Zebra 3 - final beta Rev 21625 April 8th

[lucassantana]

Is there anyway to add our own custom tags to each category? Can't seem to find a way to do it, unless I'm an imbecile

There isn't one. I can't recall the exact reasons, but there were many.

Some people have used bank names as a way to custom tag their own presets.

You can also save your own tags in the description field and create "saved searches" to find them quickly in the files view.

Hmm that's a shame. Guess I'd rather adhere to this limitation than further complicating the process by using the description field instead. Anyway, LOVING the new high quality oscillators. Loving everything about it. I just hope there will be a future guide on how to create our own custom GUIs, that way everybody wins!

[Urs]

Once we recover from this two year development & design marathon, there's a good chance we'll do a video walk through of our UI editor.

[lucassantana]

Once we recover from this two year development & design marathon, there's a good chance we'll do a video walk through of our UI editor.

Cheers Urs. Definitely a well-deserved break. Thank you guys so much.

[Itinerant Ghost]

WOW, the UI looks amazing, and the presets!!!!! Again, well done, friends! I appreciate all the effort that goes into sweating all the little details

[tapekiller]

Here is my edit of the new GUI.

I removed the gradients behind the menus.
I made all the menus a color so they stand out from all the label text.
I'm still playing with the colors of modules and modulators.
I also moved the DC Offset button. Somehow it bothered me being right below the volume knob.


Z3 GUI Edit 1.jpg

The palette is a bit unbalanced now, but it's a bit more readable and you can definitely work on it. Some stuff didn't need to be color coded, and I think they got the buttons right the first time around, right now they are less relevant in the overall ui and don't stand out. Right now they look just like underlined text imo, but removing the background already improved readability

[aMUSEd]

Is there anyway to add our own custom tags to each category? Can't seem to find a way to do it, unless I'm an imbecile

There isn't one. I can't recall the exact reasons, but there were many.

Some people have used bank names as a way to custom tag their own presets.

You can also save your own tags in the description field and create "saved searches" to find them quickly in the files view.

Hmm that's a shame. Guess I'd rather adhere to this limitation than further complicating the process by using the description field instead.

I wouldn’t worry about that, the description field is exactly meant for this sort of thing - more verbose descriptions of the patch that go beyond tags. I think the point is it would make more sense to have a description that says ‘This is a slightly wonky pad that gets more detuned with MW’ than erect a whole category ‘wonky pads’ (even though that might be amusing to do). Tag categories tend to get cluttered over time with semi useless categories people think are a good idea at the time (just look at Omnisphere)

[SteveElbows]

As I can understand the official release of Zebra 3 in July?.. just saw that the beta was expired in July.

No, it could be released as soon as this week.

[midi_transmission]

I like the new (orginal) Zebra 3 gui.

Just 3 things.

- The yellow is slightly brighter than the other colors. A bit more shading would balance it.

- Please update the hover-state icon for the modulator buttons (i.e. MSEG1 button that looks a bit like a cross). The hover icon overlapping the button icons looks very broken on some of them.

- Not a huge fan of the modulator cross button/icon "MSEQ1 (x)". Maybe there is something better. But the only real issue is the hover on them.

[Flogs]

Once we recover from this two year development & design marathon, there's a good chance we'll do a video walk through of our UI editor.

Please do, thank you.

[dvd98]

Hope CPU usage can be optimized a bit further, Z2 was always nice because it was so low CPU. Apart from that i love Z3.

[pdxindy]

Zebra 3 has an alive, organic quality - so many patches surprise you with the direction they flow in and the sheer range of timbres and expression in one patch is extraordinary. Considering this has no samples and no arp/seq it's amazing how real it sounds and how much motion is possible in the patches.

+1

[SYNTHLOVE]

I just would like to join in with some criticism regarding a modern perspective on music production workflows / UIs and one question:

Why is there no IPad version?

I am really happy to see Zebra 3 getting ready and very likely I will buy a license, especially because I am happy to see Linux support.

However, as a polyglot musician I came to really very much like to use the iPad, especially for sound research and design. The ability to just take (parts of) my projects and ideas everywhere with me was the most important change in my musical workflow in the last 20 years. Nowadays these mobile devices are very capable and it is such a great option to just take your sound design session to the next coffeeshop / sofa / train / beach / studio / person / band / wherever you like.

I do not understand why u-he is sleeping on this important aspect.

After years of mobile music fun being forced into an office like situation sitting in front of a computer, communicating via the absolute minimalistic and very limited interface called "mouse", trying to hit a very small area of actual action ("knob" UI simulation) while there are large empty panes on the same screen seems like masochistic retro-computing to me. I see this software UI and I think "this will bring a lot of pain to hands / shoulders / necks in long editing sessions". And with a synth like this you will have long sessions, for sure!

So please just let me take it to my favourite place. Free me from the desktop / laptop computer chain. Give me freedom!

Also It shows very much in the UI that the developers are not developing for mobile devices. It seems a very important perspective for any developer to understand how mobility and continuity can contribute to a decentralised music production process.

The UI is a relict from the past. I guess the main developers do not even have touch screens on their main work computers, do they? This is such a pity and a missed opportunity!

Great synth, but chained in old school computing ideas.

I would love to integrate this beauty into a lovely AUM setup.

Please do not hate me, I write this because I like all u-he products! I was unsure to write this text, because of course I do not want to offend anybody, but somehow it seemed to me that someone needs to write about that elephant in the room. Mr. Heckmann, with all respect to your enormous body of work, please get an experienced iPad developer on board and let him at least be part of the UI design process.

[Igro]

- The yellow is slightly brighter than the other colors. A bit more shading would balance it.

Exactly my thoughts.

[SteveElbows]

Why is there no IPad version?

Its not very unusual to see that missing, a lot of soft synth makers dont go there. Probably because the pricing model established for ipad is quite far adrift from traditional computer software pricing, and when that is coupled with the required dev efforts and perhaps volume of sales, things either dont add up or dont give companies strong reasons to believe things will add up for them. Some companies probably dont like the percentage cut that Apple take either.

Some companies even dabbled with ipad versions in the past but did not persist.

[Urs]

Yeah, from what we hear, the effort does not pay off. Price it fairly, you don't sell enough, price it competitively, people start moping about the price of the desktop version (which we can't make any cheaper, because that is simply what development costs when 20 families need to be fed).