U-he Zebra 3 (Alpha)

[EvilDragon]

I agree. Basing a layout on a synth name, or vise versa, is what we call "too cute by half," in my world. Let's just have a nice clean logical layout. Great sounding synth, though, but I'd definitely turn to it more if it had a logical layout.

FYI it does come with an alternative skin from Plugmon, too.

[zerocrossing]

I agree. Basing a layout on a synth name, or vise versa, is what we call "too cute by half," in my world. Let's just have a nice clean logical layout. Great sounding synth, though, but I'd definitely turn to it more if it had a logical layout.

FYI it does come with an alternative skin from Plugmon, too.

Sure, I should probably explore other skins, for sure. I admit to owning too many similar types of plugins that I've owned before Hive that I do tend to go to because I know them very well, and frankly, force of habit.

[aMUSEd]

I agree. Basing a layout on a synth name, or vise versa, is what we call "too cute by half," in my world. Let's just have a nice clean logical layout. Great sounding synth, though, but I'd definitely turn to it more if it had a logical layout.

FYI it does come with an alternative skin from Plugmon, too.

I prefer the original skin though

[EvilDragon]

Sure, that's subjective

[Daru925]

I'm looking forward to enjoy the mseg paradise.

[Kyunghee]

I agree. Basing a layout on a synth name, or vise versa, is what we call "too cute by half," in my world. Let's just have a nice clean logical layout. Great sounding synth, though, but I'd definitely turn to it more if it had a logical layout.

FYI it does come with an alternative skin from Plugmon, too.

The Izmo/Gizmo skin for Hive 2 is my favourite synth plugin GUI, so satisfying. The original however is kind of confusing

[Kyunghee]

with LLMs I'm having a field day doing sound design with my personal "scripter" generating endless uhm wavetables.

it has certainly given Hive a new lease on life for me, it has kind of a dream of mine to create a natural language input for uhm scripts and the tools are finally good enough to where I don't need much spare time to actually get something workable going.

You know, I tend to take u-He synths for granted. Today I finished a song and decided to put a splash of Hive on it, which admittedly I hadn't used in a while. Well, it was just the spice the track needed.

Getting Zebra 3 will be my best Christmas present this year.

To me Hive still has the most pleasing UI and satisfying workflow of all synths.. still my gold standard. And yes not to mention the sound and different filters available are fantastic. I wish uhm scripting was more popular, though now with LLMs I'm having a field day doing sound design with my personal "scripter" generating endless uhm wavetables.

Wait!! What?!! We must have more information!!!

I, personally, am not smart enough to benefit from the UHM scripting. I suck at understanding the intense mathematical formulas that I’ve seen tossed around when talking about it. Are you saying that LLMs are now advanced enough to feed it wav files and it can spit out the needed formulas, or even the whole UHM script??

What engine are you using? What is your prompting process? Could you post an example of one of your prompts?

I try different solutions every few weeks or so, things are always changing quickly when it comes to AI agents so the best approach really is just to build something multiple times and see what approach does it best to your liking this particular month. In this case, my favorite solution to date has been using Google AI Studio.

I never wanted to feed it wav files for uhm scripts so much as give it natural language to describe the sounds I want. However that would be a very interesting avenue to explore next once I get tired of this current approach. Maybe even add an audio preview option as well.

I'm right there with you though I don't really have any experience in DSP coding so my math leaves a lot to be desired, but I've always had an interest in uhm scripting as a means for expanding the sound sources for Hive.

If there is interest I can see about making this something to share with others, it took me such a small investment of time though I realize reality anyone could probably use AI Studio to build something similar if they spend enough time figuring out what they want to do at the outset and guiding the process.

I have a long list of instructions I have refined I give as the app's core instruction set (I don't know how much of this is necessary now, it has grown over time as LLMs have failed to generate usable scripts so starting from scratch may be better if you are just getting started). But basically as long as you are guiding it as things fail, it can learn enough from the scripts themselves, the manual, internet resources (mostly KVR as the uhm dataset if were being honest) and from there develop a good understanding of creating working uhm scripts.

A picture says a thousand words, here is my favorite iteration of the tool so far (the prompts with "Add Complexity" get a lot more interesting than the example I chose from one of the simple prompt ideas):

Is this available to use somewhere?

[daily patcher]

Is this available to use somewhere?

I hope to say yes soon. With Zebra 3 using uhm as well that's enough motivation for me to keep working on something more final, there were some very wrong assumptions in recent iterations that were greatly limiting the output so I'm working through refining that bare minimum before making it public. I find it useful already, but if I make something shareable I at least want it to be somewhat capable at scripting all flavors of uhm wavetables.

[Urs]

Note that Zebra 3 uses uhm solely to put curves in and out of the pasteboard. These curves are really just lists of points.

I hope to add the functionality to use these curves in Hive next year, like, in the Wave, Spectrum and Phase commands as alternatives to the envelope.

I will also try to be able to convert individual wavetable frames to curves, so they can be used both in the script and in Zebra 3. I doubt this will happen anytime soon, probably not even 2026.

Both things are going to be highly involved, and they add a huge layer of complexity to uhm. The main goal here is to use Zebralette 3 as a graphical editor for curves that can be pasted into uhm scripts. Which can then morph through those curves just like in Zebralette 3, and be accessibly in the formula parser.

The nerd factor is incredibly here, but melting the precision of uhm scripting with the comfort of the waveform editor is just something that needs to be done. And maybe, who knows (no plans yet), we'll one day have a visual tool that contains both the spline editor and a visual .uhm editor.

[Touch The Universe]

with LLMs I'm having a field day doing sound design with my personal "scripter" generating endless uhm wavetables.

Can you share the code or prompts that you are using? I'd like to give that a try too using terminal and python or something that I can prompt an llm to tweak the code for me to experience there. I assume I need to give them the instructions on what an umfile is and then how to analyze a WAV file and then how to process that and generate an umfile. Is the core structure of the dot uhm a.json or what's going on is it just a text?

[Urs]

.uhm is (somewhat) human readable and editable text. Each line represents a command that either sculpts a wavetable or sets up configuration data. Lines are read and executed top to bottom. At its core is a formula parser that can create wavetables mathematically. Think "y = sin( 2 * pi * phase)". This is similar to Serum's formula parser, but you can split the operation across multiple lines and multiple wavetable buffers, i.e. you can reuse and manipulate results from prior operations.

Might be worth starting an extra topic... it'll get lost in a few weeks/days...

[kraster]

I am surprised that the new layout of Serum is seen positive here, particularly in respect of Hive. To me it feels like the UI of Serum 1 was brilliant for what it was, but the UI of Serum 2 strikes me as too busy with odd choices on proportions.

I love Serum 2’s UI.

I find it really intuitive.

I don’t really care how busy it is since it’s so functional.

I’d put it second to Minimal Audio’s current for the best UI in a synth.

[DrGonzo]

When talking about skins, wouldn't it be incredibly cool if skins could filter out certain functions and highlight others. Like you switch skin and then you get a MiniMoog setup or a Juno-ish clone.

[Super Piano Hater 64]

When talking about skins, wouldn't it be incredibly cool if skins could filter out certain functions and highlight others. Like you switch skin and then you get a MiniMoog setup or a Juno-ish clone.

Like the Plugmon skins for Diva and Presswerk?

[DrGonzo]

When talking about skins, wouldn't it be incredibly cool if skins could filter out certain functions and highlight others. Like you switch skin and then you get a MiniMoog setup or a Juno-ish clone.

Like the Plugmon skins for Diva and Presswerk?

Something like that, yeah.