Zebra 3 - final beta Rev 21625 April 8th

[nusound mind]

This version is pretty unstable so far on my system. Windows 10, studio one 6.6. Crashed 3 times in roughly 50 presets as I'm going through, saving ones I like. Once it froze my entire cpu, had to shut down and turn on again, which is rare for a plugin to do, it's only happened few times in years.

Wondering if I manage to sort through all the new presets whether I can roll back to a previous beta and will the saved presets still be there. I save them in Studio One itself, with their very convenient preset system. I may try that.

[nusound mind]

Typically I go with the 'if it isn't broke..' philosophy with plugins, and the last beta was pretty stable for me. But at that point there were only 300+ presets so I figured going through nearly 1k new presets was too enticing to pass up.

In any case I'm sure the wrinkles will be ironed in due time though if it's crashfest atp I do wonder whether it's really ready for prime time. Although perhaps my set up is an outlier, i don't see a lot of other claims in the thread of it being unstable so idk.

[Seafire Mk2]

A decent bug report might help

[Kyunghee]

Still regarding UI. Now I probably know why Zebra 3 looks strange for me. ALL U-HE stuff looks so good..they have their unique style. But at the same moment I am still know that's it's U-HE. Regarding Zebra 3 it's different feel and vibe. Sorry that I again posting about UI. But I love U-HE and love Zebra 2.

Yeah it doesn't have that modern U-he design language that I find very nice (like MFM2 or the recent Uhbik plugins). Instead it looks kind of generic, like a second rate plugin.

[SamDi]

Can it be, that Modulation in the Delay effect has no impact? Nothing changes on my side.

Also pretty unstable on my system (Windows 11/Nuendo).

[pdxindy]

Can it be, that Modulation in the Delay effect has no impact? Nothing changes on my side.

Modulation works here... both the Modulation knob and modulating a parameter.

[Fannon]

Here is one instance, where contrast is really not great: black font on dark grey background if you disable the module. Doesn't happen often so it's not a big deal, just wanted to point it out.

2026-04-10 23_06_12-Zebra3 _ Zebra3.png

Generally, I think the new theme improves the UX / flow and declutters a few things. I also understand the SVG situation and personally would not be opposed towards "embracing" this by making the theme even more minimalistic (but with clearer contrasts, less gradients, less skeuomorphism).

Btw. I mentioned having problems with Zebra UI loading very slow - this was mostly caused by an issue on my side, having much slower IO / file access than I though (symlinking things into GDrive the wrong way). Fixing this brings loading Zebra UI to ~4s which is OK, but it is still my slowest loading instrument. Hive / Diva loads in ~1s. It probably shows that Zebra 3 UI loading time is to some degree due having to load so many (small) files.

[Urs]

This version is pretty unstable so far on my system. Windows 10, studio one 6.6. Crashed 3 times in roughly 50 presets as I'm going through, saving ones I like. Once it froze my entire cpu, had to shut down and turn on again, which is rare for a plugin to do, it's only happened few times in years.

Wondering if I manage to sort through all the new presets whether I can roll back to a previous beta and will the saved presets still be there. I save them in Studio One itself, with their very convenient preset system. I may try that.

Is it actually crashing (host ends with an error message) or freezing (nothing happens for a while)?

We found a bug that can stall presets changes and tab switches on the UI for several seconds going from certain presets to others. This bug is fixed, and preset changes will be super snappy again.

[SamDi]

Can it be, that Modulation in the Delay effect has no impact? Nothing changes on my side.

Modulation works here... both the Modulation knob and modulating a parameter.

Oh yes, tried it on a plain init. But effect is very subtle. Barely noticeable on the patch I am working on. But forgot that I can modulate delay directly. Thanx.

[nusound mind]

This version is pretty unstable so far on my system. Windows 10, studio one 6.6. Crashed 3 times in roughly 50 presets as I'm going through, saving ones I like. Once it froze my entire cpu, had to shut down and turn on again, which is rare for a plugin to do, it's only happened few times in years.

Wondering if I manage to sort through all the new presets whether I can roll back to a previous beta and will the saved presets still be there. I save them in Studio One itself, with their very convenient preset system. I may try that.

Is it actually crashing (host ends with an error message) or freezing (nothing happens for a while)?

We found a bug that can stall presets changes and tab switches on the UI for several seconds going from certain presets to others. This bug is fixed, and preset changes will be super snappy again.

First time it crashed changing preset (made stutter noise, then program quit) second time changing parameter (can't recall which) and it froze so I task managered it outta there as it was 'not responding'. 3rd time cpu froze when I opened the synth. It opened but then mouse, cpu froze entirely.

Studio One went to the crash report opening 'start normally or not' message when restarting it the initial two times.

For what it's worth it has since not crashed nor any detectable untowards functioning, maybe slight delay here and there switching presets. So idk if it's a case of bad 1st impressions b/t new beta and S1 or what. I'm about 1/2 way through the bass preset folder.

[djdaxy]

10 instances jaming out techno patches from scratch all playing at once on my ryzen7 think pad @27%cpu good for this laptop havent used the built in presets yet tho

[jasperdunn]

Loving all the new presets, however it seems that many polyphonic presets are set as Voice Alloc. = Continue when I think they should be set to Iterate. Did the default change and it not update or something?

Pink Lagoon is one example, but I've found loads that should be set to Iterate IMO.

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Okay I just checked it out, all my own presets are set to Iterate (I never touched this setting though) and all the factory presets are set to Continue.

Did the default setting change, and not get updated throughout the factory presets?

I think Iterate is a better default for percussive and polyphonic instruments.

[MCMorrise]

Loving all the new presets, however it seems that many polyphonic presets are set as Voice Alloc. = Continue when I think they should be set to Iterate. Did the default change and it not update or something?

Yeah, I suspect that was a change to defaults. While playing today I noticed AnaTomi, Combic Percussion, Lhasa, Nice Hat!, and several other patches in the Percussion category which, due to using Continue allocation, either (1) lack a consistent attack phase or (2) get weird clicks on the attack or (3) both. I don't remember them being that way on last play-through. I'd think percussion is the prime use case for Iterate voice allocation.

[gerenm63]

Looks great! Can't wait to start playing with it this weekend!

[IanFu]

Here's what I assume might happen:

Some host and controllers when set to MPE Mode will send notes on different channels. This will sound polyphonic in Zebra (and almost all our synths) even when they are set to Mono or Legato - because we treat the setting as "per MIDI channel".

This allows for expressive play beyond the (intended) possibilities of MPE. Like, you can concatenate legato played notes polyphonically by "tapping" instead of just "sliding".

Many thanks for the reply, and all the hard work Urs. I'll have a further look into what you've said when I can get some more time tomorrow. Until then, if I can add in a bit more of an update from a post I tacked on to another reply somewhere...

"If I set the Voice Alloc to Iterate and Discharging to Smooth is that the sound just turns to pure distortion almost immediately. Set to Continue, the distortion goes but I can still play polyphonically in Mono mode.

Switching off MPE and going to single channel mode doesn't change it although Mono does then work correctly.

This only appears to occur on rapidly played repeating arpeggios i:e playing C major as an arpeggio as fast as you can."

That distortion is the main concern as anything else, I'd be happy to work around. I have other VSTs like my Korg ones that don't support MPE so I'm used to having to swap modes as or when needed. The distortion is something I've not found a workaround for, yet.

Cheers.