Zebra3 Info

[EvilDragon]

Are people okay with such large preset files? I was considering to limit the number of keyframes, but if 4 oscillators x 256 waves x 2048 samples is okay nowadays... that would be up to 8 MB of samples per preset, and thus also at least each that per instance, plus whatever it takes anyway...

Data compression?

[Urs]

Does Serum have curve based wavetables at all? I mean, other than sample based ones..?

I know of at least one other synth that supports the serum wavetable format: eXpanse Hyperwave RE. Does this mean it's becoming a de facto standard or not is another matter.

It's a plain .wav file. Maybe there's more embedded, but from what I can see, if you legally obtain a .wav file you can load it into any application which opens .wav files. Likewise, if you have the copyright for a .wav file (like, probably not for Serum wavetables from the factory library or third part libs), you can open it in any such application, save it in the application's own document format and distribute it.

Saying: While it's tempting to support .wav files such as Serum's wavetable format, it might open a gazillion cans of worms.

Anyhow, I'm currently working on a curve based editor. Bezier splines and stuff. A lot of stuff going on with very little memory footprint.

[EvilDragon]

Anyhow, I'm currently working on a curve based editor. Bezier splines and stuff. A lot of stuff going on with very little memory footprint.

That sounds great

[MorpherX]

Q: Does Serum save wavetables with presets? Or does none need to install the wavetables used in presets? From YT videos it looks like they are plain .wav files. Which might make an import function desirable maybe...?

Wavetables are embedded.

They are .wavs with 2048 samples per single cycle with up to 256 frames. Any 3rd party wavetables have to be converted to this format.

Sorry, but you are completely wrong !

1. Wavetables can be embedded or not !
You can change this in a text file. I have many thousands of wavetables and single cycles for Serum and these are all not embedded.
2. The size of the single cycles and wavetables can have any size up to 2048 samples for single cycles and up to 256 single cycles per wavetables.
The size of single cycles is decided when importing a single cycle or .wav file in the import options or the value you give in in the wavetable editor.

I would say you have never used this wonderfull VSTi correct and telling here nonsense.

[lnikj]

Q: Does Serum save wavetables with presets? Or does none need to install the wavetables used in presets? From YT videos it looks like they are plain .wav files. Which might make an import function desirable maybe...?

Wavetables are embedded.

They are .wavs with 2048 samples per single cycle with up to 256 frames. Any 3rd party wavetables have to be converted to this format.

Sorry, but you are completely wrong !

1. Wavetables can be embedded or not !
You can change this in a text file. I have many thousands of wavetables and single cycles for Serum and these are all not embedded.
2. The size of the single cycles and wavetables can have any size up to 2048 samples for single cycles and up to 256 single cycles per wavetables.
The size of single cycles is decided when importing a single cycle or .wav file in the import options or the value you give in in the wavetable editor.

I would say you have never used this wonderfull VSTi correct and telling here nonsense.

Apart from the fact that you have overridden the configuration which bit it is wrong?

From the manual:

"NOTE: Serum will always save the changes you have made to a wavetable data inside a preset (your song) unless it is a Factory wavetable. While this uses hard disk space (how much size depends on how many frames you use in the Wavetables, from 8k to 4 Megabytes) the benefit is that you can exchange presets with others, or open your song in the future, without having to worry about table file management. so there is no need to save wavetables unless you want your wavetable to appear in the Wavetable Menu.

This increases the size of both the presets and the projects containing them. There is a setting in Serum.cfg that you can change in order to disable saving the tables as parts of the presets, but that is not advisable."

[freddo]

It's still a work in progress. Be patient.

Zebra 3 still W.I.P? The original post was 5 years ago!

[MorpherX]

Q: Does Serum save wavetables with presets? Or does none need to install the wavetables used in presets? From YT videos it looks like they are plain .wav files. Which might make an import function desirable maybe...?

Wavetables are embedded.

They are .wavs with 2048 samples per single cycle with up to 256 frames. Any 3rd party wavetables have to be converted to this format.

Sorry, but you are completely wrong !

1. Wavetables can be embedded or not !
You can change this in a text file. I have many thousands of wavetables and single cycles for Serum and these are all not embedded.
2. The size of the single cycles and wavetables can have any size up to 2048 samples for single cycles and up to 256 single cycles per wavetables.
The size of single cycles is decided when importing a single cycle or .wav file in the import options or the value you give in in the wavetable editor.

I would say you have never used this wonderfull VSTi correct and telling here nonsense.

Apart from the fact that you have overridden the configuration which bit it is wrong?

From the manual:

"NOTE: Serum will always save the changes you have made to a wavetable data inside a preset (your song) unless it is a Factory wavetable. While this uses hard disk space (how much size depends on how many frames you use in the Wavetables, from 8k to 4 Megabytes) the benefit is that you can exchange presets with others, or open your song in the future, without having to worry about table file management. so there is no need to save wavetables unless you want your wavetable to appear in the Wavetable Menu.

This increases the size of both the presets and the projects containing them. There is a setting in Serum.cfg that you can change in order to disable saving the tables as parts of the presets, but that is not advisable."

Your first post was wrong !

Wavetables have not to be embedded and its a totall waste of disk space to save presets with wavetables.
Saving wavetables within presets is a suggestion from the dev, not more and there is nothing wrong when saving presets without wavetables but also correct and there is also no explanation why it should be advisable to save it with presets, its a personal opinion of the writer.
Give up working with this synth you don't understand it, you even don't understand how to import or resynthesize !

[lnikj]

Thanks for your kind advice.

[hakey]

This will be too geeky, but I'd really like to see a some way of deriving wavetables from mathematical functions.

Drawing curves in an editor has its advantages - simplicity, mostly - but algorithmic generation seems more likely to produce wavetables that are complex, interesting and useful.

[SLiC]

This will be too geeky, but I'd really like to see a some way of deriving wavetables from mathematical functions.

Drawing curves in an editor has its advantages - simplicity, mostly - but algorithmic generation seems more likely to produce wavetables that are complex, interesting and useful.

Serum does this very well as a point of reference.

[Urs]

Serum does this very well as a point of reference.

*sigh*

I've given up. Buying Serum just to read the manual. Might even try it. Hope it's worth looking into.

[ErikH]

Stop trying to please every rooster in this chicken shack and do your own thing. Those who know better can do their own coding, start their own company and run it.
Bloody hell!
You might have invited your entire crew to go and eat sushi.

[Urs]

Stop trying to please every rooster in this chicken shack and do your own thing. Those who know better can do their own coding, start their own company and run it.
Bloody hell!
You might have invited your entire crew to go and eat sushi.

No worries. Serum has a really well thought out editor section, but it simply renders the wavetables into, well, static wavetables. The realtime processing after that is very basic, mostly some phase and value mangling stuff - nothing like Zebra's Osc FX. That's cool for what it is, but it isn't my cup of tea. The transitions between individual tables sound kinda switch-and-go to me, so it easily gets steppy even with 256 tables. I watched a few Youtube videos about the editor and the main topic / time spent in almost each is about how to make the transitions smooth. It's Serum's archilles heel.

Zebra's approach is very different. Which doesn't mean it couldn't benefit from better editing tools. For which I think I prefer selection based editing over Serum's grid-based method.

[hakey]

This will be too geeky, but I'd really like to see a some way of deriving wavetables from mathematical functions.

Serum does this very well as a point of reference.

It's a nice editor, but it's a fixed menu of algorithms. There's no way of generating a waveform from an arbitrary function, which is what I would like to do. As I say, it's super geeky idea, and I'm not holding out much hope for it.

(In my experience, drawing waveforms isn't a productive way to discover interesting timbres.)

[Simon-Claudius]

This will be too geeky, but I'd really like to see a some way of deriving wavetables from mathematical functions.

Drawing curves in an editor has its advantages - simplicity, mostly - but algorithmic generation seems more likely to produce wavetables that are complex, interesting and useful.

Serum does this very well as a point of reference.

+1

I don't use Serum myself but saw this in a video the other day and meant to suggest it for Zebra 3. Pretty neat feature if you ask me.