Zebra 3 Public Beta Revision 20399

[Trahast]

A bit late to the party, but wow-ee! And also golly gosh! This sounds really, really good, boys and girls. Well done, U-He & Co.!

It’s feels a little bit full circle, as Zebra2 was the first third-party plug-in I bought. (Version 2.3 had just been released, so it’s been a while.)

Some of the new features I feel right at home with, others will require deep study of the manual, a tutorial video or two, and a lot of experimentation. I like that.

I don’t have the brains to get into a discussion of what features should or shouldn’t be added. I’m simply enjoying the next generation of a fantastic music-making playground, and looking forward to many years of evolution of Zebra3.

Cheers,
Trahast

[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?

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)

You’re right, that’s a solution!

[misterandy]

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.

Great! Sort of just realized that in Curve Spectrum mode the only thing that matters is where on each vertical line in the Harmonic Grid the curve crosses. The space in between reads nothing from the curve, of course. The same with the Guides. This of course is in line with the User Guide where it says “each vertical lines corresponds to a particular harmonic”. So it makes most sense to just snap a point on to every vertical line and adjust them up and down to taste - and ignore the curve between It’s a bit faster to use Grid Move Y though and also a bit more tidy. Fun tuning each partial! You can for instance tune the third partial upwards so it almost reaches the fourth partial for an interesting effect.

[Howard]

Fun tuning each partial! You can for instance tune the third partial upwards so it almost reaches the fourth partial for an interesting effect.

Not sure what you mean here. Explain?

[exmatproton]

Fun tuning each partial! You can for instance tune the third partial upwards so it almost reaches the fourth partial for an interesting effect.

Not sure what you mean here. Explain?

Yeah, wondering too; can we manually tune each partial in additive mode?

[misterandy]

Fun tuning each partial! You can for instance tune the third partial upwards so it almost reaches the fourth partial for an interesting effect.

Not sure what you mean here. Explain?

When Spectral Modifier is set to Curve and the mode set to Guide you can tune sharp particular partials via the Guide and crank up the Spectral Distortion so that the pitch moves up to the next partial. So you can get a slight detune between neighboring partials. Sort of the same principle as two similar oscillators with slight detune, but between the partials instead.

[Urs]

Yep

[exmatproton]

Fun tuning each partial! You can for instance tune the third partial upwards so it almost reaches the fourth partial for an interesting effect.

Not sure what you mean here. Explain?

When Spectral Modifier is set to Curve and the mode set to Guide you can tune sharp particular partials via the Guide and crank up the Spectral Distortion so that the pitch moves up to the next partial. So you can get a slight detune between neighboring partials. Sort of the same principle as two similar oscillators with slight detune, but between the partials instead.

ah yes..indeed I thought you were talking about individually tuning partials. Which, imho, would be a nice addition. Or a way to select a range (a la Pigments) where the modifiers get applied to

[Howard]

Ah yes, I'd almost forgotten about that - ta for the reminder! Page 29.

Very low levels can cause a slow movement. I don't yet know how/why this works.
Attached an experiment. One-shot envelope gives the impression of reverb, but it's just a single oscillator without any oscillator FX. Mod wheel shifts the Guide so that there's a tad more up top, for a twittering effect:

Riser!.h2p.zip

[Jaqen]

Can the carrier of the FM oscillator module be updated? The carrier is only a sine wave, I think some other waveforms should be added, refer to the FM8 synthesizer, both the carrier and the modulator can adjust the waveform, so much so that I have to use my FM8 for some operations now. If you can change the waveform at will, then I think the possibilities will increase greatly.

[Urs]

Can the carrier of the FM oscillator module be updated? The carrier is only a sine wave, I think some other waveforms should be added, refer to the FM8 synthesizer, both the carrier and the modulator can adjust the waveform, so much so that I have to use my FM8 for some operations now. If you can change the waveform at will, then I think the possibilities will increase greatly.

We'll experiment with that. It's not super high priority for us as we're pretty happy with the FMOs as they are, and we do not want to complicate them too much.

The extra waveforms in the original 4-operator synths were usually added to make up for fewer operators compared to the 6-operator ones. They are quite noisy as they alias heavily. So they may have usually been used as modulators for short transients. In Zebra 3 one can use any waveform as modulator though, it's just that carriers currently are always sine waveforms.

[Jaqen]

Thanks, I hope you can add some more waveforms to the carrier part, even if it's just a few, it will be more perfect and crazier! I've been using Zebra2 since and although not a veteran user, your product has always been one of the best. I hope you can consider giving it a try, thank you. I recommended zebra3 to my friends who make music, they are stunned, in China, they only know serum.....Love come from china!

[andrea.lamiac]

Bought it and I believe it's gonna be my next favourite u-he synth.

[sarmad5]

Maybe I do not have enough coffee in my veins yet, but I do not exactly understand the previous two requests...

Currently voices are started by notes played. That is a pretty fundamental thing. We are toying with options to add a latch mode. This would run 1 voice permanently, and maybe it could offer Gate to be used as trigger to move things while that voice is running.

Retriggering oscillators might be possible, but it sounds rather esoteric as an option. If it's for OscFX such as Spectral Decay, there are tricks to achieve retriggering.

A tutorial video with an arpeggiator patch should pop up soon, if that is what you're looking for (basically triggering different parts of the synth at different times with different keys)

(maybe elaborate a bit more and I'll be able to be more precise...)

So, yes retriggering Osc with spectral decay was definitely one of the intentions.

I was also thinking that if an arp or a note repeat setting existed in the pitches tab, you could potentially have upto 4 different kinds of patterns triggering different oscillators rather than having one global one.

[misterandy]

Ah yes, I'd almost forgotten about that - ta for the reminder! Page 29.

Very low levels can cause a slow movement. I don't yet know how/why this works.
Attached an experiment. One-shot envelope gives the impression of reverb, but it's just a single oscillator without any oscillator FX. Mod wheel shifts the Guide so that there's a tad more up top, for a twittering effect:
Riser!.h2p.zip

Wow, that’s a strange sound. From static tuning? Maybe a bug?