Zebra 3 Public Beta Revision 20399

[gassle]

Zebra 2/ legacy has a separate "zebrify" FX plugin. [...] I'm not sure if anyone else really uses it often though. I don't hear many folks here mention it often.

Me! I use Zebrify all the time! Severely underrated.

Me too!
I use Zebrify if not daily, then at least weekly.
It's just such a great sound lab, route anything into it and modulate audio based on pitch and transients and well - I think it's absolutely wonderful.

I would LOVE a Zebra3 version of Zebrify, but that's a bit further down the road for now.
Yet I really hope we can see something like it, or an audio input, further down that road.

Same, I used Zebrify as much I used Zebra 2 past 10 years, created some unique FX chains. Would definitely wanna have a Zebrify3.

[beely]

- Fine control when holding SHIFT key down, does not work correctly while left mouse button is held down. To get fine control over anything you need to let go of left mouse button, then hit SHIFT, then hit left mouse button and hold on the control.

Yes, as the manual says, you have to press Shift *before* clicking on the control.

I do find this a bit annoying and non-intuitive (I had to go look up the manual about fine control because I couldn't reproducibly find it on my first z3bra outing). I would expect to be able to add Shift as I'm already moving the control to get finer movements as necessary, so I'm with you on that request...

[atmelcool]

Hey Zebra fans, have you ever used the pitch options in the oscillator other than following the keys? I'd be interested to see how others have applied these options.

Some of these options are based on a past time incidence maybe.

So we had one of the great film composers (not HZ) at the office, for, hmmm, some kind of negotiation I guess regarding Zebra 2 and preset design. The vibe was somehow weird, as we'd permanently misunderstood each other. At some point he asks something like "can it be set to go through the overtone series?" and then Howie and I said "yes, sure!". And then he said "Show me!", thinking it was just a single knob he'd have to turn and that's it. Of course it was more involved than that, but I think this was the point where we lost him and never heard back.

Won't happen in Z3.

Am I correct in assuming that controls other than the keys are more suitable for sound effects and non-tonal music than for tempered melodies? I'd love to see a preset based on this type of oscillator control.

[bmanic]

I do find this a bit annoying and non-intuitive (I had to go look up the manual about fine control because I couldn't reproducibly find it on my first z3bra outing). I would expect to be able to add Shift as I'm already moving the control to get finer movements as necessary, so I'm with you on that request...

Ah crap, yeah now that I think about it, I guess this is actually standard in all the U-He synths and effects. It's something that I remember bothering me in Diva too but I haven't used it in a little while so I guess I just quickly get used to it. Oh well, it's no big deal but it does go against the norm. I don't really know any other synth or software for that matter where this would be the case for a fine tune modifier.

[bmanic]

Question:

Is there no way of using one FX lane as a global send? One where I could also send some of the separate busses?

Or even a way to make all the busses + master be in series. This would help when I want some lanes to have a specific very targeted effect.. where all lanes are then summed into the master and go through a common delay/reverb.

Right now I don't see any other way than to duplicate all the delays/reverbs on all of my lanes. Am I missing something here?

EDIT: I was missing something. The FX matrix seems to work just as the synth lanes so you can route from one row to another.

[u-he Basti]

My plan during this beta is:
1. better overall readability of the ui:

I would love a pair of small +_- buttons in the preset panel to adjust the brightness and the size of the text in the preset browser. It's often too small and with too little conrast to be readable when a smaller gui size is chosen to aid screen real-estate. I mentioned earlier I would like the preset manager optionally in a floating size-able panel, and also the ability to drag-drop .h2p files from a filemanager app onto some spot in the gui to load that preset, reducing reliance on one of the better preset managers.
Cheers

Hey glokraw. We have a lot of tasks regarding our very own UI framework for the upcoming year already. One thing is the ability for floating windows and a more flexible resizability. The other very important thing is making the UIs gamma setting (preferences) actually work with .svg assets. We might end up bringing you custom curves or exposure controls to adjust brightness and contrast while we're at it. (Don't quote me on this, since there is a lot of other things scheduled already ) Drag-and-drop support will also be expanded (developed further).
Cheers!

[Urs]

I hope it's okay to report some minor bugs in this thread. Or is there a proper email or bug tracker where you'd rather have reports? Anyhow, here are some that I found just now as I finally had some time to test Zebra 3 beta.

System: Mac M1 Mini base model. Sonoma 14.6.1. Reaper v7.55. Zebra3 VST3 format.

- Mouse control is super sluggish on knobs, sliders and multi-way switches. This is fixed by turning off the option "Hide Mouse On Drag"

What type of mouse do you have?

- Fine control when holding SHIFT key down, does not work correctly while left mouse button is held down. To get fine control over anything you need to let go of left mouse button, then hit SHIFT, then hit left mouse button and hold on the control. So basically you can't fine tune things in one motion while first doing coarse tuning, then simply holding shift and continuing the mouse motion. You have to completely "let go" of the control, then press shift, then take action again for it to work.

Yeah... originally, in 2002, I did this deliberately, so one could hold shift, then click a control, then let go of shift and have a free hand to play some notes while mousing fine control.

Today I would do this with a preference.

I would love to change it, but to be honest, it's such a heavy refactoring job, it would probably bind one of my best devs for a few months. There was never a good time to do this, but maybe we can do it next year when we also refactor the rendering backend.

[Urs]

I would like to right-click on two presets, each yielding an option to choose as A or B, and then be able to switch between the A and B sounds with a click, useful to compare similar sounds being edited.

We have several options to do this in a similar way:

Undo/Redo work for Preset loads, that includes Ctrl/Cmd-Z and Ctrl/Cmd-R keyboard shortcuts

The preset browser has a "restore" function on the top that sets the state to whatever it was when the preset browser was opened. This is similar to a Compare button on the olden synths.

If you have an example of an implementation is another synth, I'd be happy to check it out.

[Urs]

Hey Zebra fans, have you ever used the pitch options in the oscillator other than following the keys? I'd be interested to see how others have applied these options.

Some of these options are based on a past time incidence maybe.

So we had one of the great film composers (not HZ) at the office, for, hmmm, some kind of negotiation I guess regarding Zebra 2 and preset design. The vibe was somehow weird, as we'd permanently misunderstood each other. At some point he asks something like "can it be set to go through the overtone series?" and then Howie and I said "yes, sure!". And then he said "Show me!", thinking it was just a single knob he'd have to turn and that's it. Of course it was more involved than that, but I think this was the point where we lost him and never heard back.

Won't happen in Z3.

Am I correct in assuming that controls other than the keys are more suitable for sound effects and non-tonal music than for tempered melodies? I'd love to see a preset based on this type of oscillator control.

I'd think that a lot of sound effects and drum/percussion might benefit from it.

Here's some more reasoning:

In Zebra 2 there is per oscillator "Key Scale", which e.g. let's one stretch or reduce the keyboard range, even invert it. But it lacks options to do overtone series or anything. In ACE and Bazille one can select per oscillator/LFO key, overtone and fixed frequency options, but they easily confuse and take away screen estate.

The idea behind the Pitch modules is that you get extremely deep control, but it does not take away much screen estate in each oscillator. 4 groups is however plenty enough to create patches with wildly different settings.

[Urs]

Question:

Is there no way of using one FX lane as a global send? One where I could also send some of the separate busses?

Or even a way to make all the busses + master be in series. This would help when I want some lanes to have a specific very targeted effect.. where all lanes are then summed into the master and go through a common delay/reverb.

Right now I don't see any other way than to duplicate all the delays/reverbs on all of my lanes. Am I missing something here?

EDIT: I was missing something. The FX matrix seems to work just as the synth lanes so you can route from one row to another.

Yep, so, you can always sacrifice columns to put more effects in series.

You have the 4-in-1 and 4-in-4 mixer. Latter can be used to dynamically route any lane to any other, in two ways: Each output can pull from any input, or any input can be routed to any output (this is a difference, best to be explored by playing with it). It's a bit involved, but the possibilities are awesome.

But most importantly, while you can route any of the voice Grid lanes directly onto lanes in the FX Grid, the Main output has those sends in the FX Grid. But the Sends are per voice! So you can use the voice modulation to control your Sends. That's been one of my favourite things in Zebra 2 already. I should point this out a bit more clearly since the layout (Sends are located in the FX section...) suggests otherwise.

[PieBerger]

I'm having a blast in Z3 so far and other users have already fed back on a lot of things I have noticed, but I don't believe this this one has been covered yet.

Regarding the spline editors and specifically the curve morph/frame editing workflow, it would be nice if the following could be implemented:

Frames can be dragged along the Morph line by selecting any part of them and not just the little dot that connects them to the line.

Expand the active area where the full right-click context menu is displayed. Currently this can only be accessed by right-clicking on the dotted Curve Morph line which is quite fiddly. Right-clicking in the area between the line and the lower boundary of the frames brings up a context menu but only gives two options, Distribute Evenly and Reverse order, which are also available in the full menu. A single unified menu that is accessible from a larger area of the UI would be great! This also applies to the spline editors in Zebralette3.

There is a thin "invisible line" between the bottom limit of the frame space and the top limit of the curve editor where right clicking brings up the Zoom settings. Not much to say on this other than it's a kind of graphical typo that ought to be corrected. (Zebralette OK here)

[The Sound Of Merlin]

Dear friends, The EQ module is a wonderful secret weapon in Zebra 3 for many reasons. I'll use it in many of my patches to come. Not only for the resonating capabilities but also for stereo and M/S stuff. WONDERFUL!

It would be great if the EQ would get a scalable floating window so that I can see more conveniently what I am doing. It would be nice to only see the curves that are actually active. Maybe this EQ pop up window could get on/off switches for the the separate bands outside the graph?

[Urs]

The unused curves are supposed to be hidden. There's a bug that came in last minute. We'll fix it in January.

[AtomOfScent]

I swear, if Z3 makes it out of beta and we still can't rename favourite 1-8 to something actually useful...


What am I missing here? Make it an editable text field and create an alias for the the UI. No complicated backend/database changes needed.

[NAD]

Dear friends, The EQ module is a wonderful secret weapon in Zebra 3 for many reasons. I'll use it in many of my patches to come. Not only for the resonating capabilities but also for stereo and M/S stuff. WONDERFUL!

It would be great if the EQ would get a scalable floating window so that I can see more conveniently what I am doing. It would be nice to only see the curves that are actually active. Maybe this EQ pop up window could get on/off switches for the the separate bands outside the graph?

I absolutely agree the EQ is incredibly powerful, and anyone who disagrees must be a lefty communist! I also agree that it would be nice to have a more detailed view of the EQ like the modmappers for example. And I agree that hidding inactive bands would be useful as well. I have a heap of other EQ requests that I'm saving up for another obscenely long FR post...