Zebra 3 Public Beta Revision 20399

[tasmaniandevil]

Many parameters adjusts so quickly, if I want to increase the decay a little bit and try to pull the knob up, it almost reaches top. Sensitivity like this is pretty time consuming for basic adjustments.

That's not the case over here. But I have an idea. Go into the preferences and switch off the "Hide Mouse on Drag" option. See if that improves the situation. It's possible that on some few Windows systems, the sensitivity is too high when this option is active. But again, it seems limited to very few systems. In most cases, sensitivity is good even with Hide Mouse on Drag active. We'll have to investigate why it's not working as intended in a few cases.

[tasmaniandevil]

Key CTRL are experimental as far as I know, for me on linux it simply doesn't work at all

Yes, key control is not fully implemented on Linux yet.

[exmatproton]

why it's so hard to add points on splines ?
it just refuses to add point on straight line, I need to make an arc first and then it adds point with double click.
also sometimes it adds points even on straight line but that happens in 1 out of 100 clicks..

manual says: "Add points .....................................double-click in the background or option+click (Mac) / ctrl+click (Win)"
I'm just doing something wrong ?

So, a click onto a segment straightens it. That's the same as in Zebra 2, so we thought we'd keep that.

But maybe it's less intuitive, as it prevents points from being added.

What would you alternatively suggest to use to quickly straighten segments?

I would use a key modifier to straighten lines and a double click (left mouse button) to add points.

[exmatproton]

Another idea; i am in love with the 4 pitch sources. They are awesome. However, i am not fond that i am limited by the fact that the vibrato always retriggers. Sometimes it works great, but most of the time it results in a movement that is very predictable. Would be awesome to see more dedicated controls there; just like with the normal LFO's (retrigger options, phase, different OSC types). But if that is too much, only a couple of different retrigger options would be very, very welcome

[WalterH]

why not simply helper key alt / ctrl / shift + double click straightens curve, you know which key might be more suitable .. but idea is , double click for only adding points, and key + double click straighten

[Urs]

Another idea; i am in love with the 4 pitch sources. They are awesome. However, i am not fond that i am limited by the fact that the vibrato always retriggers. Sometimes it works great, but most of the time it results in a movement that is very predictable. Would be awesome to see more dedicated controls there; just like with the normal LFO's (retrigger options, phase, different OSC types). But if that is too much, only a couple of different retrigger options would be very, very welcome

I'll pass it on...

[Ghost Dog]

.... So I think I mentioned it before, we are thinking about more slope control ....

We need to organize one of those Inception flights for you and your team: you go to sleep and when you wake up, you start shouting "damn, we need more envelope options".

Joking aside, yeah, I remember you mentioned the "impending streamlining" of envelopes in Z3 (it was a couple of years ago IIRC).

As I said, the Z3 envelopes work well for me, they are 'natural and pleasant sounding' for lack of a better term (and there are options and workarounds to change the curves), but .... if you decide to go full nerd with Z3 envelopes, I don't think people will hold that against you.

ATB

[Andreya_Autumn]

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...

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...

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.

Yeah sorry I wasn't suggesting you change the range of the dial. Lemme be clearer:

If you're working with normalized data in -1...1 then yeah, 0 is obviously in the middle of the underlier. But UI-wise, yes, there absolutely is a way around it. And it looks like this:
...1/3 .. 1/2 .. 1/1 .. 2/1 .. 3/1 ... etc etc.

That's how we did it in Six Sines and it works great!

Bipolar.gif

That's the proposal!

I can get back to you in January, but my opinion won't have changed by then.
You're right the off-by-one is not a big deal, but it also doesn't offer any advantage (or am I missing something?). And you do lose a lot of clarity... the number is no longer a literal multiple of frequency. Octaves aren't at 2,4,8 etc... it's just a head-scratcher for me personally.

Thanks for considering it, and for the great synth!

[Urs]

Well, yeah... it's just, we don't have normalised parameters, we always try to use natural parameter ranges, and avoid any translation. And we absolutely try to avoid parameters that are scaled anything else than linear. This helps setting up modulation depths and such.

[WalterH]

why not simply helper key alt / ctrl / shift + double click straightens curve, you know which key might be more suitable .. but idea is , double click for only adding points, and key + double click straighten

in addition to my above post:
Please, if devs will take care of that also don't forget to make it as easy to delete points (simply delete key).
Creating curve should be lot easier than it is currently.

[Urs]

why not simply helper key alt / ctrl / shift + double click straightens curve, you know which key might be more suitable .. but idea is , double click for only adding points, and key + double click straighten

in addition to my above post:
Please, if devs will take care of that also don't forget to make it as easy to delete points (simply delete key).
Creating curve should be lot easier than it is currently.

Delete key works. Needs Key Control to be activated of course.

[Urs]

So there's a lot of functionality that we need to explain in a lot of detail once we finished the UI. But without the UI finished, we can't officially do explanatory videos, like this:





And of course, we'll continue to work on this. If the current paradigms are not optimal for people, we can add more.

[Andreya_Autumn]

Well, yeah... it's just, we don't have normalised parameters, we always try to use natural parameter ranges, and avoid any translation. And we absolutely try to avoid parameters that are scaled anything else than linear. This helps setting up modulation depths and such.

Hmm ok. The linearity of modulation should be the same in both cases though shouldn't it? Just you know, off by one. For you 1->3 is an octave and so is 3-7, in Six Sines 2 to 4 is an octave and so is 4-8. The domain is logarithmic in both cases.

And also without normalizsation, I don't quite get why 0 would absolutely need to be in the middle? Other than the work of making/maintaining another standard for a bipolar-behaving control of course. Which is, yeah, work of course. Easy for me to say that work is worth putting in, but yeah... if it were me I would wanna do it. 1 in the middle just seems plain better to be honest.

[Andreya_Autumn]

Oh and... "avoid any translation"... yeah that makes total sense. But doesn't the current way require translation (in the center you're obviously multiplying frequency by 1, not 0)?

[colibri]

Will there be a way of converting Zebra 2 presets? Or at least getting close?