Zebra 3 Public Beta Revision 20399

[djb123]

Are you guys interested in crash logs? I just had a crash in Ableton 12.3. Trying to load a preset with a sequence running.

Live-2025-12-11-190144.ips.zip

[Touch The Universe]

Been awhile since I've had this much fun - got like 100 presets already

[enCiphered]

Impressive pace, 100 presets already. Let’s just hope you don’t start thinking that an hour of fun equals a finished product. That math rarely works out.

[Shabdahbriah]

It's a bit like 'Elon Musk' everywhere.

I don't have all of U-he's stuff, just Bazille, Ace, MFM2, and Uhbik, all of which were bought on their respective introduction offers, but having interacted with and observed the interactions of Urs (here and on numerous other forums) for what seems like decades... He is one of the mellowest, sharpest, cordial, and just plain coolest humans around, and is more than generous with giving credit and praise to his 'collaborators'... which is profoundly in contrast to mr. muskrats public persona.

[dayjob]

So the upgrade/crossgrade discount for owners of multiple U-he products including Zebra legacy is what?

Less than the snack you’ll eat while installing it.

If you own Zebra 2 (pre-Legacy) only you can upgrade to Zebra 3 for €30 (~$30).
If you own Zebra 2 and The Dark Zebra you get Zebra 3 completely free.
Owning other u-he products (Hive, Diva, Repro, etc.) does not give a further crossgrade discount beyond the above. There’s no general multi-product owner pricing.
Buying Zebra Legacy now (the 99 € bundle) does not give you the €30 upgrade path. You’d pay normal pre-order or full price for Zebra 3.

Pretty sure this is right, but if not, someone please set me straight.

Yes, pretty cold... Owners of Legacy (those who bought in the past) should get SOMETHING. It's still Zebra2, it was a borderline obsolete product and it cost money, it wasn't a gift.

the roadmap/update path was repeated ad nauseam here and i think on social media for a long time. for what seems like years now. i think it was all boosted even more during the run up to the release of Zebra Legacy.. reminding people the difference between buying Z2 before Legacy was released or waiting and buying Legacy and then buying Z3 on release... and what the prices would be.

it was borderline annoying seeing the same information repeatedly on every channel.

you missed it. that's life. but you can't blame U-he.. they did their due diligence to let everyone know what the deals would be.

there are bigger problems to have in life. you'll be ok.

[dlandis]

We're online!

And we're all very Merry!

Thanks, Urs, for this. It really does sound great and looks to deliver years of fun programming, tweaking, and whatnot. I do hope that you all have nice long vacations planned. And thanks also for your very kind and generous upgrade policy.

[Touch The Universe]

Impressive pace, 100 presets already. Let’s just hope you don’t start thinking that an hour of fun equals a finished product. That math rarely works out.

I'm at nearly 200 - way more than an hour. Not even planning anything really about a product. Though truth be told its 30-40 init to patch then tons of variations

[aaron aardvark]

If my memory serves me, I bought Zebra HZ in February, 2013. So I have been waiting for this for a minute or two. Now it's finally here! I was confused by the License Card until I saw the video regarding that; then it was pretty simple. Very thankful it works with my Mac OS10.15, because I tried updating to Mac OS 11 recently, and my iMac (about 5 years old) wouldn't let me do that, even though it should theoretically be possible. Long ago, I updated my iMac to the latest Mac OS, and it was a disaster: half of my music plugins didn't work, so I have been leery of updating the Mac OS ever since. Glad the basic architecture of the user interface hasn't changed radically. I tried about a dozen presets: sounds good! The user interface has a tendancy to easily disappear though. I just have to keep re-opening it.

[Shiek927]

Honestly, I just want to hear patches! songs! amaze me!

[Shiek927]

Also, Zebra Legacy is pretty f’n far from obsolete. Superseded, sure. But Zebra 2 still sounds amazing and is far from having every possible sound made. It’s probably a safe bet that while Zebra Legacy is “feature complete” now, it will probably continue to be supported for many years to come and dare I say, probably even get a few of the cross platform upgrades that U-he seems to give all their plugins from time to time.

The amount of entitlement from people these days is amazing. I personally have purchased everything included in Zebra Legacy as an individual product (although, smartly when company deals were available) and if I weren’t “legacied” into Z3 for free, I’d have no issue paying the introductory offer or even full price if I had to.

Hans Zimmer is STILL using ZebraHZ as his primary synth to this very day. Sure, it's supplanted with other synths, like The Legend HZ because it's clear that his heart belongs to Moog, but he's gone on record saying he still hasn't exhausted all the uses of Zebra2 and that's after many, MANY, blockbuster scores including the Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, and many more with that thing. I still remember him saying that "90% of (the synth parts in) Inception is Zebra2".

I agree that Zebra2 is effectively "feature complete" and, frankly, a bit of an easy template or cheat code for Zebra3 development since it's easy enough to look at that synth and work backwards. A dedicated arpeggiator/sequencer, X/Y macros which may or may not end up returning, maybe some more FX(?), seem to be the only things lacking in Zebra3 as-is. Z3 is already plenty rich with OscFX, filters, and options.

[Supersensory]

I bought Zebra 3 on beta as I was looking for a do-it-all sound design synth, and it seems like it can really deliver on much of that which is great. I do have some issues with the UX though, which I hope that there may be some time to address while still in beta:

• The lack of moving modulation and visual feedback in general is really confusing when you're working on a complex patch. It's something that's pretty much standard these days, and would help ton with overall comprehension. Relying on your ears to make sure something is happening is not always reliable with many variables at play. This was particularly noticeable with the key-tracking modulation, it just became guesswork at times, especially because the key-tracking range is not obvious. Even a small highlight on the modulation ring/bar which tracks the current level would help a ton here.

• Not being able to right click a knob/slider to assign LFOs / envelopes etc is kind of annoying - It means you have to constantly switch your attention to the lower panel, hunt for the tool and then assign it manually. A small detail but it really breaks the flow, you go from creating to setup, which can make everything feel disconnected.

• No number values appearing when adjusting slider/knobs is inconvenient, as it means that again you are guessing at the range of those values. Being able to set duration in ms and beats/bars for envelopes would be great too.

• The little modulation modules which appear in the lower section are hard to understand, as the knobs have no value labels or feedback. The mod matrix is also super messy - there's no ordering of modules - So if I assign LFO2 to two different places at different times, they might be spread out somewhere across the bottom bar, meaning you need to hunt for them and read every single label and assignment. Could these be grouped by modulation source, or even better, allow the modulation module to expand for different destinations? The best possible solution would be an actual matrix with visual feedback as we see in something like Serum, opened via one of the tabs like the "Pitches" window.

• The effects being styled differently from all the rest makes it feel like a pedal board, rather than an integrated tool. It's a small gripe. but it clutters the UI.

• Some kind of feedback on the main panel for what the oscillators and filters are doing would be very helpful. The filter in particular has a huge amount of dead space on the left side.

• The filter panel with all the different options is a nice idea, but again I have no visual idea what what any of these actually look like in order to make an informed choice.

I understand that it's still in development and much may still be subject to change, but I wonder if other people feel similarly about some of these points. I really believe this is a landmark synth, it's just that some of the UX choices are needlessly clumsy or innacurate to work with. I really want to learn this thing top to bottom so I can make almost anything in it, which it seems capable of. These issues with modulation assignment and visualization in particular though, are making it feel kind of unwieldy and tedious at times.

I'd be happy to talk at greater length about any of these items I've raised. Thanks for all your work, and I look forward to the full release!

[Touch The Universe]

That distortion might be the best one I've ever heard, amazing for distorted bass leads - especially combined with 6pole lp filter - which i don't usually mess with (maybe it's that combo?). Dune 1 and Synnthmaster are second places.

Im not usually an fx guys but dang, i should really mabye try more fx Im thinking. can Someone recommend something 3rd party if you can with similar sound.

[HelloDave]

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This is incredible news! I do have a quick question about Zebra 2 Legacy and the upgrade. I have only ever used zebralette and only own a Diva license from U-He. If I bought Zebra 2 Legacy today what would the upgrade path be to Zebra 3? From the wording is seems like it would be free? But Zebra 2 Legacy is only $99 so I must be missing something. Either way I will be buying it I just want to make sure I do it smart, haha. Thanks again U-He, yall are the BEST!

the pre order for zebra 3 is here https://checkout.u-he.com/1843/?scope=c ... EORDZEBRA3 (https://checkout.u-he.com/1843/?scope=checkout&cart=291219&coupon=PREORDZEBRA3) Zebra Legacy doesnt have an upgrade path so preorder is the only way to get a discount . I am in the same boat .

[neuromod]

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.

That's really fascinating! I never would have guessed this.

[ffx]

If you double click on an OSC on the top left, or an MSEG, couldn't then open the detail tab below? Also an option "detail tabs follow selection" might be nice...?

Another slight improvement:

If you switch from Presets tab to Synth tab, and a very bottom element in the matrix is already selected (e.g. the filter as last element in the chain), the left panel view also should be scrolled to that selected element, IMO. Seems to be inconsistent otherwise...

The performance of the CLAP version seems to be worse than the VST3 version, on my system, M1pro macos 15.7 Bitwig. The preset "Kanta Bronze" will quite more early run into cpu dropouts using the CLAP version.