Zebra 3 Public Beta (final beta)

[Urs]

Yes it’s not good enough.

Too bad then, so many years wasted... for nothing.

(and all those sound designers who miraculously created a great factory bank, they must have been cheating. Probably added a few instances of Serum into the presets, and that's what you hear, can't possibly be this insufficient and lacking synthesizer)

[Echoes in the Attic]

Bit of feedback, you probably already considered: It might be easier for the Filter selector view in the middle to have the slope options lined up. For example all the 12db slopes, all the 24 db slopes being all in a line would be easier to quickly select different types. I was switching between all the 12 db filters for example, but the ones that weren't in a line threw me off just a bit.

Speaking of the filters, there's quite a bit of volume differences between the filters. Some are quiet whereas some really go into clipping easily. Might be good to have a normalization option there. But it's mainly huge differences with how the resonance behaves so maybe not possible.

[Funky40]

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@Urs !

and Team


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( not yet played with it, my ITB setup is dismantled)

[wagtunes]

Or, if you refuse to compromise,

Why should anyone want to (or have to) compromise? That's a defeatist attitude.

they force you to figure out a way to get done what you want to get done.

No, they force you to get something else done instead of what you wanted done.

I mean look what musicians did with early synths that didn't have near the functionality we have today. Greg Hawkes of The Cars wasn't creative? He played some of the most iconic synth riffs to this day.

Those limitations were mandatory and here's the salient point: because that's all they had at the time.

Are you saying that Greg Hawkes couldn't make more iconic synth riffs if he had the options we have today back in those days?

We have so much power at our fingertips these days why limit ourselves? I'll make an example of Zebra 3. I'm a huge fan of multiple built in Arpeggiators in synths. I love using them in different directions at different speeds triggering different Oscs, etc (and before someone even starts typing, no you can't do that with the Arp in your Daw). I've made countless such patches in other synths and use a lot of them in compositions.

At this point in time Zebra 3 does not have even a single Arp (no, the Mappers are not the same). So I am forced to compromise by not being able to make those patches that I love in Z3. Do you see what I'm saying?

What I'd love to see is 4 Arp Modules in Z3 that could be placed on each Column instead of having an Arp "Mode". That would certainly follow the semi-modular paradigm of Z3. Is that going to happen any time in the future? Who knows, it's out of my control.

Zebra 3 is a great synth and we can love it for what it is today but please no one try to dumb it down by pushing back against features that will expand the range of sounds it can make. That's a self defeating attitude.

Here's my response to all that.

Name me ONE synth that can do anything in the world OUTSIDE of a truly dedicated modular synth that doesn't take a masters degree in engineering to figure out how to use?

Because let me tell you, I have tons of modular synths. Been using them for years. I can do anything with a modular synth.

You know how many years it took me to get there?

The kind of power you want in Zebra 3, how many people do you really think will be able to take advantage of it other than just pull up a preset? So u-he is going to make a synth that maybe 10% of the user base will be able to take full advantage of? Business wise it makes no sense given the number of man hours it would take to make such a synth.

In short, not every synth can be or SHOULD be everything to everybody.

Again, outside of the few dedicated modular synths out there (Softtube, Cherry Audio, etc) how many synths out there can do anything you want it to do?

I'll wait while you count all zero of them.

[Urs]

Bit of feedback, you probably already considered: It might be easier for the Filter selector view in the middle to have the slope options lined up. For example all the 12db slopes, all the 24 db slopes being all in a line would be easier to quickly select different types. I was switching between all the 12 db filters for example, but the ones that weren't in a line threw me off just a bit.

Yeah, thankfully this can be done without breaking presets.

Speaking of the filters, there's quite a bit of volume differences between the filters. Some are quiet whereas some really go into clipping easily. Might be good to have a normalization option there. But it's mainly huge differences with how the resonance behaves so maybe not possible.

So the filters are normalised for Cutoff fully open and Resonance set to 0.

The filters are vastly different designs, so they naturally behave differently. Compensating for volume differences would make individual filters sound awkward. In many cases it is impossible even (no pun intended), because the overall volume goes down but the the self oscillation becomes really loud. In such cases, compensating for volume loss would make the self oscillation even louder.

[PieBerger]

It's 2025 and after 11 years of development Zebra3 is finally in public beta and it's still not good enough

Users need unlimited LFOs, MSEGs and envelopes, with deep feature sets each, cutting edge DSP, effortless workflow and all for $99 new or a free upgrade from version 2 that they bought 15 years ago

Yes it’s not good enough. Even in Serum we now have 10 fully featured MSEGs which also function as LFOs.

Zebra 3 might have “extra” LFOs tucked into various places but… why? It’s so much simpler to have a list of modulators in one place that can be used everywhere.

Sounds like you're going to save yourself 30/179/249 bucks

[Dr.Gunjah]

I didn't have time yet to try Z3 myself, so just a short question... Is there now one location where I can see all modulations or is it still a treasure hunt with mod depth knobs scattered everywhere?

[Urs]

I didn't have time yet to try Z3 myself, so just a short question... Is there now one location where I can see all modulations or is it still a treasure hunt with mod depth knobs scattered everywhere?

Still a treasure hunt. But we're working on a concept for a global overview window, but that is in early stages. If that is a showstopper, maybe wait for Zebra 3.1 or 3.2.

[Urs]

(OTOH you can now solo modules quickly... so much faster to analyse existing presets)

[nusound mind]

Pers. speaking the presets I find pretty pragmatic. The few basses sound great for the most part, or easily adjusted to fit.

Contrasting this w/ Absynth, Z3 did what i hoped, upped the sound quality, and it's now the best sounding uhe synth, surpassing Diva and Bazille. Absynth otoh, which I liked the sound of better than Zebra 2 (unless we're talking Dark Zebra) sounds negligibly better for all intents (though still good) yet upgrade price is 3X as much.

All I hope for now is some further cpu optimization so i can safely bump up resolution to 2k more often, but for producing music to me I'm gtg. Maybe sound designers have a different set of criteria or needs, but as an instrument it's fantastic. A touch better than I'd expected even, after using Zebralettle a few times and overall expectations, which were high to begin w/.

[Echoes in the Attic]

Speaking of the filters, there's quite a bit of volume differences between the filters. Some are quiet whereas some really go into clipping easily. Might be good to have a normalization option there. But it's mainly huge differences with how the resonance behaves so maybe not possible.

So the filters are normalised for Cutoff fully open and Resonance set to 0.

The filters are vastly different designs, so they naturally behave differently. Compensating for volume differences would make individual filters sound awkward. In many cases it is impossible even (no pun intended), because the overall volume goes down but the the self oscillation becomes really loud. In such cases, compensating for volume loss would make the self oscillation even louder.

Understood. Just was tough to try different filters as the volumes were so different (mostly thinking of the really loud resonance of some that clipped hard) and so had to continuously adjust volumes to not overload. Seemed like more variation than I'm used to swappping out different filters. But I think you did warn somewhere to be careful with the filters. Maybe a built in limiter on the filter module or something as an option?

[zerocrossing]

Sometimes a better idea should be discarded because there's already an established way to do things.

Then my question would be do you advocate for a major rewrite of a plugin that's been in development for who knows how many years? How many man hours of work would that create? I don't have any idea I'm just asking. I'm not sure what you want discarded and added. Maybe it's a couple of lines of code or a couple of months of coding. Either way I don't oppose anything that makes Z3 better.

Keeping in mind the hundreds if not thousands of patches created in Zebra 2 and those already for Z3 by countless sound designers (not to mention Z2 being used in several movie themes) and we see proof that Zebra is very usable in it's current state.

Again is it 100% comfortable for 100% of the people? Nope, nothing is...

Don't get me wrong, I have a laundry list of things I 'd like to see added. Some them are features of convenience and some are features of function which add to the range of sounds that can be made. I'll give a specific example of a feature of convenience.

I've been at it since 4am with Z3 and one thing that keeps seeming like a good idea would be for a way to have the contents of each column shown in order in the left hand panel and not showing any modules that aren't in that stack.


Z3 121125-2.png


Notice how Osc 4 is selected and shows on top (I have that option chosen in Rack View) but none of the other modules in that stack are shown without scrolling. I've tried the other two rack view options and they don't seem to accomplish the task unless I'm missing something.

There is room at the top of each column for a "Focus" button where if you click on it only the modules in the column that has focus would show in the pane of the left in their natural order. Sometimes I want to edit the modules in a stack one after the other in order without having to click back and forth.

Does that make sense to anyone else or am I trippin? It's not something that adds more features or accomplishes a task that can't already be done, it's just something that makes things more....convenient. Again I don't know if that would take hours or months to accomplish.

Anyway I'm going back in to spend a few more hours with Z3........

I’m not talking about any of that. I’m talking about conforming to established terminology at the expense of having a precise definition. You’re thinking of things like an engineer, not like an average user.

I always think of an online Pokemon card game that I worked on the people at Pokemon wanted a way for users to sort their decks. They insisted that every option be on screen on that page, rather than a curated group of parameters and a way to bring up a list to customize your on-screen options.

It was a mess. Not to them, because they’d all been playing for decades, but to a new or casual user? Overwhelming. I’ll leave it like this. You can design an interface however you want, but if you’re not willing to consider new users, you will be putting a constraint on potential growth. If you have to read the manual to figure out how to change the waveform… well…

[Dr.Gunjah]

Still a treasure hunt. But we're working on a concept for a global overview window, but that is in early stages. If that is a showstopper, maybe wait for Zebra 3.1 or 3.2.

Ah I see, thanks for making it clear. It's not a showstopper for playing around for sure, but later when using presets made by other people it would certainly help to have one location where you can view and possibly control the amount of all mods. It would help to quickly identify the things you may want to change in a patch and move on with your track.

I guess the scattered mod controls are useful "shortcuts" for sound designers but as someone who often uses presets as starting points I kinda wish they wouldn't exist. Really my only gripe with Z2.

Then again that global overview window may be the best of both worlds.

[Ah_Dziz]

Words

You want all the mods including the non matrix ones?

[billinder33]

Sometimes a better idea should be discarded because there's already an established way to do things.

one thing that keeps seeming like a good idea would be for a way to have the contents of each column shown in order in the left hand panel and not showing any modules that aren't in that stack.

Synthmaster 3 has a similar issue where the osc and LFOs are numbered but out of order (and with no way to rearrange). Maybe they fixed it in a later version, but I lost interest due to the navigation system and haven't had a desire to touch it since Serum 2 hit the streets.