Zebra 3 Public Beta (final beta)

[sunthief01]

I also never owned Zebra 2, but I've been playing Zebralette 3 since it came out and learning the spline editor. I completely disagree about the interface being whack and needing a complete rework..

For me Zebra exists in a place between the "trying to be everything you'll need" (of say, Pigments) and the "actually everything you'll need (of Reaktor) and giving that to you in a polyphonic environment without virtual cables.

So to me the modularity makes sense. The lanes make sense. The lack of wires is elegant. I need to get used to where to go for certain things coming from Zebralette, but I just completely disagree about the interface.

I think the reason I like the interface is that I'm coming to it first and foremost as a curated modular environment and not primarily as a subtractive synth...

[jobinho]

I think the reason I like the interface is that I'm coming to it first and foremost as a curated modular environment and not primarily as a subtractive synth...

Given the depth of this synth, I can’t help feeling a landscape UI would work really well, even on my 27" monitor some of the text is very small and everything feels a bit tight, something a wide UI would alleviate

[Robotoad]

limitation push creativity

I will push back against that myth until the day they pry the synths out of my cold dead hands.

Limitations stifle creativity. Period, end of story.

The only thing limitations do are force you to compromise.

Dr. Seuss once took a $50 bet to write a story using only 50 words. The result was the most successful book of his career, Green Eggs & Ham.

[DCrown]

My first impression is that it has some very good sounds/presets. I have noticed a way higher cpu usage than Zebra 2 though.
Frankly speaking I expect an upgrade to be optimized, it means a better cpu performance than previous version, so I will wait, maybe it will be improved....

[Touch The Universe]

[JerGoertz]

Urs mentioned that some of the new Filter have Diva quality and resource consumption, but the filters are not 1:1 the same

1.0 Release probably for Q1 next year

Thanks, much appreciated.

[PieBerger]

My first impression is that it has some very good sounds/presets. I have noticed a way higher cpu usage than Zebra 2 though.
Frankly speaking I expect an upgrade to be optimized, it means a better cpu performance than previous version, so I will wait, maybe it will be improved....

It's not an upgrade of an existing engine, it's a complete re-write with imo, much better sounding filters and crazy deep and also amazing sounding additive manipulation and Osc FX. It should be expected that these improvements come at the cost of more cycles. That being said, Zebralette3 was thirsty during the beta and was subsequently optimised before commercial release, so there is hope for Zebra3 to follow suit

[JerGoertz]

My first impression is that it has some very good sounds/presets. I have noticed a way higher cpu usage than Zebra 2 though.
Frankly speaking I expect an upgrade to be optimized, it means a better cpu performance than previous version, so I will wait, maybe it will be improved....

I believe Urs mentioned that it will be optimized for CPU at some point, and to expect higher usage until then.

[pchase]

My first impression is that it has some very good sounds/presets. I have noticed a way higher cpu usage than Zebra 2 though.
Frankly speaking I expect an upgrade to be optimized, it means a better cpu performance than previous version, so I will wait, maybe it will be improved....

Why on earth would you expect that? Zebra2 was released in 2006, almost 20 years ago. CPUs had a fraction of the power they do today. Would you not expect a completely new synth engine to use more CPU than a 2006 synth in order to sound better?

[DCrown]

My first impression is that it has some very good sounds/presets. I have noticed a way higher cpu usage than Zebra 2 though.
Frankly speaking I expect an upgrade to be optimized, it means a better cpu performance than previous version, so I will wait, maybe it will be improved....

Why on earth would you expect that? Zebra2 was released in 2006, almost 20 years ago. CPUs had a fraction of the power they do today. Would you not expect a completely new synth engine to use more CPU than a 2006 synth in order to sound better?

Yes, that's what I expect. My main synth is Avenger and V2 s lower on cpu than very old V1, although it has way more features.
It is always about improving a product!
In a complete project a cpu hog is not useable for me and freezing a track is not my workflow, I rarelly do it, cuz I want always get back to a track add or change something in the process.

[SamDi]

The whole concept and workflow of Zebra is and has always been about the economics of connecting as few modules as needed for as much outcome as possible.

It is one middle ground between simple fixed architecture synths like Hive, Diva and Serum and full blown modular environments like VCV Rack or Reaktor.

Thanks for elaborating on your vision of the concept of Zebra. I appreciate to read your thoughts on this.

It is not the only concept that tries to achieve this, there is e.g. Phase Plant, MPowerSynth and probably a few more that I don't recall. However, these concepts are not the same as Zebra, since they either sacrifice the depth that Zebra offers, or they sacrifice the workflow for whatever infinity they may have.

While I am able to understand your opinion on the concept of Zebra, I think with this statement you are noticeably wrong. I can not see how e.g. the concepts of Phase Plant do sacrifice either workflow or especially depth. So having curves and LFO shape tables, each able to modulate everything with everything, freely remapable and retriggerable by everything does not offer depth? Sorry but it seams like, you have some blind spots on that.

Speaking of which, Zebra is the opposite of a layer based approach. This has advantages and drawbacks. The advantage is, you can probably build more complex and/or refined patches quicker in Zebra than in a layered synth. The disadvantage is, if you need gazillions of the same kind of modules, you lose all the advantages. And then you need a different synth.

Don't understand this either. I mean, you have the grid with 4 lanes with each ending on a mixer channel, where then each you can route into individual Fx lanes. So this isn't a layer based approach?

Maybe I have a different understanding, of how a semi-modular synth should be, than you. In my opinion the goal should be, not to stand in the way and give the user as much freedom as possible, to realize a sound in the way he is intending it. Doesn't mean to say "Zebra is the opposite of a layer based approach" or it's rahter paradigm A and not so paradigm B, limiting it unneccessarily? It could be a layered based approach very well, not?

Besides, more than 4 filters per voice will bring CPUs into serious trouble

Maybe for a pad, played with bass notes and with long release. But for lead or bass sounds? You need to ensure to be future-proof and keep future CPUs busy till Zebra 4 arrives.

Again, rather than get bummed out by what it supposedly lacks delve into its enormous capabilities. It's a phenomenal piece of software.

I wouldn't contradict that it's a phenomenal piece of software and I also don't think, I get bummed out. I just think there is much potential to improve and I wanted to gave this feedback.

It is odd to have two very different modulation paradigms. To a new user, it seems like a lot of things are just not mod targets, when they are, but only in the mod matrix. I'd also appreciate a "focus" screen, where all modulation can be seen as a list, like Omnisphere does it.

I see it the same way, but Urs already stated for this. What I don't understand is: what would you take Zebra 3 away, if you'd decide to drop all the "direct modulation" fields out and just leave a central concise modulation system, be it a matrix or like in Phase Plant? I would say nothing.



Maybe it is important to say, that my intention was/is not to fuel controversy, but to give some feedback how Zebra could even get more great as it already is. So again:
What would you take Zebra 3 away to open it up in terms of limitation of module amount or to make the GUI morce concise? I think nothing.

[Urs]

And it's annoying that they are limited to 4.

If "King Crimson is not a band, it is a way of doing things",

Deep cut. Saw Belew, Vai, Levin and Carey on the first show of their Beat tour. It was great. They're going to be in your neck of the woods on 15/06. Highly recommend it. I didn't miss Fripp at all. He usually hides anyway.

https://beat-tour.com

Yeah, I think I watched all videos on YT.

Great to see they're finally coming to Europe. Been waiting for this! Oh and ticket sales start today... it's a big arena though, should be possible to get one.

[Urs]

Am I losing my mind, or did U-he change their mind about the free upgrade to Zebra 3 for Dark Zebra owners? When I requested my licenses, I got an email with a link to upgrade to Z3 for $35, but I bought Dark Zebra more than 10 years ago when they promised the free upgrade.

You might have purchased TDZ with a different email address. Contact our support and they'll be sorting it out. It's pretty much what 6 people have been doing all day every day for a week or so.

[Urs]

My first impression is that it has some very good sounds/presets. I have noticed a way higher cpu usage than Zebra 2 though.
Frankly speaking I expect an upgrade to be optimized, it means a better cpu performance than previous version, so I will wait, maybe it will be improved....

Every single module in Zebra 3 is objectively improved in sound over its Zebra 2 counterpart. In the most simple case, modules in Zebra 3 are likely to be oversampled when in Zebra 2 they are not, and they are likely to implement novel technologies for anti-aliasing (if ADAA rings a bell as a term, we use it pretty much everywhere, and we might have the first FM oscillators deploying a version of it). Oversampling would approximately double the CPU.

So in that sense, every Z3 module is expected to at least consume twice as much CPU as their Z2 counterparts. Speaking of FMOs for instance, those now are dual oscillators. So it's intuitively clear that they use more CPU than the single FMOs from Z2.

that said, a few modules will see more optimisation. The texture reverb for instance can use up to 20% on my machine, but a team of devs is on it, just didn't want to risk breaking anything before this beta release.

[Urs]

It is odd to have two very different modulation paradigms. To a new user, it seems like a lot of things are just not mod targets, when they are, but only in the mod matrix. I'd also appreciate a "focus" screen, where all modulation can be seen as a list, like Omnisphere does it.

I see it the same way, but Urs already stated for this. What I don't understand is: what would you take Zebra 3 away, if you'd decide to drop all the "direct modulation" fields out and just leave a central concise modulation system, be it a matrix or like in Phase Plant? I would say nothing.

So, in Zebra 2 the ModMatrix was an add on "for when you need it" because almost everything had direct modulation slots. So the general concept is neither new nor odd. We have however improved the ModMatrix concept over the time, and now it plays a bigger role.

In Zebra 3 many modules became more complex and deep than in Zebra 2, so adding lot of direct modulation slots was very cluttering. We tried.

So we reduced the direct modulation slots for wherever it matters the most. And that is typically wherever sample accurate modulation makes an audible difference, e.g. in the FMO modulation gains, and of course on filter cutoff.

Our approach to the ModMatrix is ultra flexible, but to make it feasible, it runs on a more sparse granularity than direct modulation slots. The control rate of direct modulation slots is 1/4 sample rate or 10kHz, while the granularity of the ModMatrix is about a sixteenth of that, about 800Hz when the sample rate is 44.1/48 kHz.

So in Hive we tested various ways to increase that granularity, but the audible differences (if any) would not justify the increased CPU hit. At an update rate of 8-16 samples (which is better than many, many synths), the CPU doubles. Not worth it.