Zebra 3 final final beta 21764 April 14

[SamDi]

What also got worse

On a quick check, it is the same as in Zebralette 3, so I don't think it has changed in any way. But I agree the control could be more finely grained.

OK maybe this and the other two bugs, I mentioned in the bug thread added up to feel like a new beahviour.

[Urs]

What also got worse

On a quick check, it is the same as in Zebralette 3, so I don't think it has changed in any way. But I agree the control could be more finely grained.

OK maybe this and the other two bugs, I mentioned in the bug thread added up to feel like a new beahviour.

I think maybe it feels worse because the editor is bigger, thus the available way seems relatively smaller.

[exmatproton]

I am not sure if this has been noted, or being worked on; the MSEG numbers/bar count are/is still dissappearing when zooming out (enough). Gentle reminder that it would be neat to have bar counts up to the largest zoom level Maybe in a future update

[Urs]

Yeah, in a future update...

[exmatproton]

Yeah, in a future update...

Awesome. Thanks

[NAD]

With the official release imminent, I'd like to repeat some of my outstanding complaints with some additional suggestions, and to amplify some comments with which I strongly agree. This may not be the perfect time or place, but I'll put it down here now anyway for posterity if for no other reason.

Mouse Wheel
The main thing still bugging me is the inconsistent resolution of the mouse-wheel when adjusting parameters. When dragging with the mouse, most if not all parameters increase/decrease by whole numbers. This is good. But it is sadly not so for many parameters when adjusting with the mouse wheel. In the osc rack panel for example, almost all parameters can be scrolled nicely, with the puzzling exception of the Detune and Pan knobs which jump by increments of 4 when scrolling. This makes me VERÄRGERT! (I'm not German, had to look that up...) As another example, the Ratio knob in FMO and the Overtone Value knob in the pitches tab both scroll by increments of 0.4 which is particularly frustrating when you're aiming for whole numbers. (In this case, 0.2, 0.25, or 0.5 would all be preferable but 1 is most consistent with the dragging behavior.) If this got fixed it would make me very GLÜCKLICH!

Oscillator

• @pinton suggested in a previous thread that "Resolution" and "Curve Math" on the oscillator rack panel can be relegated to the lower panel or the main editor. You are very wise, pinton! I personally rarely touch them, and I'm guessing most people aren't adjusting them very frequently.
• @misterandy suggested replacing the Curve Geometry icons on the oscillator panel with a text label such as for the Renderer selector right next to it, and I very much agree. The icons themselves are not particularly intuitive to me personally and they also feel a bit incongruent with the rest of the panel. The same goes for the Trigger Mode icons on the Envelope panel.
• Regarding the oscillators, it'd be awfully handy to have a button to access the main editor directly on the rack panel. Ergonomic, even, you might say.

Modmapper

• Recognizing the awesome power of Mappers only relatively recently, I was a bit puzzled by their behavior in "Map Smooth" mode. A picture is worth a thousand words so here's an example of how it currently works, hopefully sufficiently self-explanatory:
  
  
  (Obviously the modulator can be bipolar without loss of generality)
  
  How I wished it actually worked is more like this:
  
  
  
  In other words, for n points (steps) you'd get n-1 linear segments. That makes so much more sense to me! As a perhaps somewhat degenerate use-case example: Take a filter and set the cutoff to zero with a direct mod from a Mapper at 100. Set the Mapper to Map Smooth modulated by anything (e.g. MW) with 2 steps. You can now conveniently control the minimum and maximum individually of the modulator's range. (Now if the mappers were actually morphable curves, shit would really get wild! But I digress…)
  
  For good measure here's Map Quantize as it does—and undoubtedly should—work, just because when you start making charts it's hard to stop:
  
  
• On the topic of mappers, there's been some discussion about the "User" style LFOs from Zebra 2. That might be addressed by having a dedicated ramp (saw up) LFO built directly into the mapper as an optional third mode. This would probably require at least three additional controls i.e. Rate, Time Base, and Trigger, but I do believe there's space for it. Something to consider perhaps down the line.

Delay
Another thing that bears repeating, is the time value gap in the Delay module. For unsynced delay times it's currently impossible to get values between 200ms and 500ms. I'd argue that those are very important times for a delay to have! Perhaps the Range knob can have a different -er- range- for 0.1s and 1s.

Misc.

• I also agree with Mr. Andy regarding the filter labels in the Noise module. Surely they can be updated to match the selected noise type?
• Many (including myself) have asked for a way to bypass direct modulations, and I hope we get to see that one day.
• Lastly, I'll repeat my wish for a more convenient way to save and recall a custom init patch. As it stands, selecting "Init" from the Data Display menu loads the original factory initialized state rather than my custom default.h2p (which is only loaded when first instantiating the plugin). Also modifying default.h2p is inconvenient if you've set presets to save to the user folder, and even if not, considering that default.h2p doesn't show up in the preset browser. A couple of options in Data Display right-click menu for "Save as custom default" and "Load custom default" would be very much appreciated.

Blah blah blah, listen to me go on and on. Urs, I know I kvetch a lot but you guys are really killing it. And I love and appreciate you . The new GUI is fantastic and also thanks for adding a phase knob to the osc panel! Peace out

[HAJIME KOURIKI]

With the official release imminent, I'd like to repeat some of my outstanding complaints with some additional suggestions, and to amplify some comments with which I strongly agree. This may not be the perfect time or place, but I'll put it down here now anyway for posterity if for no other reason.

Mouse Wheel
The main thing still bugging me is the inconsistent resolution of the mouse-wheel when adjusting parameters. When dragging with the mouse, most if not all parameters increase/decrease by whole numbers. This is good. But it is sadly not so for many parameters when adjusting with the mouse wheel. In the osc rack panel for example, almost all parameters can be scrolled nicely, with the puzzling exception of the Detune and Pan knobs which jump by increments of 4 when scrolling. This makes me VERÄRGERT! (I'm not German, had to look that up...) As another example, the Ratio knob in FMO and the Overtone Value knob in the pitches tab both scroll by increments of 0.4 which is particularly frustrating when you're aiming for whole numbers. (In this case, 0.2, 0.25, or 0.5 would all be preferable but 1 is most consistent with the dragging behavior.) If this got fixed it would make me very GLÜCKLICH!

Oscillator

• @pinton suggested in a previous thread that "Resolution" and "Curve Math" on the oscillator rack panel can be relegated to the lower panel or the main editor. You are very wise, pinton! I personally rarely touch them, and I'm guessing most people aren't adjusting them very frequently.
• @misterandy suggested replacing the Curve Geometry icons on the oscillator panel with a text label such as for the Renderer selector right next to it, and I very much agree. The icons themselves are not particularly intuitive to me personally and they also feel a bit incongruent with the rest of the panel. The same goes for the Trigger Mode icons on the Envelope panel.
• Regarding the oscillators, it'd be awfully handy to have a button to access the main editor directly on the rack panel. Ergonomic, even, you might say.

Modmapper

• Recognizing the awesome power of Mappers only relatively recently, I was a bit puzzled by their behavior in "Map Smooth" mode. A picture is worth a thousand words so here's an example of how it currently works, hopefully sufficiently self-explanatory:
  
  
  (Obviously the modulator can be bipolar without loss of generality)
  
  How I wished it actually worked is more like this:
  
  
  
  In other words, for n points (steps) you'd get n-1 linear segments. That makes so much more sense to me! As a perhaps somewhat degenerate use-case example: Take a filter and set the cutoff to zero with a direct mod from a Mapper at 100. Set the Mapper to Map Smooth modulated by anything (e.g. MW) with 2 steps. You can now conveniently control the minimum and maximum individually of the modulator's range. (Now if the mappers were actually morphable curves, shit would really get wild! But I digress…)
  
  For good measure here's Map Quantize as it does—and undoubtedly should—work, just because when you start making charts it's hard to stop:
  
  
• On the topic of mappers, there's been some discussion about the "User" style LFOs from Zebra 2. That might be addressed by having a dedicated ramp (saw up) LFO built directly into the mapper as an optional third mode. This would probably require at least three additional controls i.e. Rate, Time Base, and Trigger, but I do believe there's space for it. Something to consider perhaps down the line.

Delay
Another thing that bears repeating, is the time value gap in the Delay module. For unsynced delay times it's currently impossible to get values between 200ms and 500ms. I'd argue that those are very important times for a delay to have! Perhaps the Range knob can have a different -er- range- for 0.1s and 1s.

Misc.

• I also agree with Mr. Andy regarding the filter labels in the Noise module. Surely they can be updated to match the selected noise type?
• Many (including myself) have asked for a way to bypass direct modulations, and I hope we get to see that one day.
• Lastly, I'll repeat my wish for a more convenient way to save and recall a custom init patch. As it stands, selecting "Init" from the Data Display menu loads the original factory initialized state rather than my custom default.h2p (which is only loaded when first instantiating the plugin). Also modifying default.h2p is inconvenient if you've set presets to save to the user folder, and even if not, considering that default.h2p doesn't show up in the preset browser. A couple of options in Data Display right-click menu for "Save as custom default" and "Load custom default" would be very much appreciated.

Blah blah blah, listen to me go on and on. Urs, I know I kvetch a lot but you guys are really killing it. And I love and appreciate you . The new GUI is fantastic and also thanks for adding a phase knob to the osc panel! Peace out

I’ve wondered myself about the exact scope of the mapper's criteria, but I’ve decided it’s not that important for now. Of course, I hope they’ll clearly define it in the manual someday. I expect things will start rolling out gradually. In practice, it's something we can observe through the scope.

[Urs]

We have collected all of those things and wishes, but we do not have the energy to delay Zebra 3 another 6 to 12 months. We'll have to improve some things gradually.

[NAD]

We have collected all of those things and wishes, but we do not have the energy to delay Zebra 3 another 6 to 12 months. We'll have to improve some things gradually.

Of course, I should've mentioned I don't really expect any of that stuff to be addressed any time soon (or at all for that matter), what with the official release coming up and what not. I was more just sort of putting that stuff out there to "offload" it from my head and into the universe or whatever...

[HAJIME KOURIKI]

My overall impression is that it would be great if the scope were a floating window. Also, I’d love to see some improvement in how the modulator's gain is displayed. Currently, it resizes the waveform by default, which I think is fine, and both of these seem like relatively low-effort updates. (My apologies if I'm mistaken!)
Right now, I can barely check things on the scope, but there’s no way to see the crucial output. I particularly struggled when trying to check constant values via the "via" parameter. I’m hoping for an option to clearly visualize these values. In addition to the scope, having a voltage indicator would be very helpful.

[Urs]

Yeah, the scope needs some updating... it's going to be one of our next internal projects. We do have a scope plug-in that has proper readouts and all that, but that stuff is not yet available in the mini-scopes in our synth plug-ins.

[M32]

Question: will the release version already include multicore support, or is that going to be implemented later? No pressure, just curious.

Also: i'm thinking of releasing a preset pack after launch and am thinking of the best procedure. I'm already testing and labeling/categorizing all patches in this latest beta, but possibly it would be better to test them as well in the actual release '1.0' too? Any advice to best practices would be most welcome.

One small other question, when editing a usage description, i want to use a neat layout, for example
MW = morph
Ctrl A = fx
Ctrl B = vibrato
AT = modulation depth
etc.

But i can't find a way to implement 'start a new line' i can use spacebar presses so it looks ok in the window, but then it looks weird in the preset browser righthand column. If i press 'enter' the window will just close and save

[cb8rwh]

Shift + Enter works for a new line for me (macos)

One small other question, when editing a usage description, i want to use a neat layout, for example
MW = morph
Ctrl A = fx
Ctrl B = vibrato
AT = modulation depth
etc.

But i can't find a way to implement 'start a new line' i can use spacebar presses so it looks ok in the window, but then it looks weird in the preset browser righthand column. If i press 'enter' the window will just close and save

[Viktor [TUC]]

Shift+Enter does a "soft line break" in the text boxes.

[Alexander_D]

Just interesting. Is it possible to add something like randomizer on Osc with lock function like in old NO Massive synth? Sometimes it's give an amazing and interesting sounds. I know the answer is NO, but anyway I want to ask