Zebra 3 Public Beta Revision 20399

[buckycore]

I bought it two days ago with out even trying it out. I knew I wanted it so it would have been silly to pass up the sales price hemming and hawing over if I need just "one more synth". It's funny, because I had just bought Diva and Hive when you had that Holliday sale. So I now officially can I say I own all your synths.

Also, will there be in app announcements about future updates Beta updates and/or presets?

And lastly are the FX in Zebra 3 a special concoction, or are they based on your FX plugins? Man, the delay in this one patch messed me up it was so amazing sounding!

[atmelcool]

Dear Urs, I also really hope you'll take a thorough approach to the synthesizer manual. If you describe an option in it, please refer to it in the manual exactly as it's named in the synthesizer. Also describe what it specifically does and what it can be used for. This would make it easier for non-English speakers to study the manual with a translator. If possible, make the instructions online; browsers will immediately translate them into the required language. Thank you for your work!

[atmelcool]

Where is this curve located?

[eclipse_soundlab]

Where is this curve located?

frame one in your wavetable (saw wave)

So you're looking at it.

[stippenstoh]

Hmm, i find it very inconvenient if the only place where i can access the phase adjustment is from there. I guess it is better than nothing, but i really hope this gets updated!

Urs addressed this earlier:

Phase is a "hidden" modulation target. You can set and modulate it through the Matrix, which is a concept we have explored in Hive, and which seems widely accepted. We're happy to put this in the UI for the Wave Renderer, but it does not apply to the Additive Renderer. Feedback is welcome!

Personally I'd love a phase knob for the wave renderer.

[Urs]

I assume you have people read all the Z3 threads from page 1 to latest to gather suggestions?

Yep, no worries.

[Urs]

While programming some sounds in Zebra3, I tried to set up an "analog style" polypatch. It's really easy to use the pitches for pitch-variations, assigning the oscillators to different pitch-sources. Still, I wish there was an equally easy way to do the same thing for envelopes. It's nice to have little variations in envelope-times PER VOICE. At the moment it needs many, many random-modulators or mod-noises to achieve this.

Long story short: Would it be possible to have some kind of randomisation in the envelopes? Maybe as an option under "V1" or "V2"?

You can save a lot of assignments by modulating Stretch or Feedback in the envelopes, which affect all phases.

I would also usually turn to Mappers set to the same number of steps as there are voices, and "Increment" with no specific trigger source. Then you get repeated patterns by the number of voices.

(I had thought about randomisation in V1/V2, but am still not sure if it makes enough sense... happy to continue the discussion)

Last thing: Would be great if one could easily duplicate a modulation in the matrix and assign the duplicate to a different target...

Indeed, I'm surprised myself since Hive has copy/paste, so I thought we definitely have this here, too. Maybe it didn't fit, I'll ask...

[Urs]

Also, i think my third question wasn’t answered.

Sorry, I misread, and on YT it seemed as if 3+4 were the same question.

So we are thinking about slopes in the envelopes, but we need to weight it against some other options. So we keep that open for future decision making, after some feedback and after dealing with a million other things.

And lastly(sorry if im stupid), is there a way to adjust the phase of an osc?

That is one of the things we originally didn't want to do, but for now we added it as a "hidden" option. You can select Osc Phase as a ModMatrix target and offset it. This only works with the wavetable renderer, not the additive one.

Edit: can you also bring back the z2 reverb as an option?

The classic mode is very much a souped up NuVerb from Zebra 2. The other reverb in Zebra 2... dunno... I'll think about it.

[Urs]

Any chance more direct modulation slots are coming (similar to the number in Z2 modules)? I never ran out of mod matrix clots in Zebra2/HZ but it's happening a lot now as I need to use them to do things like assign mod/vel/eg etc to oscillator volume. It's also a much more intuitive approach for patch design.

We wanted to reduce direct mod slots compared to Z2 by focussing on those where it really counts.

I'm totally open for suggestions here, I just also want to avoid overloading the UI with direct slots for every pan, vol, width on ever module.

[Urs]

Dear Urs, I also really hope you'll take a thorough approach to the synthesizer manual. If you describe an option in it, please refer to it in the manual exactly as it's named in the synthesizer. Also describe what it specifically does and what it can be used for. This would make it easier for non-English speakers to study the manual with a translator. If possible, make the instructions online; browsers will immediately translate them into the required language. Thank you for your work!

We are still working on a few terms that will be updated in the UI during the final design process.

Once done, user guide and UI should display the same terminology.

As for automatic translations, I'm sure there is a solution for PDF? I don't know with all that AI stuff around...

[stippenstoh]

(I had thought about randomisation in V1/V2, but am still not sure if it makes enough sense... happy to continue the discussion)

I think it makes sense for anyone who is not as versatile with synthesizers modulation as most people in this thread seem to be.

As someone who approaches synths more as a musician than sound designer I can say that the solution you described was already way over my head. But maybe Zebra3 is aimed at people with an equally logical as creative brain though and I am just not the target group, which is totally fine (can't dumb down everything with such a powerful tool).

[Urs]

(I had thought about randomisation in V1/V2, but am still not sure if it makes enough sense... happy to continue the discussion)

I think it makes sense for anyone who is not as versatile with synthesizers modulation as most people in this thread seem to be.

As someone who approaches synths more as a musician than sound designer I can say that the solution you described was already way over my head. But maybe Zebra3 is aimed at people with an equally logical as creative brain though and I am just not the target group, which is totally fine (can't dumb down everything with such a powerful tool).

Well, maybe we do a little video tutorial about this. It really is not very complicated.

So if you can assign Random to Attack, Decay and Release, maybe you might as well choose the "Stretch" modifier, which affects A, D and R simultaneously, and assign Random to it. This may give you the same effect, but with 1 modulation instead of 3.

[stippenstoh]

Sounds good!

[atmelcool]

Where is this curve located?

I still don't understand how it all works In the second zebra it was all more clear.

[stippenstoh]

Urs,

as others have pointed out it can be a little hard to know what is doing what in Zebra3 right now. I worked on a patch and had forgotten what envelope 2 was doing and it took me some time to figure out.

Here's a suggestion, taking inspiration from Waveform Pro DAW and Davinci Resolve for video color grading and editing:

Waveform has a large panel at the bottom that displays options/info for whatever I click on.

Davinci Resolve has an "Inspector" panel, displaying information about whatever I click on.

Maybe something like an "inspector" panel in the Lower Bar could display relevant info of currently selected items?

WF01.jpg

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WF03.jpg

DR01.jpg

DR02.jpg