Zebra 3 and Zebra Legacy

[Urs]

Oi, I see... 11/25 was meant for November 2025, the month of the draft. We absolutely had no schedule when we posted this, so we would not have known a date. We have a tentative schedule now, but it's tight:

We hope to have first public beta about 1-2 weeks after our current sale ends. Overlap would bring our support team to its knees, and probably our servers again. And also, we are trying to optimise some bits a bit more so it doesn't bring everyone's CPU to a halt.

But there will be a Zebralette 3 release candidate soon, maybe next week, which we also use to field test Zebra 3 Licenses for those with a free upgrade entitlement (so people can access their Z3 licenses beforehand, to stretch this out a bit...)

[TENETfanboy]

Say less, I’m in

[WalterH]

Current sale ends in Dec 4, so.. ~10 days after that
in other words Z3 will be available in mid Dec
If days of week somehow matter then 15th Dec is a Monday

I still cant believe it will arrive without arpeggiator, hope you have that among first on "to do" list.

[Urs]

I still cant believe it will arrive without arpeggiator, hope you have that among first on "to do" list.

We're going to address the situation in various ways. Here's some AI slop to start with:

NoArpz.jpg

But mainly we have planned a video that shows how Zebra's voice architecture itself can already mimic a realtime playable arpeggiator. And while it can't do exactly all the things an arpeggiator can, it can totally do a lot of arp-y things that no arpeggiator would. And thus we hope that people understand that whatever sequencer and arpeggiator we end up implementing, has to interact with these features. Nothing else makes sense, but these features need to be explored by a wide range of sound designers first.

[Urs]

(I love how AI has learned to count fingers, but black key distribution on a piano keyboard is still a no go)

[medienhexer]

Current sale ends in Dec 4, so.. ~10 days after that
in other words Z3 will be available in mid Dec
If days of week somehow matter then 15th Dec is a Monday

I still cant believe it will arrive without arpeggiator, hope you have that among first on "to do" list.

Meanwhile, over in the Absynth 6 thread, people are praising Absynth‘s MSEGs, which are so great that you don‘t even need an arpeggiator. I say: if you rely on market research, you‘re cooked

[Urs]

Meanwhile, over in the Absynth 6 thread, people are praising Absynth‘s MSEGs, which are so great that you don‘t even need an arpeggiator.

Maybe we should hire that person

[koalaboy]

Maybe it's just me (likely) but I remember a time when there were hardly any decent plugin arps, or in DAWs... but nowadays they are absolutely everywhere in so many flavours, so I'd much rather have focus on synthesis than sequencing.

Sure, I want it *all* eventually, but I love the innovation coming along with the voice architecture and other things and that's what I really want to see in new plugins - the stuff that I can't easily do elsewhere.

(Of course, I also value the sheer quality of u-he products and that's another reason they stay on top for me)

[Lbdunequest]

You can arp the synth in piano roll.

[Shiek927]

I agree that an arp/seq should be at the top of the wishlist after v1.00 is out, but also understand that if Zebra3 were to have every idea and feature from Zebra2, it would take another 10 years to get this thing out haha

[ksandvik]

We are drowning in arp plugins, anyway, especially in Ableton Live. I rather see more interesting automation and sculpting features that I could control from the outside.

[exmatproton]

With all those arp/midi sequencing plugins available these days i don't see any need for a dedicated Arp section in a synth, tbh. Unless it brings a completely new approach

[Kyunghee]

I hope that if arp/seq there is, it'll allow to control parameters and not just notes/gates/velocity

[sunthief01]

With all those arp/midi sequencing plugins available these days i don't see any need for a dedicated Arp section in a synth, tbh. Unless it brings a completely new approach

Agreed. Most sequencers and arps included with synths seem pretty limited compared to what can be done in dedicated sequencers like Stepic / HY plugins, or even better via scripting in Falcon or through various midi effects or even a modular environment. Of course there are exceptional examples of really cool useful sequencers in synth plugins too but for me it is rare.

The reasons I'm excited for Zebra 3 don't have anything to do with theoretical sequencing capabilities - if it ends up having that and its useful great, but honestly I find the way arps especially mess with my gates / envelopes to be super annoying and prefer to trigger my sequences other ways, since I often want variable gate lengths, probability, polyphony etc. and to use it to do things besides move the pitch and open and close the gate.

In fact, the suggestions for other ways to work with pitch in Zebra 3 sound really interesting to me - the pitch resources and mapped sequences sound cool in the vids from NAMM and Superboorh

I just don't really understand saying a synth is incomplete without a sequencer when there are so many great solutions outside of needing a fantastic sequencer in every single synth

[stippenstoh]

We hope to have first public beta about 1-2 weeks after our current sale ends.

Does "public beta" mean it is already available for everyone, e.g. via pre-purchase? Or just owners of both, original Zebra2 and ZebraHZ?

I expect Zebra3 to make quite some waves so it makes sense not to release prematurely. If a Q1 2026 commercial release is possible that'll be great.