Zebra 3 Public Beta (final beta)

[bmanic]

Sorry for not reading the whole thread. Just now I finally had a little time to play with the Zebra 3 beta and was wondering if anybody else is experiencing extremely sluggish knobs and sliders? When moving controls with the mouse + left click, I have to reposition my mouse on the mouse mat several times to go from 0 to 100% of the movement of a knob. For contrast, if I do the same in Diva, for instance the cutoff knob of the filter, I simply flick my wrist up and mouse moves maybe 5cm on the mouse mat and the control instantly goes from 0 to 100% with perfect control.

It's like the mouse velocity/acceleration code is broken or something. This seems to affect absolutely all knobs and sliders in Zebra 3 beta. Sluggish as molasses.

I'm on Mac M1 Sonoma, running latest version of Reaper and VST3 version of Zebra 3. I'll check the other plugin formats ASAP and see if they also have the same issue.


EDIT: If I turn off the option "Hide mouse on drag" everything works as expected. Knobs and sliders aren't stuck in mud any more.

EDIT2: Sorry for spamming what is probably a bug report in the wrong thread. Will go to the correct place and report.

[Rastkovic]

Patch by Simon Stockhausen, who utilizes the Modal module....

Zebra 3 – Modal Patch 01

[wagtunes]

Okay, I don't know if this is a bug or not but in Zebra 2, when I go to OSC 1 below and modify the shape, the sound changes. In Zebra 3, nothing happens.

Is this a bug or does it work differently in Zebra 3?

Select a shape in the time line and hit the little speaker icon to preview the currently selected shape.

Otherwise the current Curve is determined by the curve morph knob.

Thank you. I finally got around to trying that out and it worked. I can see there are some things in Zebra 3 that are going to take some getting used to.

[Urs]

I can see there are some things in Zebra 3 that are going to take some getting used to.

I would say this is an understatement, probably

We tried to keep Zebra 3 as familiar as possible for users of Zebra 2. But in many, many ways we had to throw out the old ways and put in place the new.

[JerGoertz]

Urs, is there going to be an FX version of Zebra 3, like Zebrify for Zebra 2?

[Urs]

Urs, is there going to be an FX version of Zebra 3, like Zebrify for Zebra 2?

Not sure yet, and not soon, either.

We will try to add audio input to the synth - something we talked about for years though...

[NAD]

Urs, is there going to be an FX version of Zebra 3, like Zebrify for Zebra 2?

Not sure yet, and not soon, either.

We will try to add audio input to the synth - something we talked about for years though...

I can't speak for other DAWs but in Reaper having audio input would be sufficient, as any plugin can come before any other plugin in an fx chain (regardless of whether they're classified as an instrument or effect). In Live for example I'm not sure if this is possible or simple to do. Of course in that case we probably wouldn't get the envelope followers or pitch tracking but I personally don't care about that so much.

[tripleflows]

A separate modulation page showing all modulation in a filterable way would be essential. See the Korg Native synths (Wavestate, Modwave, Multi/Poly) UX for this, which is excellent additional way to handle all modulations on a single page very quickly.

[Urs]

I think there are better ways to improve readability of the signal flow, like more mouse hover action, activity coding and local information.

I'm not a fan of spreadsheet views. They work for simple synths that have 2-3 oscillators and one or two filters. Take Serum for example which only shows like 8 entries at a time. That won't be helpful in Zebra.

My hunch is, if we added a large spreadsheet view to Zebra 3, it would not yield the effect that people are looking for. 50+ rows of rather abstract modulation connections won't help, no matter how easy they are to navigate. (if we show all possible connections, I think it's more like 200-300 rows)

It's IMHO more clever to be able to focus on subsets of a patch, as you can already do in Zebra 3, and maybe find ways to highlight things that are active. And also improve the menus on the knobs.

[tripleflows]

Sure I agree, the old modulation matrix paradigm is archaic these days, and one of the best solution is context sensitive hover indeed e.g. on Pigments, where modulations are overlayed and adjustable around the actual knobs just for during the time of adjustments.

However the aforementioned Korg Natives mostly follow the method what Z3 does right now (locally showing modulations to a selected parameter, if I see it correctly), but the "tabbed spreadsheet view" is more than just a modmatrix, as it is an additional representation, a quick overview and a detailed way of displaying modulations at the same time, all quickly separated by synthesis section.

E.g. I can see only the Filter modulations of Layer B of a Layer A B C performance. This is already not 50+ lines, but yes, it may happen...

[JerGoertz]

Urs, is there going to be an FX version of Zebra 3, like Zebrify for Zebra 2?

Not sure yet, and not soon, either.

We will try to add audio input to the synth - something we talked about for years though...

Okay, I hereby cast my vote for an FX version (I think Z3 has nice sound mangling capabilities).

[SamDi]

Phase Plant does not have any kind of oscillator FX and that's where a lot of Zebra's power comes from.

That's true that PP does not deliver OSC FX out of the box, but half of the OSC FX in Zebra can be realized in PP also.

Since you have complete control of modulation of phase, frequency and volume in audiorate you can do the warping and windowing FX also, PP delivers even some modulator wavetables for it.

When you imagine, that you can create and take each wavetable for modulating phase or volume you'll see that the sky is the limit.

For sure in terms of workflow you can argue that for that area it's more work in PP, but you can really not say there's a lack of depth.

Take for instance the Delta X FX. It's a type of FM modulation with 6 different transfer modes, 8 different configurations and the ability to swap the carrier or modulator. So this Oscillator FX alone has 96 different combinations.

Indeed there are some great opportunities in the OSC section of Zebra.

That's why saying Zebra is "limited" is kind of ridiculous.

I don't see how opportunities in one aspect contradict to be limitating in other aspects.

[SamDi]

Now if that is so, patches with 30+ slots would become patches with 60+ slots. Who's gonna keep an overview here, and what would have to change in the UI to make this happen?

Best solution I have ever seen IMHO, was in Synthmaster 2 (don't know if it flowed to SM 3 either):

You had a list of modulations, which you could be set to automatically filter to modulator- or destination-centric.

So if you clicked on a modulator in the synth the list showed all destinations, which this modulator is modulating. If you clicked on a destination the list showed all modulators, which modulated this destination.

Perfect to analyse patches or find mistakes.

Unfortunately I didn't see, that the industry was jumping on that solution. May it has some backdraws, which I am not aware of.

[kraster]

Phase Plant does not have any kind of oscillator FX and that's where a lot of Zebra's power comes from.

That's true that PP does not deliver OSC FX out of the box, but half of the OSC FX in Zebra can be realized in PP also.

Since you have complete control of modulation of phase, frequency and volume in audiorate you can do the warping and windowing FX also, PP delivers even some modulator wavetables for it.

When you imagine, that you can create and take each wavetable for modulating phase or volume you'll see that the sky is the limit.

For sure in terms of workflow you can argue that for that area it's more work in PP, but you can really not say there's a lack of depth.

Take for instance the Delta X FX. It's a type of FM modulation with 6 different transfer modes, 8 different configurations and the ability to swap the carrier or modulator. So this Oscillator FX alone has 96 different combinations.

Indeed there are some great opportunities in the OSC section of Zebra.

That's why saying Zebra is "limited" is kind of ridiculous.

I don't see how opportunities in one aspect contradict to be limitating in other aspects.

There’s a difference with just modulating oscillators and oscillator fx. Take simple fx like mirroring. There’s no way of doing that in Phase Plant.

How would you bend a wave table in phaseplant?

These are the kinds of things I’m talking about.

In phase plant for those kinds of things you’re relying on downstream approximations using wave folding. They won’t track pitch or phase without having to add some other modulators to account for that.

Some fx involve some kind of modulation but a lot of them are more about taking a wave and altering it in some fundamental way.

Serum, Zebra and Icarus distinguish bewtween oscillator fx/warping and modulating a waveform. They’re not the same.

Oscillator warping/fx are really powerful sound shaping tools. In some cases oscillator fx are there to minimize things like having to add complicated modulation layers and in others it give you a kind of DNA level control over the basic sound.

And that’s the point about calling things like Zebra limited. I don’t think Phase Plant is limited. It’s extremely powerful even though it lacks oscillator fx.

It’s really about the overall capabilities of the synth in terms of an aggregate of features. In that sense calling phase Plant or Zebra limited is just daft nonsense.

[SamDi]

There’s a difference with just modulating oscillators and oscillator fx. Take simple fx like mirroring. There’s no way of doing that in Phase Plant.

Take OSC 1 (carrier) and set frequency to 0
Take OSC 2 (modulator) with positive only triangle (0 at 0°, 1 at 180° 0 at 360°)
--> it plays the OSC1 waveform halfway then going mirrored back

How would you bend a wave table in phaseplant?

By taking a bend wavetable, factory-delivered in category "modulators". When you modulate the phase of another oscillator with this wavetable, bending is exactly what happens.

Bending is technically running somewhere in the wavecycle faster and therefore running somewhere at another position slower, that's exaclty what phase modulation or frequency modulation does.

Oscillator warping/fx are really powerful sound shaping tools. In some cases oscillator fx are there to minimize things like having to add complicated modulation layers and in others it give you a kind of DNA level control over the basic sound.

Nothing to argue here.

And that’s the point about calling things like Zebra limited. I don’t think Phase Plant is limited. It’s extremely powerful even though it lacks oscillator fx.

I mean philosophically each synth is limited in it's own way. E.g. in PP I can do nothing, what needs good filters, they are really crappy IMHO.

It’s really about the overall capabilities of the synth in terms of an aggregate of features. In that sense calling phase Plant or Zebra limited is just daft nonsense.

I think we'll stay to have some different opinion here. Again: what would it take Zebra away to offer double amount of envelopes, MSEGs and general modules like filters and maybe not to need to choose the instance number or ID manually but automatically, to have only one entry (e.g. filter) in selecting menues?