Zebra 3 - final beta Rev 21625 April 8th

[pdxindy]

I could wait or live without an arp inside Zebra3. I have plenty of arp tools inside my DAWs.

It would be interesting to have an Arp/Seq integrated and able to do stuff that an external Arp cannot.

[chuckwood]

I could wait or live without an arp inside Zebra3. I have plenty of arp tools inside my DAWs.

Although I can certainly wait, I would still love to have an arp at some point. And this may be an unpopular opinion but I don't even need anything flashy, just a bread and butter arp. I also have many other external arp tools but nothing quite beats having the arp built-in when you are still tweaking the sounds.

But enough 'arping on, congratulations team U-he on a massive job, it's looking and sounding so good.

[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

Hm, in a 96 khz Bitwig project I can barely run 2 at once on a Macbook Pro M1 depending on patch. Better than Diva though.

smug mode my laptop seems to handle zebra3 really well Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 5 AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 8840HS 32GB ddr5 RAM with de bloated win11 my only problem is ableton 12 is very crashy
but tried the same thing again with 11 instances this time with my half my own patch trying to utilize a bunch of features and half preset it sits idol around 20cpu with all that going and some stock eq and fluctuates between 20% and peaks around 40% with all the tracks playing respectively didnt notice bugs tbh

[muki]

+1 on a light mode like Zebralette3 please!

+1

[Viktor [TUC]]

If you go into OSC 1 & 2 you will see that they have a Spectral Decay OSC FX turned to max depth. Turn that to minimum and the tailing off won't happen anymore.

The bass preset "Diffuse Bass" fades into silence with normal paced note sequences. Notes need to be played slow for it not to happen.
Is this intended behaviour and if so, how can I change it

While this does work, the actual fix is switching the voice allocation setting to Iterate (it being set to Continue was the actual bug here, since it worked fine in previous versions due to voices iterating before). The next version will have that as default for presets.

[Urs]

Not sure whether it is a bug or intentional. And I should have brought it up when I first noticed it but for whatever reason I assumed it was just a "will be as expected in the final release".

In Zebra 2/HZ, a very common patch and performance technique for me was to use the polyphonic triggering of the envelopes for real time expression - especially the Attack parameter. I would keep one hand on a trackpad, or a midi fader (or foot on an expression pedal) to alter the attack (or multiple attacks for multiple EGs mapped to different modules via mapping to an XY macro) in real-time as I played. What made this work was the fact that once a note was played, changing the attack only impacted the next note. So I could decide to increase attack on a note or chord, and change to a short attack on the next note to be played WHILE still holding the long-attack note(s), which would continue the previous envelope. This also allowed for some MPE-like expression on non-MPE keyboards (in in the case of Z2, a non-MPE synth.)

In Zebra 3, adjusting an EG attack immediately impacts the note(s) already triggered and being held. This renders the above technique impossible. Maybe this is intentional? Maybe I've missed a setting I need to change? I've tried triggering as none, gate, and trigger - no difference.

(related - I REALLY miss the individual direct mod slots for each envelope stage. I used different mod sensitivities for each stage on the regular, and often negative-modulation for one or two stages).

So, much of the criticism of Zebra 2's envelopes was that one can't modulate Attack, Decay and Release once the phases had started. So what you perceive as an advantage, was mostly perceived as a flaw in the community. Common tricks like envs modulating themselves does not work in Zebra 2.

In Zebra 3 you can bring that back effortlessly:

In the ModMatrix slot that is set to modulate Attack, use "Gate" from the Sample & Hold drop down.

[Urs]

something that has to be fixed btw (imho), is the (re-)trigger issues with the spectral decay (OSC fx). There are even patches in this latest batch that use it that sound buggy because of it.

Yes and no.

The bug was that the presets were converted the wrong way. Many patches that are supposed to have Voice Allocation on "Iterate" are in fact on "Continue", and latter does not (by design) restart the Spectral Decay.

These presets will be fixed in the next release.

The other thing is, Spectral Decay should get its own trigger parameter so we can sequence this and stuff. That's something to be considered for a 3.x update.

[Urs]

Is the upgrade set to expire or anything, I have yet to get round to ponying up.
Not really been keeping up with the beta tbh...

The beta tester license card expires in July.

We will probably release another "absolutely final" beta today that fixes preset browsing issues and the remaining crashes we know about. This will be the last beta to accept the beta tester license card.

The final release will not accept the beta tester license card anymore. This is scheduled to happen in a few days.

[Urs]

Yes, but what sort of inventive Arp/Seq might they come up with!!!

okay...new "bold" statement: Only consider adding something like that/spend energy and time on that when, and only when something amazing, new, fresh, amazing, massive, new, fresh, amazing, awesome, fresh, new, great, new, fresh, awesome, new kind of seq/arp has been cooked up. Otherwise...not needed

I kinda assume that's why they didn't drop a standard one in already...

My thoughts exactly.

[Urs]

Instead of a boring old arp I'd like to see a Zebra CVilization type module that does 4x4 matrix rotation of modulation signals and destinations.

For sequencing I'm thinking CVilization Mode 3, like having two or more sequences where one sequence can "leak" into the other, but also be restored to its original form.

Some kind of CVz Matrix Rotation is available in the audio and fx Grid in Zebra 3 with the 4-in-4 mixer. It does not have a Matrix, but it can scan 4 ways on the output or input side. Powerful tool when you wanna dynamically route anything into or from anywhere else.

[bhinton]

Not sure whether it is a bug or intentional. And I should have brought it up when I first noticed it but for whatever reason I assumed it was just a "will be as expected in the final release".

In Zebra 2/HZ, a very common patch and performance technique for me was to use the polyphonic triggering of the envelopes for real time expression - especially the Attack parameter. I would keep one hand on a trackpad, or a midi fader (or foot on an expression pedal) to alter the attack (or multiple attacks for multiple EGs mapped to different modules via mapping to an XY macro) in real-time as I played. What made this work was the fact that once a note was played, changing the attack only impacted the next note. So I could decide to increase attack on a note or chord, and change to a short attack on the next note to be played WHILE still holding the long-attack note(s), which would continue the previous envelope. This also allowed for some MPE-like expression on non-MPE keyboards (in in the case of Z2, a non-MPE synth.)

In Zebra 3, adjusting an EG attack immediately impacts the note(s) already triggered and being held. This renders the above technique impossible. Maybe this is intentional? Maybe I've missed a setting I need to change? I've tried triggering as none, gate, and trigger - no difference.

(related - I REALLY miss the individual direct mod slots for each envelope stage. I used different mod sensitivities for each stage on the regular, and often negative-modulation for one or two stages).

So, much of the criticism of Zebra 2's envelopes was that one can't modulate Attack, Decay and Release once the phases had started. So what you perceive as an advantage, was mostly perceived as a flaw in the community. Common tricks like envs modulating themselves does not work in Zebra 2.

In Zebra 3 you can bring that back effortlessly:

In the ModMatrix slot that is set to modulate Attack, use "Gate" from the Sample & Hold drop down.

Thanks Urs - alas, this doesn't seem to work. The behavior is the same whether attack is changed directly from the module slider or via modulation from the mod matrix with Gate (or gate via / as a secondary). The previous note(s) still instantly switch to the new attack setting.

[stippenstoh]

If you go into OSC 1 & 2 you will see that they have a Spectral Decay OSC FX turned to max depth. Turn that to minimum and the tailing off won't happen anymore.

The bass preset "Diffuse Bass" fades into silence with normal paced note sequences. Notes need to be played slow for it not to happen.
Is this intended behaviour and if so, how can I change it

While this does work, the actual fix is switching the voice allocation setting to Iterate (it being set to Continue was the actual bug here, since it worked fine in previous versions due to voices iterating before). The next version will have that as default for presets.

Thanks Viktor!

[Urs]

Thanks Urs - alas, this doesn't seem to work. The behavior is the same whether attack is changed directly from the module slider or via modulation from the mod matrix with Gate (or gate via / as a secondary). The previous note(s) still instantly switch to the new attack setting.

100 % sure that if you set up, say Ctrl A to control envelope Attack and Gate on S & H of that ModMatrix Slot, for each note A will be sampled and held throughout the whole note, and new notes take whatever A is set to after.

[pekbro]

Is the upgrade set to expire or anything, I have yet to get round to ponying up.
Not really been keeping up with the beta tbh...

The beta tester license card expires in July.

We will probably release another "absolutely final" beta today that fixes preset browsing issues and the remaining crashes we know about. This will be the last beta to accept the better tester license card.

The final release will not accept the beta tester license card anymore. This is scheduled to happen in a few days.

Ok thanks, I just went ahead and paid the 30 euros.

-Cheers

[bhinton]

Thank you! It works. I was having a brainswitch between "Sample and Hold" and "Click and Hold". Just tried it using constant with Gate for SH and adjusting attack via the Constant value results in holding the attack stage for the previous note. I'll just have to "unlearn" that mousing the attack slider is an option.