Zebra 3 Public Beta Revision 20399

[1234Hi5!]

Does Zebra 3 provide any sort of waveform, audio and/or wavetable import and/or resynthesis? If so, what are they? If not, why?

Read the manual

[Borbolactic]

Does Zebra 3 provide any sort of waveform, audio and/or wavetable import and/or resynthesis? If so, what are they? If not, why?

Read the manual

Found it or at least a 'User Guide', although if anyone would like to short-circuit to the answer for me, such as if they already know, it would be appreciated.

Edit 01:

"Note: As the import feature is still at an early stage of development, the individual
parameters are not described here. If you would like to keep up with news at u-he, please
check out our user forum at KVR and/or subscribe to our newsletter." ~ Z3 User Guide

I somehow read that already, forget where, but in any case, it doesn't answer my question, namely and more specifically perhaps, if Z3 can properly break an import into partials to use in the additive oscillator. If it only imports wavetables, what about breaking those up into proper additive partials once in?

Also, is Z3 processing true partials in additive mode or is it processing granules-as-partials?

Edit 02:

There is no mention of resynthesis in the User Guide, and the import feature ('early stage' by the Guide's own admission) seems to deal with the import only in a 'sample(r)' way. As discussed elsewhere, wavetable synths appear as glorified samplers, while granular synths are a bit along that line as well.
____

Hey, Urs, can we do/'resynthesize' wavetables and/or imported audio files into additive partials or not and, if so, how would that work?

Bezier curves, 'nurbs' and control points, etc., and programs like Photoshop, Illustrator/Inkscape, Blender3D and AutoCAD have been around for a long time.

[misterandy]

Seems like it’s not possible to use the Shape Tools to edit the Guides since the Guides are accessed via the Drawing Tools only. Is this the case? Would be great to be able to use the tools “Grid Move Y” or “Grid Step” to easily tune individual partials by using the Spectral Modifier “Curve” with the guides in the Additive Renderer.

IMG_2285.jpeg

[Borbolactic]

Seems like it’s not possible to use the Shape Tools to edit the Guides since the Guides are accessed via the Drawing Tools only. Is this the case? Would be great to be able to use the tools “Grid Move Y” or “Grid Step” to easily tune individual partials by using the Spectral Modifier “Curve” with the guides in the Additive Renderer.

Can imported waveforms/audio/wavetables be converted to and then used as guides to then 'guide' the partials in an additive waveform?

[Urs]

It's really more useful for drum synthesis. Get a wee kit set up. Having lots of options for triggers is something I enjoy. It's definitely nerdy. Thanks anyway

We'll be posting a video with a 13 piece drum kit + a few loops in January, but we first need to fix a bug and post a new beta to make this possible.

[Urs]

using dubious licenses and/or license cards

I didn't quite get the gist of your post, but let me chime in on some of the subjects...

In my world, loyalty discounts are a tool to turn a disadvantage into money. So, if a company has a low reputation for return of investment (ROI), they can offer loyalty discounts to peddle their portfolio to people who otherwise would not buy. The greater scheme here is that those companies will get the full price of the software in the end by charging for upgrades.

But we typically do not charge for .x updates and maintain plug-ins with free updates over many, many years, sometimes with updates that less dubious companies would call "major" - and charge accordingly. So our reputation for ROI is pretty high, which is also reflected by a good ratio between sales price and resale price.

In other words, if we wanted to improve our retention marketing (towards our existing user base) we could certainly do loyalty discounts, but then we would need to make up for that e.g. by introducing more update fees.

But whenever we do discounts, we usually do same-for-all, which improves acquisition marketing (towards new users), simply because my feel is that people are generally quite happy with our products due to high ROI.

For a long time the only kind of discounts we did were introductory sales during public beta phases. There's nothing wrong with that. We always also offered free access to the public beta of a new product. So it is not true that we charge for beta testing (we internally discussed rewards for actual bugs found, but if you look at the reports in all these threads, most of these bugs are already mentioned in the first post... so offering a reward may raise false expectations...?)

I don't think that we're the only company to do public betas. I think companies would be ill advised not to do this. It is a play for the long game, for a high ROI, as opposed to catering for impulse buys for a product that has been developed with limited feedback.

For instance, had we not done a free to use beta, many people would have bought Zebra 3 already based on certain expectations, e.g. that it would load wavetables, that it did resynthesis, all of which it doesn't, and this thread and the feedback hopefully helps to clarify these things during the initial hype.

I think we help people understand what Zebra 3 *is*, and what it *is not*. Which is more valuable for us in the long run than selling more licenses now, to more people who then turn out to be unhappy.

If that makes us "dubious", I think I'm happily that.

[Urs]

Seems like it’s not possible to use the Shape Tools to edit the Guides since the Guides are accessed via the Drawing Tools only. Is this the case?

Yes, that is the case. When I initially developed the editor a few years ago, we did not know how universally useful Guides would be, so I kept the shape editor more simple.

I hope to find the time soon to add Guides to the shapes editor, but I am not sure when exactly that will be. Hopefully some time next year.

Would be great to be able to use the tools “Grid Move Y” or “Grid Step” to easily tune individual partials by using the Spectral Modifier “Curve” with the guides in the Additive Renderer.

Just like I underestimated Guides, I also underestimated the need to address individual partials. So I am thinking about a tool that lets one drag the curve along individual grid lines without affecting surrounding ones. It's a bit more complicated as the Harmonic Grid is very dynamic in which lines it displays, so it'd probably have to be a tool that is more involved and "knowledgable" about the Harmonic Grid.

[Urs]

Does Zebra 3 provide any sort of waveform, audio and/or wavetable import and/or resynthesis? If so, what are they? If not, why?

Resynthesis is commonly something sample based instruments do. Zebra is not a sample based instrument.

Likewise, Wavetable Synthesis is commonly something where people load pre-manufactured sample files with so and so many "frames" that can sometimes be stitched, manipulated or drawn into. But again Zebra 3 does not use a sample based oscillator or editor, it uses spline-based curves instead.

Zebra can however render its spline-based curves as waveforms into wavetables, for use in other synths like Hive.

[stippenstoh]

We'll be posting a video with a 13 piece drum kit + a few loops in January, but we first need to fix a bug and post a new beta to make this possible.

[JoeLowery215]

Does Zebra 3 provide any sort of waveform, audio and/or wavetable import and/or resynthesis? If so, what are they? If not, why?

Read the manual

Found it or at least a 'User Guide', although if anyone would like to short-circuit to the answer for me, such as if they already know, it would be appreciated.

Edit 01:

"Note: As the import feature is still at an early stage of development, the individual
parameters are not described here. If you would like to keep up with news at u-he, please
check out our user forum at KVR and/or subscribe to our newsletter." ~ Z3 User Guide

I somehow read that already, forget where, but in any case, it doesn't answer my question, namely and more specifically perhaps, if Z3 can properly break an import into partials to use in the additive oscillator. If it only imports wavetables, what about breaking those up into proper additive partials once in?

Also, is Z3 processing true partials in additive mode or is it processing granules-as-partials?

Edit 02:

There is no mention of resynthesis in the User Guide, and the import feature ('early stage' by the Guide's own admission) seems to deal with the import only in a 'sample(r)' way. As discussed elsewhere, wavetable synths appear as glorified samplers, while granular synths are a bit along that line as well.
____

Hey, Urs, can we do/'resynthesize' wavetables and/or imported audio files into additive partials or not and, if so, how would that work?

Bezier curves, 'nurbs' and control points, etc., and programs like Photoshop, Illustrator/Inkscape, Blender3D and AutoCAD have been around for a long time.

I think Serum 2 does this now

[exmatproton]

Seems like it’s not possible to use the Shape Tools to edit the Guides since the Guides are accessed via the Drawing Tools only. Is this the case?

This is indeed the case. A "workaround" is to shape the splines in the OSC editor and copy/paste that into the guides window for time being (you can also copy/paste them into the MSEG editor btw)

[JoeLowery215]

Hey Urs just wanted to follow up on my question about the LFO being able to do audio rate mod now vs Zebra 2. I can get good cross mod sounds using the LFO in Zebra 3 and using key tracking. Thanks!

[jtsterays]

Obviously there will be optimization in the future, but I hope it's gonna be significant. I can understand if you have stuff like modal or diva filters playing chords, then the CPU will be heavy. But a simple sinewave (200hz) with no filter that uses 2-3x more CPU than Hive for example is quite lame.

[Urs]

Obviously there will be optimization in the future, but I hope it's gonna be significant. I can understand if you have stuff like modal or diva filters playing chords, then the CPU will be heavy. But a simple sinewave (200hz) with no filter that uses 2-3x more CPU than Hive for example is quite lame.

If you just want a sine, use the Additive Renderer with the lowest setting (16 sines), or stick to Wavetable. Set resolution to 200Hz and Curve Math to Fast. That'll surely use less CPU than Hive.

That said, sure, there'll always be examples that Zebra is not the best choice for. But the best choice for these examples will probably never do what Zebra does.

[jtsterays]

Obviously there will be optimization in the future, but I hope it's gonna be significant. I can understand if you have stuff like modal or diva filters playing chords, then the CPU will be heavy. But a simple sinewave (200hz) with no filter that uses 2-3x more CPU than Hive for example is quite lame.

If you just want a sine, use the Additive Renderer with the lowest setting (16 sines), or stick to Wavetable. Set resolution to 200Hz and Curve Math to Fast. That'll surely use less CPU than Hive.

That said, sure, there'll always be examples that Zebra is not the best choice for. But the best choice for these examples will probably never do what Zebra does.

Yea sine was just an example, basically most basic sounds you can do from other subtractive synths. I'm aware that Z3 is way more than that ofc, doing a saw + filter env in this would be very boring, but since it's a workhorse synth, kinda hope it can do basic sounds well too so I can ditch the cookie cutters yknow. Oh and my sine was at 200hz and low maths.