Zebra 3 Public Beta 2 Revision 20552

[JoeLowery215]

Urs I personally think this is an error but is there really no way to have FMO sine wave be more clicky? I know Z2 had the soft attack option.

[pdxindy]

In that case, I would remap breath to AT in the DAW so that Zebra receives the AT data.

Aftertouch doesn't have a CC number, so I can't remap it like that.
And it doesn't account for somebody wanting to use for example CC2 in ADDITION to whatever they've mapped to A,B,C and D. Hate to say this, but I can do this in Zebra2, Hive, Ace, and Repro...
I'm sorry but it still looks to me like the list of midi control numbers for automation isn't complete, so my question still stands: why is CC2 (Breath) missing?

In Bitwig it is easy to Remap Breath to AT... or any CC# to AT . I think most DAW's can do that.

How do you do it in Hive or Zebra 2, etc.? IIRC, none of them have CC2 as a mod source. They are all the same as Zebra 3 and you assign Breath (CC2) to Control A or B.

Or maybe I'm not understanding what you mean?

[Urs]

I'm confused about this, too. We originally had Breath CC2 and Expression CC11 (or was it 13?) hardwired as the only MIDI CCs. We then renamed those Ctrl A and B, and set them to Breath and Expression by default, but let users chose their preferred assignment. This is how Hive, Zebra 2, ACE, Repro have worked for about 10 years, ever since Repro came to be, or maybe even since Hive.

We now have added two more MIDI CCs that can be used as modulators within our software, and called them C and D for consistency.

The whole reason we did any of this was because people wanted to map whatever they had to A and B, instead of just a fixed assignment.

However, now it is very quick and easy to assign Breath to whatever AT is modulating: Just set Ctrl B to CC2, as you've done in Hive etc, then right click the B in the bottom bar and choose "Swap All Targets->Pressure"

[Urs]

Thanks Urs! I may have missed it but....the BURN module. Doesn't do anything for me other than glitch out and bring my CPU up to like 800%....anyone else? I don't really know what it does

We made a video about it:

[Rnaroth]

Just got to checking out the Zebra3 beta. What I love:

• The new Target finder. Laser mode is my favorite.

• Visual Indicator. Thank you!!

• Ability to select Targets and Sources from both places. The new context menu is perfect

Feedback on Distortion Wedge mode:
Wedge seems to be something between "Foldback" and "Soft", from what I can hear. This is not the Zebra2 Wedge for sure (as was mentioned in the release notes). "As a shaper", I need to set the Amount under 13 or so. I can double the amount in Soft mode. Beyond this, it does into heavy distortion/folding for more complex sounds. The Z2 Wedge shaper somehow managed to do the "folding" while maintaining the character of the source signal; the distortion was "pleasant". This is just my own unscientific opinion. I appreciate you listening to the community.

[jtsterays]

Hi, I really luv this beauty. Don't know if it is a lot of work, but for the lazy people like me, it would be handy to go directly from any page (Perform, Matrix, or FX/Out) to the Osc or MSEG editors. As it is now, one must open the orc first, to get there.

Scherm­afbeelding 2026-01-21 om 19.46.43.png

Like this maybe??

Greetings to all,

XeloX58

Yes please, this will reduce 1 mouse click every time. That's a lot.

[jrgillam]

A few thoughts on the whole visual feedback conversation — I'm one of those people for whom a picture is worth a thousand words. So I would be happy if there were a little more of it, done tastefully, in situations where it would be actually useful. For example if ModMath had a mini scope, or the LFOs had some indication of which are moving fast or slow so they can be easily identified in a busy patch.

I understand why some people want the synth to light up like a Christmas tree, and I understand why others don't. But I think a little more would be good for UX (and might help sell more copies). I'm sure you'll pull off whatever you decide to do with the usual u-he elegance.

***

A few other misc observations:

I might change the "maths" label on the osc renderer to "accuracy" like Diva (or something that makes it clear more precise modes will melt your computer faster). Also are you mixing up American and British English by having "maths" in one place and "math" in the ModMath the mod math modulator? It seems a little weird to me as an American.

Similarly the filters use the "KeyF" label whereas the EQ/Resonator uses "Track." I might be misunderstanding the manual on what the "track" does in the EQ but it sounds like the same thing as key follow.

I’d love to have an “open osc editor” button on the oscillators in the grid as well. I kind of miss the effects there too from Zebra2 but I can see why the full editor makes more sense in 3. Would just be nice to get there without determining which osc I’m using and finding the corresponding pane along the bottom first.

[tasmaniandevil]

I also want to report that something with the reverb FX is broken.

Could you post that preset?
Which operating system are you using?
Which plugin host, and which sample rate and buffer size?
This might help when trying to reproduce this.

[tasmaniandevil]

Just to say that the '808 designer' preset still crashes Reaper on Linux as soon as you play a note. Other presets are fine. This was the same in the first beta too.

Which Linux distribution are you using? I cannot reproduce this on Ubuntu Studio.
Which sample rate and buffer size is Reaper running at?
And are you using the CLAP or the VST3 version? Is it revision 20552?

[wilx]

I know it's not the only way to display mod, but the 'balls in orbit' method can be subtle if you want. Or turned off entirely.

[NAD]

There's something I've been struggling to do in Zebra 3 that maybe someone here can help me out with. I'm basically trying to cleanly morph between first and second harmonic sine waves (i.e. a normal sine and a sine one octave up). You can achieve this In Zebra 2 for example using the "Sine Tree" oscillator preset, and it looks something like this:

It's essentially like cross-fading between two oscillators and no additional overtones are introduced.

In Zebra 3 using the Curve Spectrum as the oscillator source, the best I can do is this:

As you can see, it basically dips to silence in the middle. Adding an additional wave frame in the middle with both harmonics gets me close but the transition tapering is all wrong and it's impossible to get the levels exactly right in the middle frame. Another possibility was using Curve Geometry as the source and drawing a sine in one frame and two in the other, but it's impossible to get it to morph nicely without getting higher overtones. Of course you might be able to cross-fade between two separate oscillators but that rules out applying any oscfx to the result.

Any ideas?

[ThoughtExperiment]

I'm confused about this, too. We originally had Breath CC2 and Expression CC11 (or was it 13?) hardwired as the only MIDI CCs. We then renamed those Ctrl A and B, and set them to Breath and Expression by default, but let users chose their preferred assignment. This is how Hive, Zebra 2, ACE, Repro have worked for about 10 years, ever since Repro came to be, or maybe even since Hive.

We now have added two more MIDI CCs that can be used as modulators within our software, and called them C and D for consistency.

The whole reason we did any of this was because people wanted to map whatever they had to A and B, instead of just a fixed assignment.

However, now it is very quick and easy to assign Breath to whatever AT is modulating: Just set Ctrl B to CC2, as you've done in Hive etc, then right click the B in the bottom bar and choose "Swap All Targets->Pressure"

Thanks Urs for getting involved and for the explanation. I'm so sorry for causing you guys more work because I don't seem to be able to explain this properly.

First of all, I understand that I can assign ctrl B to CC2 and the nifty shortcut to swap all targets is neat. That's fine when I'm creating a preset from scratch.

BUT for example - the 1st preset in 'Public Beta Collection' (A New Dawn) already uses Ctrl B to modulate Filter1 resonance and drive. So if I swap Pressure for Ctrl B, then wiggle my CC2 slider, I increase Vibrato Depth and also F1 res and drive. Which does sound nice, but I might not want to control 3 modulations with one control all the time. So it's like I'm losing a control 'pathway'...
Funnily enough I used to get around this in Hive when I needed to by using the XY pads - although please understand that I'm not for a minute asking for the XY pads to reappear in Z3

Maybe this has become a problem for me now because so many of the included presets have so many modulation options 'baked in'. Although surely I can't be the only one who can't get along with aftertouch? Anyway, I digress...

I hope that explains the problem a little better. As it happens, this morning I've found my own way around this - if I swap 'Pressure' for 'Hold Pedal', which is in the list and has a CC number (64), and map one of my sliders to CC64, I get all 7 modulation paths: mod wheel, pitch bend, A, B, C, D and CC64 in lieu of aftertouch. So we're all good

[NAD]

Also are you mixing up American and British English by having "maths" in one place and "math" in the ModMath the mod math modulator?

Lol good catch! Completely inconsequential but funny nonetheless...

[jasperdunn]

Is the Voice Index modulator supposed to be tied to the number of Voices selected in the Perform tab?

Currently, it's always 16, even when I reduce the number of voices.

[Urs]

There's something I've been struggling to do in Zebra 3 that maybe someone here can help me out with. I'm basically trying to cleanly morph between first and second harmonic sine waves (i.e. a normal sine and a sine one octave up). You can achieve this In Zebra 2 for example using the "Sine Tree" oscillator preset, and it looks something like this:

It's essentially like cross-fading between two oscillators and no additional overtones are introduced.

In Zebra 3 using the Curve Spectrum as the oscillator source, the best I can do is this:

As you can see, it basically dips to silence in the middle. Adding an additional wave frame in the middle with both harmonics gets me close but the transition tapering is all wrong and it's impossible to get the levels exactly right in the middle frame. Another possibility was using Curve Geometry as the source and drawing a sine in one frame and two in the other, but it's impossible to get it to morph nicely without getting higher overtones. Of course you might be able to cross-fade between two separate oscillators but that rules out applying any oscfx to the result.

Any ideas?

Yeah, it used to be linear gain in Zebra 2, and now it's exponential gain. I'm trying to think about a way to achieve the same, but I agree it's gonna be more complicated.