Zebra 3 Control ABCD - MIDI vs. Macros

[jooster]

What I'm about to say is more of a side-rant have nothing to do with Controls A-D, nor is any of this aimed at Zebra 3, so take it with a grain of salt, but ...

……. "WILL YOU JUST LET ME DESIGN SOM F#@!&$G SOUNDS?!"

Ha, funny! I like to design my own sounds, just don’t have a ton of time for it. Additionally, i usually get so swept away with some particular sound or aspect of it that it makes me feel sound design is a time machine teleporting me forward…. So i end up with a few handful of sounds at some point and then perhaps purchasing a lib or two. The trouble (for me) with many libraries is that only a few patches are distinct and interesting. Of course tastes differ but i also see a considerable repeat between patches in libraries, perhaps to be able to see this lib has (some big number) of patches? I don’t care for macros, but rather hook up my own modulations. And maybe there is a happy medium for some of us; make a half baked library with partial cooked patches and instructions/ideas how to finish? (Sort of like these bake your own partially done breads). That would save both of us time. I’d be interested to buy a library with a number of patches having good initial sound diversity and instructions/ideas from the designer to make them your own. My 2ct, and excuses for going off track…

[pdxindy]

When I open a synth with macros and browse the factory library and most presets have only like the first few macros assigned (even of only 4...), I feel like they failed at making a good preset library.

I stopped trying to follow all the complexities of Midi vs Macros with Controls A-D

How I decided to deal with it, is to never touch the A-D knobs on the Zebra 3 Perform Page. It's too dangerous to use them because I will inevitably forget that I did, save and close a Bitwig project, and then when I re-open the project, the sound has changed and I would have no way to remember how to get back to the saved state.

The bake function is complicated. I don't know what has been tweaked and how much, or how to go back and of course I have to remember to use it, or my project saves wrong. Much safer to ignore the knobs altogether.

I'd welcome a preference option to disable them... not the underlying function, but just the GUI knobs. Then I cannot make a mistake.