Zebra 3 Public Beta (final beta)

[Urs]

I'll never understand the war against tabs.

I just tried something in a heavily tabbed synth. Made LFO 1 visible, then dragged modulation from LFO 2 onto a knob. The assignment was made, but the tab immediately jumped to LFO 2. I had to tab back to LFO 1 to adjust the depth. To experiment with rate and depth, I have to tab back and forth.

To me, this is one example when tabbing gets in the way.

The solution that Zebra's UI provides is that at any time, in any reasonably complex patch, if two or three or even five modules interact, the relevant parameters are accessible on the screen at the same time. This does not always work and in Zebra 3 there are some things we must fix or improve, but for most common connections, it just works.

For example, if you have a patch with two FM Oscillators (4 operators) and 3 envelopes, you can absolutely see all of the relevant parameters at once and tweak their interaction without switching back and forth between anything.

[SamDi]

I'll never understand the war against tabs.

Me neither

IMO Serum is a more fluid experience than Phaseplant because you have logical areas grouped in a small number of common sense tabs (oscs, FX, matrix, mixer) and unlike PP, you don't have to constantly collapse and uncollapse multiple objects to make useable screen real estate.

I don't see a clear winner there. They are both same fluid for me in a different way.

I just tried something in a heavily tabbed synth. Made LFO 1 visible, then dragged modulation from LFO 2 onto a knob. The assignment was made, but the tab immediately jumped to LFO 2. I had to tab back to LFO 1 to adjust the depth. To experiment with rate and depth, I have to tab back and forth.

To me, this is one example when tabbing gets in the way.

Somehow each GUI gets in the way as soon as complexity gets high.

The solution that Zebra's UI provides is that at any time, in any reasonably complex patch, if two or three or even five modules interact, the relevant parameters are accessible on the screen at the same time. This does not always work and in Zebra 3 there are some things we must fix or improve, but for most common connections, it just works.

I don't think that's true for a large scale of modulations. In Zebra you need to scroll on generator or modulator area, if you have many modules, to see direct modulations -> not all are visible. In the modulation matrix (which is also a tab, thus not always visible) it's the same, you need to scroll -> not all are visible.
Nothing wrong with that, but your claim, that the Zebra approach is more efficient or you see many modulations clearer and better, than in other solutions - I don't see that.

BTW, scrolling the mod matrix doesn't work with mouse wheel. Only with horizontal mouse wheel und there only on the scroll bar. Shall I add to the bug thread?

[Urs]

I just tried something in a heavily tabbed synth. Made LFO 1 visible, then dragged modulation from LFO 2 onto a knob. The assignment was made, but the tab immediately jumped to LFO 2. I had to tab back to LFO 1 to adjust the depth. To experiment with rate and depth, I have to tab back and forth.

To me, this is one example when tabbing gets in the way.

Somehow each GUI gets in the way as soon as complexity gets high.

But it's already there, needlessly may I say for a simple fixed structure 3 Osc 2 Filter synth.

The solution that Zebra's UI provides is that at any time, in any reasonably complex patch, if two or three or even five modules interact, the relevant parameters are accessible on the screen at the same time. This does not always work and in Zebra 3 there are some things we must fix or improve, but for most common connections, it just works.

I don't think that's true for a large scale of modulations. In Zebra you need to scroll on generator or modulator area, if you have many modules, to see direct modulations -> not all are visible. In the modulation matrix (which is also a tab, thus not always visible) it's the same, you need to scroll -> not all are visible.
Nothing wrong with that, but your claim, that the Zebra approach is more efficient or you see many modulations clearer and better, than in other solutions - I don't see that.

Hence we added Groups, so one can quickly focus on a subset of modules in a complex patch, with everything unused blendet out.

Also, turning a target depth automatically scrolls the modulator in view and highlights it. So there is already a mechanism for what people have been asking for, we just need to make it more accessible on mouse over or something, or expand on it.

BTW, scrolling the mod matrix doesn't work with mouse wheel. Only with horizontal mouse wheel und there only on the scroll bar. Shall I add to the bug thread?

This works according to the operating system and mouse/trackpad settings. E.g. I can scroll vertically with shift + scrollwheel. But we're happy to add more options if needed.

[whassup]

Everybody and their dog has an opinion on GUIs and workflow.
Here is me scratching that suface.
Over the decades that I am making music with the computer I found myself using certain things while other things that have desirable features I simply didn't use on a regular basis.
For many years I owned seriouly underpowered laptops.
So it was a natural thing for me that Hive became my go to synth.
It sounds great and is very low on CPU!
But the usability to me is ... unintuitive to say it nicely.
But the sounds and the low CPU usage made it tolerable to me.
I mostly used presets and there are plenty and good ones.
Fast forward searching for more (Diva sounds GREAT, bought and sold PhasePlant, Z2, other attemps).
Z3 comes along and sounds AMAZING!
But the usability ... Sorry but I am different. Never clicked with those concepts, they never made things easy for me but complicated.
Will I buy Z3 anyway? I am not sure, probably yes.
If (what I think should be only a matter of time) the bugs like e.g. the hickups in the otherwise great sounding filters will be fixed then I will probably put up with the personally disliked U-He workflow concepts one more time as I do with Bazille and Hive.
The best workflow that I am aware of in a synth plugin is the one of Vital.
The tabs work great, the row based mod matrix makes sense to me.
To adjust a modulation on a knob vs moving the knob is way less fiddly.

[tasmaniandevil]

BTW, scrolling the mod matrix doesn't work with mouse wheel. Only with horizontal mouse wheel und there only on the scroll bar. Shall I add to the bug thread?

Set Mouse Wheel Mode to "vertical only" in the preferences.

[Urs]

Everybody and their dog has an opinion on GUIs and workflow.

It's entirely possible that the world is a better place because I am not working in my own profession as a product designer, as instead I only impose my radical design principles on a bunch of plug-ins.

[SamDi]

Hence we added Groups, so one can quickly focus on a subset of modules in a complex patch, with everything unused blendet out.

Good point, I didn't consider that in my post.

BTW, scrolling the mod matrix doesn't work with mouse wheel. Only with horizontal mouse wheel und there only on the scroll bar. Shall I add to the bug thread?

This works according to the operating system and mouse/trackpad settings. E.g. I can scroll vertically with shift + scrollwheel. But we're happy to add more options if needed.

BTW, scrolling the mod matrix doesn't work with mouse wheel. Only with horizontal mouse wheel und there only on the scroll bar. Shall I add to the bug thread?

Set Mouse Wheel Mode to "vertical only" in the preferences.

No auto-detection would be the right thing for me. There is something different ongoing. After trying it in BW it worked as (I would) expected. Trying again in new instance of AL - worked as expected (in opposite to trying before and reported here).

Switched to "vertical only" (what is not what I want) and then back to "auto-detect", doesn't work anymore. Normal mouse-wheel has no action on horzontal scrolling anymore.

[whassup]

Everybody and their dog has an opinion on GUIs and workflow.

It's entirely possible that the world is a better place because I am not working in my own profession as a product designer, as instead I only impose my radical design principles on a bunch of plug-ins.

Well, to me it is a fact that you had great positive impact in many ways upon my life.
So I highly appreciate that you have your opinions and ways of doing things.

[spektralisk]

Also, turning a target depth automatically scrolls the modulator in view and highlights it. So there is already a mechanism for what people have been asking for, we just need to make it more accessible on mouse over or something, or expand on it.

I tried this. Turning the depth in the matrix doesn't seem to work for me. I only see that dot is appearing on the target that I'm adjusting mod depth for. There's no auto scroll nor highlighting of the modulator. The modulator is selected and shown only when I click on its handle at the very bottom of the window. That would be cool actually if that worked.

[tasmaniandevil]

Switched to "vertical only" (what is not what I want) and then back to "auto-detect", doesn't work anymore. Normal mouse-wheel has no action on horzontal scrolling anymore.

Auto-detect checks if you are using a vertical mouse wheel or a mouse with a vertical and a horizontal wheel. As long as you just scroll vertically, all controls will react to vertical scrolling. Once you actually use horizontal scrolling on your mouse or trackpad, it switches the plug-in's mode, so it uses vertical scrolling for vertical scrollbars and horizontal scrolling for horizontal scrollbars.
If you switch it to "vertical only", then all scrollbars will react to vertical scrolling only.
If you then switch back to "auto-detect", it's back to vertical scrolling for vertical bars and horizontal scroll for horizontal bars.

[Urs]

Also, turning a target depth automatically scrolls the modulator in view and highlights it. So there is already a mechanism for what people have been asking for, we just need to make it more accessible on mouse over or something, or expand on it.

I tried this. Turning the depth in the matrix doesn't seem to work for me. I only see that dot is appearing on the target that I'm adjusting mod depth for. There's no auto scroll nor highlighting of the modulator. The modulator is selected and shown only when I click on its handle at the very bottom of the window. That would be cool actually if that worked.

Might be a left over bug. It is very complex, but we'll ultimately get it to where we want it to be.

[muki]

I'll never understand the war against tabs.

I just tried something in a heavily tabbed synth. Made LFO 1 visible, then dragged […]

vital anybody ?

imho, in re tabs, vital is one of the smoothest gui experiences

[jtsterays]

Vital has the best GUI tech, sound is mid though.

[NAD]

Vital has the best GUI tech, sound is mid though.

Yeah, the sound really isn't stellar...

[tdm71]

Z2 patches will not work in Z3. Did I hear that right?