Zebralette 3 Public Beta Announcement (Revision 15573)

[Urs]

Getting lots of stuck notes while playing longish (greater than an 8th) notes on the onscreen keyboard.

Double-click = Hold. Click again to release.

[Ah_Dziz]

Thanks Urs!

Probably my ineptitude with the trackpad causing problems. Just something I noticed when playing around and trying to trigger sounds in progress.

The new oscillator sounds spectacular!! I don't know what the cpu use "should" be but on the same little laptop it can use about 20% of the cpu.

I will do some real testing a bit later

[Urs]

CPU use should improve quite a bit after bugs are ironed out

[Ah_Dziz]

So these oscillators are going to replace the "osc1-4" in the full zebra? Will the FM still be handled by the same FMOSC as before or will the new oscillators get FM added?

The spectral distortion and new OSC FX are really taking this in some really cool directions. I haven't given a try to many of the available FX and combinations of FX but the extra bit of control (via curves and triggering )in the OSC FX makes them seem a bit easier to use in predictable ways.

This is unrelated but I'd love to see what all these spectral FX could do to a random fft of an audio signal.

[Ah_Dziz]

CPU use should improve quite a bit after bugs are ironed out

Thanks again!! Really great work.

[Dan]

Looking and sounding sweet.

[Ah_Dziz]

..............

JJ

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I am getting semi random crashes when opening the GUI. White GUI box, stuck buffer, and closes the host to the desktop. Happens during playback and with daw stopped.

Win 10 (latest)
Maschine (latest)
Onboard sound

JJ

Friendly reminder: bugs go here...

viewtopic.php?t=607159

[Ah_Dziz]

My bad. Didn't even notice I was in the wrong thread.......damn.

[Viroo]

Hi Urs, I may not be the biggest help for the project, but I just wanted to say thank you for giving us the opportunity to test Zebralette 3. I'm still trying to figure out exactly how everything works. I actually have no idea how everything works exactly. Most of the time I just turn the knobs and see what happens, lol. But it's really great fun to be part of the improvement process and for the start to get more involved with sound creation in general. Thank you so much for this opportunity!

To the readers: If you are using FL Studio and the synth window is open, you have the option to randomize sounds. You will find the function in the top right of the Presets window. WARNING!!! Limiter is mandatory. Some very crazy, sometimes very loud things happen there lol! Anyway, I have created and customized a few very interesting sounds using this option. Now I just need to figure out what exactly I'm doing here, lol.

[glokraw]

CPU use should improve quite a bit after bugs are ironed out

That was scientifically proved as the Diva beta and early releases kept improving! I would put money on the idea that discoveries made in this Zebra3 release cycle, will be applied to many other U-he products as time allows. Maybe already happened behind the scenes

[bonch]

Also - when you modulate a knob, you can hear it but you can't *see* anything - but this is probably because it's early beta.

This might seem abnormal if you're used to synths with busier GUIs, but it's conventional for U-he plug-ins. I think animations like that wouldn't scale well with complexity. I can imagine the busy chaos of an advanced Bazille patch, for example.

Fair enough - but you can see the waveform moving around and changing

Sure! But an oscilloscope is a single element at a permanent location. It would drive me nuts if every modulation target in, for example, Zebra or Bazille, had little indicators bouncing around! We already have modulation depth indicators, so animations wouldn't really give any needed information.

[Compyfox]

Well then, I can now confirm that "sample loading" works, but it's really wonky.

In fact, it's sporadically working, and then the next moment it isn't anymore. Then it crashes randomly with an "exceptional error - reboot Cubase - check DMP file", and then even after rebooting Cubase, it doesn't work anymore.

I could actually drag over files from a not "run as admin" file browser into "run as admin" instance of Cubase. Dragging from the project (audio file) instantly results in a crash error (exceptional error - reboot Cubase).

I could check out files with up to 5s length (mono, 44kHz), although Zebralette3 took a bit to respond. I could also check out files that were only a couple of ms longs. One way or the other, i only get up to 8(!) wave forms converted, no more. It's not much, but it's a start for some sound design purposes. Sure as hell isn't "the competition" that offers 8-12 frames, or even up to 100 (that old Windows standalone Wavetable editor).

I hope this will be refined, but again... still usable for messing about and create some interesting bass sounds.

Crash Dump - Cubase 10 - Zebralette3 rev15573 (126MB, 2 files)


Hope this helps - I sadly do not have any other error messages as a log.
(because that would be too easy, wouldn't it)

[Ah_Dziz]

Is mts esp supported in zebralette3 yet?

[Urs]

Well then, I can now confirm that "sample loading" works, but it's really wonky.

Single cycle waveforms should work just fine, and replace the current selected waveform with a vectorised version of what you've dragged in. That is the main purpose of the sample import.

One can also use whole samples at any tune, but it should be a sample of an instrument such as flute, bass or anything like that. The importer has built-in pitch detection and will find good matches. This replaces the full Curve Set.

The cutoff between "single cycle" and "full wave set" is currently set at something like 5000 samples or so.

The parameters that pop up on import need quite some more explanation. They deal with the selection of cycles from the sample and with the accuracy of the vectorisation. If the sample has hundreds or thousands of cycles, e.g. an A3 that is 10 seconds long at 44.1kHz sample rate, and if settings for selection and accuracy are high, the process of converting the sample can take several minutes.

In future I think we'll have to add a progress bar and a cancel button.

But then, I think the vectorisation has a lot of potential for speed up, and I'm still very unhappy with the process and options of selecting the best cycles. I think both processes can be improved and made faster.

In any case, this is very advanced stuff and very different from "sample to wavetable" conversion. We will hopefully be able to add that, too, both in .uhm and in Hive 2/Zebra 3, at some point.