Zebra 3 Public Beta Revision 20399

[BobDog]

So I own and paid for Z2 and DZ (separately before DZ was included in Z2) but the serial number email is saying I need to pay for the upgrade to z3. Also DZ is not listed in the email.

Is this right or has something gone wrong?

Edit: Looks like I didn't buy DZ, I must be going senile!

[Kyunghee]

after a couple of hours of playing with this awesome update; here are my first 2 cents;



-16 voices -> 32 or 64

-Ctrl a,b,c,d -> make them visible to the daw for automation

-Ctrl a,b,c,d -> make 4 more (a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h)

-add a hard limiter (with on/off switch) before the output

-pitches -> add a quantize option 'post everything' so that modulation gets quantized as well (fun stuff)

-pitches -> calibration; add an extreme knob (times 10, or 100) for more effect

-fx -> make it possible to collapse the fx ui's, a la bitwig (et al)

I agree that the macros should be visible as knobs, easier to automate, and to use with some controllers.

[magickalmutagen]

It's finally happening. Congratulations!

One small QoL request: Allow us to middle-click and drag to navigate scrollable areas, e.g. the main left and right Synthesis areas, and the horizontal scrollable areas of the Matrix and FX / Out etc. This would really speed UI navigation up (simply scrolling with the mousewheel is currently slow, and grabbing scrollbars is tedious). If implemented, please disallow middle-clicking to control controls, else we'll be accidentally changing values when trying to navigate.

Last but not least: Zebra 4?

[Andreya_Autumn]

Everything is going very well here (Ableton 12.2.5 , Windows 10).

I just would like to see a mts-esp tuning integration into it, it would be so great.

Isn't mts-esp already working? Should be realtime even...?

(I gotta check... I'm almost 100% sure I added it to the Pitch modules...)

It is indeed! Made some Just Intonation music with it just now. Maybe because there's no visual indication of it in the UI (I think?), Julien thought it is not present.

Found another bug in the pitch modules though, I think. "Previous" note mode doesn't work in legato. Behaves identically with "first" in that mode. In mono it works as intended.

[darrenr]

Congratulations Urs and team - another great engineering achievement and a fantastic creative tool - thank you

[Andreya_Autumn]

Is this how you convert Zebra 3 FMO ratios?

Code: Select all

Zebra Ratio   Mod:Car    Actual Ratio
-------------------------------------
-5.0          1:6        0.1667
-4.5          1:5.5      0.1818
-4.0          1:5        0.2000
-3.5          1:4.5      0.2222
-3.0          1:4        0.2500
-2.5          1:3.5      0.2857
-2.0          1:3        0.3333
-1.5          1:2.5      0.4000
-1.0          1:2        0.5000
-0.5          1:1.5      0.6667
 0.0          1:1        1.0000
+0.5          1.5:1      1.5000
+1.0          2:1        2.0000
+1.5          2.5:1      2.5000
+2.0          3:1        3.0000
+2.5          3.5:1      3.5000
+3.0          4:1        4.0000
+3.5          4.5:1      4.5000
+4.0          5:1        5.0000
+4.5          5.5:1      5.5000
+5.0          6:1        6.0000

Yes. And yeah this is also what I commented on a few pages back. It would be so much more intuitive to use harmonic/subharmonic nomenclature. Because well, those are indeed the actual frequency ratios. The overtone/undertone off-by-one thing doesn't seem to add any value but does make things more confusing. Please consider switching @Urs and friends.


That's my only real UI complaint so far though. Great job on this, works well and sounds fantastic. Ich freue mich tierisch!

[Robinrobo]

This thing is incredible. Perseverance pays off. Great job!

Certainly a few things to adjust to in regards to adding modulators and assigning them but this is all learning curve I suppose. Already some strange and beautiful sounds are emerging.

[jtsterays]

I just watched a bass producer use this in a livestream and he complained about the EQ module doesn't have an offset knob where it shifts all the nodes frequency, because what they usually do it make a weird formant type curve with bunch of notches and modulate the offset knob. So that could be a good feature. Also the EQ graph doesnt animate when being modulated like FilterscapeVA.

[DrWashington]

I just got a "poof"-style sudden crash of Nuendo 14.0.41 on Mac (M4 Max). Where should I send the crash dump, Urs?

[bhinton]

Thank you for such a marvelous and unexpected holiday present!
I hate to complain about anything - this is such an incredible accomplishment - but one missing item (mentioned by a few above) is a catastrophe for me: the lack of XY controls and their Z2-style mapping. And as someone else mentioned, it's absolutely critical that those controls be addressable as automation parameters. My entire performance setup for Zebra is based around real time control via the XY system controlled by an XVI-M (16 channels of pitchbend used as high resolution controllers for XY in Zebra 2 and Zebrify - or two Zebra instances). As fantastic as Zebra 3 is, without this it will probably be strictly a studio instrument in my case, which breaks my heart.

I was also worried that the EGs did not have separate velocity control per envelope stage - I use that in over half of my patches - but I now see this can be done via the mod matrix. Maybe there's an equivalent workaround for XY and macro automation that I've missed?

Edit - to end on a happier note, OMG the FM module redesign is a dream come true. So well done.

[bretth]

I've been checking on this perhaps four times a year for the last decade. It's something I do in idle moments when I'm musing about life. How can you take this pass time away from me Urs? And thank you for Zebra 3, good things always take time!

[crystalhorizon]

Is there a way to import the presets from Zebra2 and DarkZebra?

[Weasel-Boy]

I just got a "poof"-style sudden crash of Nuendo 14.0.41 on Mac (M4 Max). Where should I send the crash dump, Urs?

Me too, on Cubase 15 on M1 Macbook. I get consistent poofs by choosing some of the Public Beta 300 presets. Where to send the Crashlogs?

[Urs]

I can see the dilemma but I don't believe the solution is to delete the module, for the reasons you stated. Maybe a compromise would be to somehow 'label' the module 'orphaned' or words to that effect?

Yes, that is a good idea.

We also had thought about a function like "Clean Up Unused Modulations"

[Urs]

I have a few feature requests:
The mapper should have the option to cycle between presets with arrows

We have not fully decided how to handle module presets yet. There might be "real browsers" with folders and all that, there might be keyboard control through the key control feature.

The mapper would greatly benefit from a Randomizer
-The same for the MSEG
-The same would also be cool for all the other Modules

The Mapper actually has a randomiser on right-click. Here again I'd be happy to add a key as well, maybe just R

For other modules, it really depends. We might have to think about randomisation somewhere down the road.

Right Click on a knob to select and edit the Modulation source.

Yep, that sounds like something we should do.

The Macros should have the option to give them names.
I really miss the XY section.

This is tricky territory.

I will probably have a separate conversation about XYs, macros, MIDI Controls and Expressions.

In short:

Nothing is set in stone. We have Ctrl ABCD now as a middle ground, and we will make them automatable. We can add XYs later, but we would rather not. Here's why:

In the past 7 years we had a full time employee who spent pretty much a third of his time assigning XYs and tagging presets for Hive and Zebra 2 factory and sound banks. Assigning XYs often takes longer and costs more than the actual preset.

Many sound designers simply refuse to assign macros themselves, and rather turn down a job or deliver worse presets if 4 XYs or 8 macros are a requirement. We have seen this with Zebra 2 and Hive over and over.

Even with just 4 MIDI Controllers, we have to support some of the sound designers.

While many people argue that XYs, macros, MIDI Controls and Expressions are completely different things, I came to the conclusion that they are often assigned to the same things. Furthermore, one would commonly use them alternatively: Expressions with MPE or plug-in API based workflows, MIDI with performance based workflows, Macros/XYs with moused or automation based workflows.

So the overlap is striking, and the usage is mostly exclusive.

So we wish to fuse the concepts.

Tidbit: In Hive all of these concepts are already realised through the Modmatrix, and even some Note Expressions CLAP Parameter Modulation are realised internally through hidden ModMatrices.

Really love the new Zebra3