the current knob position for reference.

[pdxindy]

I have a small UI/UX suggestion: an indicator on the Timeline showing our current position in the wavetable while using Curve Morph. This indicator could be like that vertical red line shown in the screenshot. It doesn't have to reflect the modulation of the Curve Morph knob. Just the current knob position for reference.

+1

[lattetown]

The new Zebralette 3 interface looks great! I'm a UX designer and noticed some "low hanging fruit" accessibility issues that should help customers with low vision.

1. Inconsistent casing of button label (e.g. none vs None)
2. Lowercase button label size hard to read at 100% zoom
3. Button label contrast could be clearer (see WCAG Color Contrast Checker)
4. Consider using ALL-CAPS for labels and button since lowercase characters are hard to read at 100% zoom

I appreciate that you've incorporated some workflows from HIVE creating consistency across your interfaces.

A bigger issue is accessibility for the spline editor for vision impaired musicians. Currently, I don't see any way to tab through the different controls in the interface.

[Urs]

I have a small UI/UX suggestion: an indicator on the Timeline showing our current position in the wavetable while using Curve Morph. This indicator could be like that vertical red line shown in the screenshot. It doesn't have to reflect the modulation of the Curve Morph knob. Just the current knob position for reference.

We weren't sure if frequent UI updates of the Curve Selector would cause CPU issues, hence we have not done this yet.

But we will try it!

[Urs]

A bigger issue is accessibility for the spline editor for vision impaired musicians. Currently, I don't see any way to tab through the different controls in the interface.

This is whole new project that we have on our list.

Atm our editors are purely visual for Curves, even though curves themselves represent audible entities. This poses a dilemma for accessibility that is hard to overcome, since the entire tool chain is based on concepts known from graphics software. I am at this point not aware of common accessibility features for visually impaired or blind people in this area, but I'll happily pass pointers to our team.

Another issue is key commands. As we make plug-ins, we are at the merits of the host software in terms of keys that our software receives. E.g. we can never get Cmd/Ctrl-Z for undo. Hence, some past attempts of ours to add keyboard based control did not go well, and thus we're reluctant to try this again.

We do however also have .uhm, which is a purely text based language to create wavetables. We are very far (but not yet ready) with incorporating the Curves of Zebra 3 with .uhm, such that entire Curve Sets for Zebra 3 (and Zebralette 3) can be edited by text input. And visually designed Curves can already be pasted into .uhm scripts.

This might be something that could make curve and waveform editing quite accessible to visually impaired people. We're open to discuss this once we're finished with the underlying main software and technology.

[wilx]

Using the 'display' section that by default has the preset name as an information/context window is great. Can this be expanded more? It displays some controls and values on cursor hover, but not everything. And could we extend the time the information is shown before it snaps back to the preset name?

The bottom few keys on the keyboard display have blue circles on them...
-and yes - while I could absolutely RTFM, I grabbed Zebralette yesterday on a track which needed to be turned around in 2 hours so I didn't have time to go digging! For busy composers with lots of deadlines, a bit of a reminder in the UI is no bad thing. If hovering over those blue circles, or the yellow box at the top with the shape/spline etc gave me a bit of info like the rest of the UI it would be even clearer.

And prev/next buttons for the OSCFX dropdowns as mentioned, so you can change fx with one click rather than click - mouse move - click.

And modulation - the oscilloscope is great. Given the way the UI looks, it would benefit hugely from something like Alchemy's modulation visualisation. You can see at a glance what is being modulated, and the 'modulation' section on the left updates to show all modulation for any parameter you click on. It's very neatly done and really boosts the usability of the synth, especially if you need to just quickly identify an aspect of the sound and then tweak it.



Looks and sounds stunning btw, you can really feel the amount of work that's gone into this and I've barely scratched the surface. Such a powerful little beast!

[sauceversace]

i would say a filter section like the one zebraCM would fit great into letté. and the effects section from zebraCM looks clean to with a master fx and a return.

i would also change the design the crosshair that shows up when modulating. nothing about this synth is gangster, so the cross hair is seems kinda out of place.

ill happely make agansgter trap theme for this syhth though, cause itsa really cool synth. Shoutout to the team at U-he . and a as a graphic designer i love the creative and unique way of editing wavetables. i like that u actually innovate instead of coming with the same stuff in a new packaging.

[sauceversace]

it would be cool to see fx on lfo that u can automnate the shape on lfo ove time like u can with the mseg. and if u could import shapes from the mseg to the lfo. i respect the 1 mseg and 1 osc approach since its a free synth. but it couyld be cool to have some unique lfo shapes too, afterall the lfo cant do all the cool stuff the mseg can.
it would also be a nie addition if we could have a lfo as a 1 shot.

[lattetown]

Atm our editors are purely visual for Curves, even though curves themselves represent audible entities. This poses a dilemma for accessibility that is hard to overcome, since the entire tool chain is based on concepts known from graphics software. I am at this point not aware of common accessibility features for visually impaired or blind people in this area, but I'll happily pass pointers to our team.

Hi Urs, thanks for your reply! I do understand that Zebralette 3 is a prototype for what is going into a more fully featured Zebra 3 later. However, since U-HE and Zebra is a top award winning synth VST used by professional producers, we shouldn't exclude visually impaired musicians like Stevie Wonder from electronic music production. Athan Billias, president of the MIDI Association, the nonprofit organization in charge of the MIDI standard was quoted recently saying... Traditional recording studios were dominated by big consoles with lots of knobs and buttons, which offered tactile feedback to the vision-impaired. Today, a studio is often little more than an app on a laptop or an iPad—and a lot of those apps prioritize eye candy over accessibility.

The good news is that other plugin makers like iZotope ARE making accessible graph-like interfaces with simple section organization and [shift/option] arrow key navigation.

Izotope Imager accessibility.jpg

In the iZotope interface above, I can select the graphic EQ points with the [tab] and [shift]-[tab] keys, and adjust the values with the arrow keys. In fact, like many DAWs iZotopes VSTs implement [shift]-[arrow key] to make a bigger change, and [command]-[arrow] to make a smaller change.

zebralette 3 UI arrow-key navigation.jpg

In fact, most U-HE presets already use a basic implementation of the arrow keys. This could be improved though, so that a user can tab to different sections. For example, I can only use the arrow keys to go through presets in the BETA folder, but I can't [tab] or [shift]-[arrow] over to the search box or the favorites, or even to the top header section.

[Urs]

Well, you can't possibly compare an EQ to a wavetable editor. We also do not prevent anyone from music production - that's a grotesque statement here.