Zebra 3 and Zebra Legacy

[ghostwhistler]

Are users allowed to transfer their Zebra Legacy licenses?

Sure, same rules as always. Best to inquire via email to support at u-he dot com beforehand.

Understood, thanks

[GruvSyco]

I saw this today...

https://www.musicradar.com/music-tech/p ... production

Apparently Grimes is pretty fond of Zebra.

[Urs]

Nice!

[harddaysnight]

How much would Zebra 3 cost?

I was thinking of buying Zebra 2, but it looks like there's no upgrade path for new buyers to go from 2 to 3, because 2 is apparently a bargain at its current price.

As it stands, there isn't any reason for me to buy Z2, since no upgrade path + Z3 on the horizon = why would I buy Z2?
Doesn't make any sense.

So I'd love to know how much Z3 will cost whenever it comes out so I can decide to keep the money aside or not - I just bought Diva (secondhand licence) and it's incredible fwiw. Pairing it with other more modern synths and thought I'd be a bit of a derp to not consider Zebra as my "modern" synth, but then came across this whole "no reason to buy Z2 right now" thing.

[Fannon]

With a newly bought Zebra Legacy, there's no upgrade path. But if you get an "old" Zebra 2 License, you will have one afaik (please correct if wrong).

Since Zebra 3 is a complete re-development and not just an updated Zebra 2 I can understand the reasoning. So if you're looking for Zebra 3, I would wait for it.

Agree that Diva is awesome. A really good complement towards "modern" (or better: flexible / generic?) synths. Another really good one is u-he Repro. Both have character and are opinionated (Repro imho even more) and very musical.

[GruvSyco]

why would I buy Z2?
Doesn't make any sense.

Because Zebra 2, especially at the legacy price, is still an absolutely incredible synth that probably still has miles upon miles of unexplored territory in terms of sound. Even if you step beyond a virtually never-ending palette with the ability to create your own wavetables, there's the ability to mix with FM, all the different filters (including Diva filters in ZebraHZ)... the world of comb filters... it's insane how much you get.

There was an upgrade path from Z2 to Z3 for an incredibly long time. Long enough that probably, a significant portion of the customer base were in line to get Z3 heavily discounted. They knocked $100 of the price of Z2, threw in ZebraHZ (I think that was another $100) and then added all the Z2 sound sets $$$. There's your discount.

Z3 isn't really an upgrade to Z2. From what has been made known, it's much more of a spiritual successor. A completely new synth, with mostly new tech that aims to give users the same vast ability to create sound that Z2 did, and this is 100% assumption, with a similar simplicity in programming (the matrix is pretty genius).

If they had simply killed the Zebra product and taken this same synth that's in development and given it a new name, there would be far less complaining about upgrades from people that are late to the experience of U-he products.


Also, I think when Zebra Legacy was released, as I understand it, all Zebra licenses became Legacy. So, a transfer of the License is a transfer of Zebra Legacy, thus no discount towards Z3. That discount remains in tact for original license holders.

Buy both. Most likely, when Z3 comes out (as per U-he tradition), there will be a discount on Z3 that usually happens during the public beta. You'll be able to try Z3 beta without restriction during the beta and if you like it, jump on a discount before the actual release. At least, that's how it's typically worked in the past (and how I've come to own most everything)

[alberto_balsalm]

As it stands, there isn't any reason for me to buy Z2, since no upgrade path + Z3 on the horizon = why would I buy Z2?

Judging by Zebralette 3, Z3 will be way more resource intensive, or at least for a subset of its features. I'm running an i7 12700 and some of the presets I made brought it to its knees, FM stuff specifically. Z2 is very light on resources - both CPU and RAM. I remember doing some testing, and 10 instances of Zebra HZ came out at around 300 mb of RAM. If I recall correctly, Pigments gobbled up 1 gb of RAM per instance with very little shared RAM usage if you added more instances (ie every new instance will still gobble up a ton of RAM).

Z2 also has gazillion presets available, and it's still a massively competent synth that could've been released today and it would've gotten a ton of attention. I tinkered around just for fun about half a year ago, testing its VA against Jupiter and Juno VSTs. You can make it sound bang on in some cases, and it will still remain competitive in a lot of others. Zebra 2's VA is really something.

There's still no ETA on Z3 and we've no idea what the full feature set and the workflow will look like. You might end up preferring Z2 for some tasks, for all you know (just the light resource usage alone makes it worth considering).

[Urs]

CPU is going to be much better than it is now in Zebralette 3 (and Zebra 3), but obviously not necessarily as easy as Zebra 2.

[Double Tap]

How much would Zebra 3 cost?

Diva is €179 so my uninformed speculation is that Z3 would be <str>€199</str> er Urs says that’s wrong \/.

[Urs]

Hehehe, it's time for this kind of post again...

So when random people on the internet started talking about Zebra 3 even before Zebra 2 was released, at some point people would hold off buying Zebra 2 (which was still new) because they were speculating about Zebra 3 (which was not even in consideration).

In order to end those speculations, I came up with the idea to post the pricing and upgrade paths to ensure that people know that their investment into Zebra 2 was not in vain. Hey, we even sat down and laid out some ideas.

That was in early 2012 or so, and Diva had just come out and little did we know that Diva would quickly become our most successful product, and there would be little to no time anymore to work on a big project until, well, a global pandemic of all things.

Anyhow, we stick to the old plan laid out back then:

Zebra 3 will be 249€
Upgrade from an original (pre-Legacy) Zebra 2 license: 30€
Upgrade from an original Zebra 2 + The Dark Zebra license: Free

Now, at that time we did not think about whatever would happen with Zebra 2, and where things would stand ten years later. There were concerns that if Zebra 3 somehow included Zebra 2, we either couldn't keep up work on Zebra 3, or we'd have to discontinue Zebra 2, or change pricing.

So we decided that once the Zebra 3 oscillator - which was worked on for a very long time - was somewhat ready to show off, we would semi-discontinue Zebra 2 in the form of Zebra Legacy and at the same time cut off the upgrade path. That again was before it turned out that we'd lose our license to publish VST2 plug-ins and that we'd spend another year or two rereleasing all plug-ins with VST2 support for a last time. Big financial blow, but also not bad to get rid of technical debt. We're almost done, 5 months to go to release a few left overs.

So now things are dragging on again, but we see light at the end of the tunnel. We are considering - but have neither decided nor will we promise - a temporary solution to support those who bought Zebra Legacy. This could be something like "if you have a license for this product, we'll give you a discount voucher in the vicinity of 50 bucks towards that new product which will be valid until day X". This isn't entirely selfless thinking, from a business perspective It may even be merely a necessity to get the new product going. And I think it's fair towards everyone. However, we'll see where we go. It's a hot topic with a lot of opinions.

Now, if anyone reads above as a promise to do so and buy Zebra Legacy to save money: Don't. If you buy it, buy it because you like it. Because it's a great synth with amazing value for 99€. But don't buy it because you really want Zebra 3 even though you have not seen it yet - it may not be what you imagined, and you might not be saving any money at all.

Anyhow, wish you all a Happy New Year, and I'm almost certain that we'll have exciting things coming in 2025.

[seafire]

Zebra 3 won't be vst2.4?

[Urs]

Zebra 3 won't be vst2.4?

Absolutely not. We do not have a license to do that.

[seafire]

Shame.

[BBFG#]

Zebra 3 won't be vst2.4?

Not sure why it would be at this point. Probably CLAP though?

[seafire]

Definitely I would say.