Zebra 3 Public Beta Revision 20399

[Urs]

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?

I'll pass it on to the UI/UX folks.

[Viktor [TUC]]

If controls aren't exposed as automation parameters, I can't access them with my controller like I can things like osc controls, filter, envelopes, macro controls etc in a standard layout* for all my synths, which means I can't directly use those useful controls (other than the mouse), and they become more or less practically inaccessible for me for realtime performance control.

Your controllers sends MIDI, so you can easily tell Zebra3 which MIDI CCs you want to connect to Control A-D and you're done, realtime control of these performance controls. And these are then recorded (or drawn like automation) in the MIDI clip.

Viktor
u-he team

[Spitfire31]

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

No.

[gassle]

Erm, trying to find the SB (sideband) module in Zebra3, or a module that's substitute of what it does.

[MrMuzzi]

Question about modulations:

I am using the Alternating Lanes preset and I wanted to quickly understand what modulates what, and since there are 4 LFOs used in the mod column I expected them to appear in the matrix, but LFO1 (used for the filter cutoff) and LFO4 (still haven't found what it modulates!) are missing from there.

Another example:
with the 90's Detroit preset there are a lot of assignments in the matrix and I can't find a quick way to navigate this. If I click on one osc then the list of mods is immediately reflected on the right, but for a filter or an LFO how do I find them? Scrolling through the matrix? Seems very impractical above 10-15 modulations maybe?

Is the idea of a visual feedback like Massive X or Synthmaster not a viable solution here, or am I missing something in the workflow?

Cheers, and congratulations for the release!!!

[Urs]

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.

The bipolar function of the Ratio parameter has many advantages. For instance, if you prefer to work with separate FMO modules for Modulator/Carrier, you can set up Ratios between them by tuning into the negative range, which will be faster and more accurate than using the tuning in semitones.

However, being bipolar requires to have a 0 in the middle, there is literally no way around it.

In my honest opinion the off-by-1-thing is not really such a big deal. Any integer Ratio is easily dialled in, much easier than e.g. the semitone tuning we have had in Zebra 2, and also faster than the switched options in Bazille.

Sure, if you want to recreate DX-something patches, you have to subtract 1 from each Ratio. But as Zebra does not have the same concepts for envelopes, gains and key scaling as DX-somethings, I think the Ratio is probably the lesser problem here. Zebra 3 is not a dedicated DX emulation, it just opens ways to combine those sonic worlds with other sonic worlds.

Wrapping up, I would like to encourage anyone to work with it for a few days, and maybe in January we can have another discussion. Maybe we find a solution that works for all of us, without sacrificing the advantages of the bipolarity of "our" Ratio.

[Urs]

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?

-> support at u-he dot com

[Urs]

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.

I think we already have this modulatable offset as an internal feature request, and visual feedback is still work in progress. The devs will be back in January, so there's a good chance it'll be in the 3.0 release, otherwise subsequent releases.

[Urs]

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.

So, I already mentioned my issues about XYs in a previous post.

That said, we absolutely want to make Ctrl ABCD work for you and your use case the same way XYs would.

We already have an internal discussion going on about if, how and when to make Ctrl ABCD host automatable, and what expressions to map onto them etc.

We had deep discussions with sound designers and many users, and we think we can come up with a unified solution that not only makes preset design faster, but also gives us better presets.

However, at the moment the macros in Zebra 3 are MIDI based, and not yet automatable even thought they are accessible in the UI.

[Urs]

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

Unfortunately: No.

There are hardly any modules and features that could behave mapped 1:1 between Zebra 2 and Zebra 3.

Zebra 3 is a completely new synth. While it clearly is based on the concepts and ideas of Zebra 2, there is not a single audio or modulation module that is identical.

[Urs]

Absence of XY (or 8 knobs like in Hive) is a bit frustrating.

There is performance section that allows changing pitch and mw but for the rest one need physical controls/additional midi device in DAW.

Before it was all accessible from plugin UI.

Control A/B/C/D are accessible from the plugin UI and they are deemed to fulfil the same purpose as Macros. We have some more work to do here, please be patient with us until January.

Like I mentioned before, they use the same mechanics as XYs in Hive, through ModMatrix slots, and the essentially perform the same tasks.

Once they are automatable, I even think it's a big advantage to fuse these concepts for the different workflows that people have.

I do hope that 4 are enough, as our sound designers would go on strike if we required more to set up. Also, our full time employee who has spent the past 7 years assigning XYs in Hive and Zebra 2 is retiring this month.

[Urs]

Ok... I went through the posts that piled up overnight and I hope I have answered everything...

Great feedback everyone, keep it coming!

[Fannon]

Control A/B/C/D are accessible from the plugin UI and they are deemed to fulfil the same purpose as Macros. We have some more work to do here, please be patient with us until January.

Like I mentioned before, they use the same mechanics as XYs in Hive, through ModMatrix slots, and the essentially perform the same tasks.

Once they are automatable, I even think it's a big advantage to fuse these concepts for the different workflows that people have.

I do hope that 4 are enough, as our sound designers would go on strike if we required more to set up. Also, our full time employee who has spent the past 7 years assigning XYs in Hive and Zebra 2 is retiring this month.

Thanks for the heads-up. This was also the first thing I noticed, but it's already an improvement that they are shown as Macro knobs on the UI, for those who don't have a MIDI controller. By automatable you refer to them not just being available to DAW automation, but also be internal modulation targets? I think it would also be more intuitive if you can just map it to a MIDI control via the MIDI L setting overlay, like with the other params. But I'm sure you'll figure out a good solution for this!

For me 4 macros are plenty. Minor idea: Allow the preset to override the name of the macro, so it's more self-descriptive what they do. Or show the Usage documentation for them on hover, if it can be parsed out.

I noticed that UI loads very slow under Windows, but I think that had been mentioned.

For the OSC and MSEG curves it would be great to have a browser for them, in some later releases. In Zebra 2 there was one, but having a browser that could also give a visual overview what the curve set would look like could be awesome.

The sound quality of Zebra 3 is awesome. It puts my Ryzen to work, but it can actually handle it well enough. This is a really great release, I'm sure people will love it.

[SamDi]

Shouldn‘t the modulation ring when having a bipolar LFO as modulator also show the bipolar modulation? Currently the ring does look always like unipolar modulated. Not shure, if it was adressed yet.

[Ghost Dog]

Urs, what's the deal with envelope modes? Is this apparent lack of env modes a beta thing (or a new "meta"), or am I missing something?

There's the "env mode" with MSEGs, but, it still kinda seems that Z3 has less options with regard to envelopes, compared to Z2 (personally I happen to like the "sane defaults" envelope shapes with Env1-4, but more envelopes never hurt anybody).

Otherwise, Z3 looks pretty great so far.