Zebra 3 Public Beta (final beta)

[jtsterays]

Questuon: can we slew/bend envelope curves?

Yes, using the Feedback modifier or having the new modulate itself.

We might add some kind of slope control. Not sure yet.

If you do it though, please dont make it global for the whole env but keep it separate for the A,D & R.

[jtsterays]

Chuck it in the performance meter, seems appropriate.

Yep, very good idea.

It ended up in the FX section because it was effortless to put it there, when it was meant to be a temporary module to debug things. Then we added the performance meter, giving it new purpose, but we didn't think as far as to simply put it elsewhere

On the topic of performance meter, after the meter gave it's suggestions, could you make it so we can just click on a suggestion text and have Z3 apply it automatically? Would save a bit of time.

[exmatproton]

I for one love the limitations.

Well you know the old saying.... Simple Things Amuse Simple Minds....

Ah yes. Adding an Arp to a synth because you can't think of other means to do awesome stuff with a synth makes me a simple mind..

[swilow11]

Questuon: can we slew/bend envelope curves?

Yes, using the Feedback modifier or having the new modulate itself.

We might add some kind of slope control. Not sure yet.

Another questjon: Zebralette 3 has the ability to disable/enable drift- is this possible in Zebra 3?

Zebra 3 has Calibration in the Pitches modules instead. More control.

Eh another question: what is the logic which governs how the pitches modules are assigned? Can I reassign them?

Any module that takes pitch information (Oscillators, FMOs, Modal Resonators, filters etc...) has a drop down where you can assign one. By default all modules take Pitch from Pitch 1, and all other Pitch modules inherit their setting from Pitch 1 too.

One can do crazy good things with this, from very vibrant and alive oscillator detuning patterns to live playable arpeggios.

Oh lovely. Thanks for that. I actually did play with the calibration stuff last night, not sure how I missed its actual function. Curious- what other parameters are being calibrated here? Obviously slight pitch stuff, but can we extend that out to some of the parameters that Serum 2 allows voice modification of (eg cutoff, pan, envelope, etc)?

And nice, I see the drop down menu now.

This synth is amazing and not finding it too cpu killing yet. I'm sure a million people have asked, but any idea of when out of beta? And how long intro pricing? I'm going to purchase for sure but Xmas is an expensive time of year so hoping that price lingers for a while longer.

[wagtunes]

Am I crazy or are there things that were in Zebra 2 that aren't in Zebra 3? Because I just pulled up Zebra 2 today because there was a particular patch that I wanted to use for a song and I didn't want to have to recreate it in Zebra 3. That's when I noticed that there is indeed an ARP in Zebra 2 that is gone from Zebra 3. I completely forgot about it. Is there a reason it was taken out?

[EvilDragon]

Correct, some things from Z2 are not in Z3.

[Touch The Universe]

I believe I recall something about there being wavetable support and importing .uhm files, but I don’t see the ability to do that yet. And if you can’t import your own, is it even technically wavetable synthesis? All I see are basically the standard analog-style tables, which we can modify using formulas and effects, so we can simulate complex wavetables.

Normally, the way I would operate is this: I’d stream a pluck sound, generate a wavetable from that, and then recreate the sound using envelopes. But if I can’t import wavetables, I need to operate differently. So how can I simulate a pluck sound starting from a standard saw oscillator using mathematics? That’s the tricky part—but also potentially interesting.

If I can figure out how to mimic the attack of a plucky sound within the wavetable itself, using oscillator effects, then I can still shape it further with an envelope. But there’s no wavetable scanning—no going back and forth through frames. It’s more like static modification rather than time-based traversal.

So there’s no inherent linear time dimension within the wavetable the way Zebra generates or modifies them. It’s an entirely different mode of performance. Is that correct?

So there’s no inherent linear time dimension within the wavetable the way Zebra generates or modifies them. It’s an entirely different mode of performance, where the wavetable defines a static spectral identity rather than a time-evolving event, and all temporal behavior is imposed externally through envelopes, MSEGs, and modulators rather than being embedded in the table itself.

A wavetable in Zebra is not a time-evolving object like:

attack → transient → decay → sustain → noise tail

Of course, I can add the attack transient to the sustain myself with envelopes, yet often with scannable wavetables you can essentially clone the envelopes and filters of other kinds of synths inside the wavetable itself. I guess it’s just a different way of handling things.

[EvilDragon]

Of course there's wavetable (err, curve table) scanning, that's the Curve Morph parameter.

[Touch The Universe]

Of course there's wavetable (err, curve table) scanning, that's the Curve Morph parameter.

Can you impose an attack transient and decay within the wavetable SEED itself, and then use a curve to scan through it to mimic a pluck? That’s just a totally different way of thinking about sound design.

I know the Exciter can generate a pretty satisfying transient impulse, but I wish there was more ways to kind of modify that but maybe I just need more time to explore that.

[EvilDragon]

Sure, you can make whatever curves you want that mimic a transient of sorts. You can drag and drop a sample and it will convert to curves as close as it can.

[Touch The Universe]

Sure, you can make whatever curves you want that mimic a transient of sorts. You can drag and drop a sample and it will convert to curves as close as it can.

Wait... what That is exactly what I'm after. Is there a manual out or videos that cover these features recently? It'd be nice to have one video that covers the overview of all these features without going into depth in them.

[swilow11]

I believe I recall something about there being wavetable support and importing .uhm files, but I don’t see the ability to do that yet. And if you can’t import your own, is it even technically wavetable synthesis? All I see are basically the standard analog-style tables, which we can modify using formulas and effects, so we can simulate complex wavetables.

Normally, the way I would operate is this: I’d stream a pluck sound, generate a wavetable from that, and then recreate the sound using envelopes. But if I can’t import wavetables, I need to operate differently. So how can I simulate a pluck sound starting from a standard saw oscillator using mathematics? That’s the tricky part—but also potentially interesting.

If I can figure out how to mimic the attack of a plucky sound within the wavetable itself, using oscillator effects, then I can still shape it further with an envelope. But there’s no wavetable scanning—no going back and forth through frames. It’s more like static modification rather than time-based traversal.

So there’s no inherent linear time dimension within the wavetable the way Zebra generates or modifies them. It’s an entirely different mode of performance. Is that correct?

So there’s no inherent linear time dimension within the wavetable the way Zebra generates or modifies them. It’s an entirely different mode of performance, where the wavetable defines a static spectral identity rather than a time-evolving event, and all temporal behavior is imposed externally through envelopes, MSEGs, and modulators rather than being embedded in the table itself.

A wavetable in Zebra is not a time-evolving object like:

attack → transient → decay → sustain → noise tail

Of course, I can add the attack transient to the sustain myself with envelopes, yet often with scannable wavetables you can essentially clone the envelopes and filters of other kinds of synths inside the wavetable itself. I guess it’s just a different way of handling things.

You can drop wavetables in and also scan using the curve parameter. As to plucks, use the spectral decay oscillator effect which sounds beautiful and no need for a filter. Use the guide curves and assign them to spectral decay which will give you very granular control over the decay curve.

You can do all the things you're mentioning by the way. Have a play with changing the wavetable editor so its in time mode. You can create a bunch of different frames, array them along the...whatever the top part is called and Morph between them. Even better, although complex and I don't quite get it, you can determine how the wavetable morphs between frames.

These aren't typical wavetables because the geometry is spline based as opposed to FFT I guess.

Look up Marula Music on YouTube, specially his video about Zebralette 3. It is super informative and basically a must watch because there are a lot of functions that aren't going to explain themselves easily.

I basically use the synth in additive mode and array the editor window so it's basically the audio spectrum from right to left. You can build your own custom resonant filters. Be aware that this can get extremely loud. A limiter is essential here. Maybe Zebralette could do with a built in spectral limiter or spectral clipper like Razor has.

[EvilDragon]

Let them finish the code first then there will be videos. Preliminary manual is under the u-he logo...

[swilow11]

Sure, you can make whatever curves you want that mimic a transient of sorts. You can drag and drop a sample and it will convert to curves as close as it can.

Wait... what That is exactly what I'm after. Is there a manual out or videos that cover these features recently? It'd be nice to have one video that covers the overview of all these features without going into depth in them.

Essential viewing.

It only covers the oscillator but seriously opened Zebralette 3 up for me. Now we have 4x the power.

[kraster]

Questuon: can we slew/bend envelope curves?

Yes, using the Feedback modifier or having the new modulate itself.

We might add some kind of slope control. Not sure yet.

Another questjon: Zebralette 3 has the ability to disable/enable drift- is this possible in Zebra 3?

Zebra 3 has Calibration in the Pitches modules instead. More control.

Eh another question: what is the logic which governs how the pitches modules are assigned? Can I reassign them?

Any module that takes pitch information (Oscillators, FMOs, Modal Resonators, filters etc...) has a drop down where you can assign one. By default all modules take Pitch from Pitch 1, and all other Pitch modules inherit their setting from Pitch 1 too.

One can do crazy good things with this, from very vibrant and alive oscillator detuning patterns to live playable arpeggios.

Oh lovely. Thanks for that. I actually did play with the calibration stuff last night, not sure how I missed its actual function. Curious- what other parameters are being calibrated here? Obviously slight pitch stuff, but can we extend that out to some of the parameters that Serum 2 allows voice modification of (eg cutoff, pan, envelope, etc)?

And nice, I see the drop down menu now.

This synth is amazing and not finding it too cpu killing yet. I'm sure a million people have asked, but any idea of when out of beta? And how long intro pricing? I'm going to purchase for sure but Xmas is an expensive time of year so hoping that price lingers for a while longer.

Whatever you set in one of the pitch modules can be applied to filter cutoff by selecting the pitch module in the filter window and turning up the key track parameter.

Great for pitch bend or tuning a self oscillating filter.

One of my favourtite uses for the pitch modules is to use different glide settings on different oscillators