Zebra 3 and Zebra Legacy

[Hanz Meyzer]

Any news here about ETA of Zebralette 3? Will it be in 2023? IMHO priority should be Zebra3 only

[Urs]

Any news here about ETA of Zebralette 3? Will it be in 2023? IMHO priority should be Zebra3 only

Uhbik is in good hands, I'm focussing on Zebralette 3. Mostly completing the editor tool set atm, but the oscillator engine needs a lot of finishing. Haven't done anything in regards to LFO, env, FX. Will probably just reuse what we have, e.g. lift those off of Hive.

The plan is to show it during NAMM. Not sure if we'll be able to beta before that (x-mas?) or go beta around that time. We'll see.

[Hanz Meyzer]

Thanks for the insight. Regarding LFOs, couldn't be any LFO "just" an OSC, too (minus the osc fx and unison)? Same editor, only with more workflow focus on low frequencies? And maybe even the ENVs could share the same editor view?

[aMUSEd]

Any news here about ETA of Zebralette 3? Will it be in 2023? IMHO priority should be Zebra3 only

I guess 1 feeds into the other anyway so anything that develops Zebralette also develops Zebra 3. I've always appreciated how Zebralette teaches users how to shape sounds in Zebra's oscs before you even get into filters and fx (and questions whether you even need to go there). I think Zebra is one of those synths where so much can be done in terms of sound shaping that often filters seem somewhat irrelevant or at least not as indispensable as some synths make them, Zebra is much more OSC centric so bringing out Zebralette first sends out a message

[Urs]

Thanks for the insight. Regarding LFOs, couldn't be any LFO "just" an OSC, too (minus the osc fx and unison)? Same editor, only with more workflow focus on low frequencies? And maybe even the ENVs could share the same editor view?

Yes, that's possible, but it isn't where I'm going with this.

I just think that a synth where *everything* is complex isn't really very appealing (and of course, the many examples of this are pretty much all multi-tabbed user experience nightmares...). I think that simple envelopes and LFOs do a good job most of the time, and an MSEG can perform either duty if a more complex solution is required for the patch at hand.

My current vision for Zebralette 3 is very close to Zebralette 2.x, feature-wise. I do not want to expand too much, even if the oscillator and MSEG in Zebralette 3 is going to be vastly more powerful than those of its predecessor.

[Hanz Meyzer]

Surely that would be more than good enough and better workflow, too. But I kind of miss those little curve per ENV section controls, like seen even in the ancient Albino 3. This would make the workflow maybe more convenient and make those Zebra2 env modes obsolete:

Bildschirmfoto 2023-10-09 um 14.39.15.png

I like how this is solved simply with a key modifier on the same knob in Avenger (minus the doubled rotation then):

Bildschirmfoto 2023-10-09 um 14.42.07.png

But I think that Albino way does not hurt the gui and is visually very intuitive. Seen in so many synths...

[Urs]

It kind of depends on how the envelope works. I guess those are technically linear envelopes with some kind transform to create whatever shape on each stage. That's cool, but I do also see disadvantages over more classic designs which can achieve similar options (e.g. feedback modulation).

I've done a lot of research in this field, and I think I just don't what to commit to anything too specific just yet.

[jtsterays]

I agree with Hanz, sometime i just want to change the decay's curve abit without touching anything else, i dont want to pull up a whole MSEG just for that. And with the LFOs, if you're going for the simpler route, maybe add an option to edit the curves. So in its normal state, it looks like Hive's LFO, but then you can press a small button that pulls up the spline editor, to modify the curves or make new one, with the basic shapes (sine,tri,square...) on the left as stock presets so you could alway go back to it if you want.

[Urs]

I don't disagree on any of it. But I'm "in the zone" about oscillators and MSEGs right now, not envelopes and LFOs. There has been an alpha version of Zebra3 LFOs for little less than a decade, which I will need to revisit and reevaluate some time down the road. Maybe it holds, maybe it doesn't.

I don't think any meaningful work has been done on envelopes yet - but then, the only type of module we have more examples of than envelopes is filters. I'm not worried. I just don't think they're gonna be a complicated as those of their predecessors, simply because MSEGs will also be able to drive VCAs, and the new envelopes will be fully realtime modulatable.

[Shiek927]

Any news here about ETA of Zebralette 3? Will it be in 2023? IMHO priority should be Zebra3 only

Uhbik is in good hands, I'm focussing on Zebralette 3. Mostly completing the editor tool set atm, but the oscillator engine needs a lot of finishing. Haven't done anything in regards to LFO, env, FX. Will probably just reuse what we have, e.g. lift those off of Hive.

The plan is to show it during NAMM. Not sure if we'll be able to beta before that (x-mas?) or go beta around that time. We'll see.

I'm curious! I know that oscillators and filters are the meat-and-potatoes of a synth and what effectively give it it's character. How much is that the case with envelopes, LFO, FX, and so-on? are those really essential to building a synth or they can be reused from other synths like that? whether from Hive or built from the ground-up, it doesn't sound like it changes the final result much.

[Urs]

I'm curious! I know that oscillators and filters are the meat-and-potatoes of a synth and what effectively give it it's character. How much is that the case with envelopes, LFO, FX, and so-on? are those really essential to building a synth or they can be reused from other synths like that? whether from Hive or built from the ground-up, it doesn't sound like it changes the final result much.

If you believe some people on KVR, whole thesis papers can be written about the slope of decay stages. And if you ask someone in my company, that's especially true about the TB-303 envelope.

What I'm trying to say is, it's much less effort to create good or acceptable envelopes and LFOs than it is to create good oscillators or filters. I guess that's mostly because they are modulators and they don't "conduct" sound, they just influence oscillators, filters and amplifiers which do. However, it's still quite easy to mess up.

[pierb]

Now that we are on the topic of LFOs and MSEGs...

I'm not certain if we will be able to modulate/morph the shape of MSEGs like we can with OSCs. If not, at least it would be great if we could somehow modulate the shape of LFOs.

The other thing I've always wished is to have some kind of slew param on the MSEGs to prevent clicks with abrupt changes. To solve this, I move the nodes in the MSEG slightly but this is a bit of a pain with complex shapes because you can't select multiple nodes at the same time.

[Hanz Meyzer]

Here a suggestion for Zebra3 / Zebralette 3:

- Support for note panning, as shown in the Bitwig pianoroll
- Four custom controls, so A, B, C, D, which then also can be saved with the preset and not just globally (not sure if this is already the case)

Also couldn't Hive already support note panning?

Thanks for consideration

[nilhartman]

Wouldn’t mapping a key follower to pan achieve similar results ? Never tested the option you refer to, so thinking out loud here.

[robisme]

Will there be a possibility of navigate and tweak things with hardware controllers ? Not only to perform, but also to create patches. Like some kind of navigation betwen modules, then betwen knobs, enter menus and chose in the list, then tweak it, etc.