Zebra 3 Public Beta Revision 20399

[chaosmeister]

I bought Zebra 3 on beta as I was looking for a do-it-all sound design synth, and it seems like it can really deliver on much of that which is great. I do have some issues with the UX though, which I hope that there may be some time to address while still in beta:
[…]
I understand that it's still in development and much may still be subject to change, but I wonder if other people feel similarly about some of these points.[…]

Agreed on practically all counts. Wonderful synth, sounds great, having massive fun, have some (too long ago) memory of Z2 workings to get the basic gist of what goes where, but indeed figuring out what modulates what, which value goes where, and why the mod matrix shows some stuff but not all of it (and takes up lots of space for little practical info)… all that indeed at times makes you feel you drive into a concrete wall. Headaches, that is.

And GUI wise: it would be nice if, apart from scaling (zooming) into the interface you could also drag the window to a bigger size so that it can contain (vertically at least) more modules -- and in an ideal world, horizontally widening the window would open up a 3rd column, for either (left) sound sources or (right) modulators. That way on a 4K monitor (of which I have 2) you could set the interface to 140%, *and* stretch out the window to full monitor-size to show more content than the default view.

[Ah_Dziz]

Bring on the audio input/ fx version. I'd be perfectly happy with the existing envelope follower, pitch tracking, etc code from zebrify if it's useable.

[Kyunghee]

Bring on the audio input/ fx version. I'd be perfectly happy with the existing envelope follower, pitch tracking, etc code from zebrify if it's useable.

A simple envelope follower with audio In would be really cool (since Pigments added it I've been using that feature a lot).

[spektralisk]

Here’s my feedback.

Sound-wise: perfect. The oscillator is ultra-powerful. Filters, FM, and Modal all sound amazing. I also really love the texture reverb.

The only real issue for me is the modulation workflow. Deciphering even my own work after some time becomes a burden.

I’ve always liked how the modulation system was handled in Alchemy.

• You click a control and immediately see which modulators are assigned to it

• You can right-click a control and see options such as: add modulation, clear modulation, copy/paste modulation (this is, in my experience, the fastest way to assign modulators—much faster than dragging from a modulator or searching in a matrix)

• You can select a modulator and click “Show mod targets,” which lists all assigned targets

• Modulation visualization via an animated dot showing the current modulation value

I think these ideas could translate well to Zebra 3.

• Clicking any control that accepts modulation could show currently assigned modulators in the bottom-right pane, with the control itself slightly highlighted

• Right-clicking any control could show a menu to assign modulators, grouped by modulation type

• Copy/paste modulation would be a very handy feature and highly welcome

• Right-clicking the modulator dot (the one used to drag to a target) currently shows “Remove Modulation”; it could also show “Select Modulation,” with a list of currently assigned targets. Selecting one would highlight that control and show all modulators affecting it in the bottom-right pane

• Modulation visualization would be very useful: a small dot on the modulation arc around knobs showing the current modulation value. I’ve always found this extremely helpful for debugging patches

Some additional issues I noticed:

• The modulation arc is always unipolar; it should follow the polarity of the modulator. For example, if an LFO is set to bipolar, all arcs displayed for that LFO should also be bipolar

• Selectors for direct modulation on modules show one large flat list. These modulators should be grouped by type, in the same way the targets are in the modulation matrix—those long flat lists are mentally tiring

And finally, please add Sonic Conditioner and Velvet from Repro-5

+1 for Envelope Follower (should present couple of points in signal to tap into)

[jrgillam]

Congratulations on the beta! It's great to finally have this synth installed on my system.

A couple little early thoughts...

I'd love it if the reverbs had stereo inputs to preserve imaging done in the generators section when the reverb is set to 100% wet (for widescreen pads and so forth).

I'd also love to not have limits on the number of modules used, but I imagine you have your reasons for doing it this way (automation?). Just feels like a bit of an arbitrary limit in 2026.

Looking forward to seeing how it all develops!

[Ah_Dziz]

Bring on the audio input/ fx version. I'd be perfectly happy with the existing envelope follower, pitch tracking, etc code from zebrify if it's useable.

A simple envelope follower with audio In would be really cool (since Pigments added it I've been using that feature a lot).

Zebra 2/ legacy has a separate "zebrify" FX plugin. It's great and I use it all the time. It's taken over for vcv and reaktor for most of my modular fx needs. I'm not sure if anyone else really uses it often though. I don't hear many folks here mention it often. I'd love to have all the new DSP and modulation for processing random audio. I'd be fine without them coding new pitch / transient detection and envelope followers if it meant o could process audio sooner.

[0degree]

Bring on the audio input/ fx version. I'd be perfectly happy with the existing envelope follower, pitch tracking, etc code from zebrify if it's useable.

A simple envelope follower with audio In would be really cool (since Pigments added it I've been using that feature a lot).

Zebra 2/ legacy has a separate "zebrify" FX plugin. It's great and I use it all the time. It's taken over for vcv and reaktor for most of my modular fx needs. I'm not sure if anyone else really uses it often though. I don't hear many folks here mention it often. I'd love to have all the new DSP and modulation for processing random audio. I'd be fine without them coding new pitch / transient detection and envelope followers if it meant o could process audio sooner.

Definitely +1 vote for Zebrify 3

[dmw9400]

Congrats to Urs and the team, really amazing work here. I'm especially loving the modal and fmo modules. The different FM modes and era modeling sound exceptional, and I'm getting FM tones that I've never quite heard anywhere else, even with relatively simple settings. A really great balance of flexibility and character.

One small bug I've noticed: when adding modulation depths in the mod matrix as parameters in Ableton Live, each mod depth parameter name displays as "Depth #1", even if it's modulation 2, 3, etc.

[plugmon]

- Creating a group with only one module (exp.: right click and create group)

[...]

- Improving the browser view:
Increasing the letter size of presets in the browser. Depending on which display size you have, it gets really hard to read the presets and folders. It would be great if you can decide which letter size you want to have in the preset browser in % similar to plugin size.

+1 to these.

In fact, in some of my patches I added slight EQ that had almost no audible effect, simply to create a group.
(If creating a group with a single module is implemented, having the [+] button permanently visible in the module grid header could become visually distracting. So limiting group creation to the right-click context menu sounds like the best solution to keep the UI clean.)
The grouping feature is a great way to communicate what each module does. Ideally, I’d like every module to belong to some group in my patches.

Regarding the browser font — slightly off topic, but it’s a bit unfortunate that in the skin script "_PresetManagerView" stopped responding to the "Font Size" property at some point.
In the past, I could tell users “If you want to change the font size, tweak this,” but now it no longer works…

[Supersensory]

@Supersensory thank you, that's great feedback!

I'll just quickly say that we can probably do some of these things, like right-click-assignments.

I do have my (stubborn?) belief that "nervous balls in orbit of knobs" as visual feedback are the wrong way to go about things. Here's why: Slow moving balls don't say anything, and neither do fast moving balls, as they just turn into a blur. The window of accuracy IMHO is very small, like, maybe for medium decay times or such. Their main purpose is to seek attention, and the fast things always win, as if they were the most important ones.

We have a killer alternative though. Maybe give it a try, and let us know what you think once you work with it. Our Scope can show up to 4 modulations in parallel, including ModMatrix Slots with modifiers. You can freeze it, you can zoom in on almost sample level. So you can, say, hit a note, freeze and trace exactly what's happening on the onset. This thing has proven invaluable for many people in Hive, in order to get a great picture of what's happening with certain modulations.

(ok, there's a bug that makes envelopes appear steppy... they are not and we'll fix it)

We're also working on a project to display all modulation paths. Like, an alternative view on the patch focussed on the modulation setup rather than the audio signal path. But this project is ongoing and might not make it into the initial release of Z3.

Another word on visual modulation feedback: It uses a lot of extra CPU for the UI. We have another project going to bring UI performance down on Windows. We're not doing hardware acceleration there, yet. But maybe by end of next year we will. And then I'm happy to revisit the subject, even if only for a skin that makes Zebra 3 more familiar for Serum users.

The mod matrix is also super messy - there's no ordering of modules

You can order by index, source or target.

Thanks for your detailed response! Right click assignments would be a massive update.

I tried out the things you have suggested, and have a couple of additional thoughts:

• The scope is definitely a cool addition, and can help with more detailed analysis. However it doesn't address the issue of immediacy, as you're looking at a curve without any y-axis values in a different window. Thank you to the person who let me know that parameter values appear up at the top while adjusting them - It's a similar thing there though, where you need to look away from what you're adjusting or hovering to see what's happening, rather than having a small text popup by the cursor. I'm not really much of a Serum user, as in the past I've mostly used Phaseplant and Pigments, which as still very visual synths to be fair, so I guess I'm used to that. I suppose my thoughts are simply that there's so much power and detail on tap, but the lack of certain quality of life UX features create a disconnect with the user. It's like you can go as deep as you like, but the basics are awkward.

• Having some kind of modulation view would be awesome, and I look forward to seeing the direction you go. I'm not saying that having the "nervous balls" for knobs is necessarily the best visualization for the main screen though, just that having no replacement for them is a bit opaque. As another user mentioned, perhaps having the modulation movements appear on hovering a parameter would be a good compromise, with some kind of persistent highlight on modulated parameters to guide the user's actions on the main window.

• Ordering the modulation modules definitely helps some, thanks for the tip. Do you think there is any possibility of updating the modules themselves though, or extending them to make them more readable/powerful? If they were grouped would it be possible to collapse them down to save space? With enough modules you have to scroll quite a bit. One last suggestion would be to push the most common sources like LFOs/Envelopes/ModWheel to the left side when sorting by source, be able to pin mod sources, or even colour code them by source.

Thanks again for being so open to feedback

[atmelcool]

If it's not too long or too complicated, I'd like to see this list broken down by device category. Delay near reverb, etc., I'd like to organize the list. If that's not possible, so be it. That's not the point. The main thing is that the Zebra 3 has excellent features and great sound! I already like it more than the Zebra 2, but the Zebra 2 will always be on hand.

[limitlesssss]

Shouldn't drop-down menus and lists like the one above follow Zebra 3's color scheme? White menus (when the plug-in itself is not white) feel kind of jarring and very disconnected.

Kind of reminds of Cubase with its still old-style menus, even though the whole software has been visually modernized.

[sunthief01]

I know that it's not an easy task to display all modulations clearly, and I still haven't found or seen a perfect solution. I really like how this is handled in Vital or Razor. If the knobs simply moved according to internal modulation, that would already be more than sufficient. I would really love to see something like this implemented.

So how would you control a knob when it is moving because of a modulator (LFO for instance)? That would be aweful.

Good point. Then let the ring around the knob reflect the modulation (and for faders, a bar instead of a ring).

This sounds somewhat similar to how Massive X displays a parameter being modulated from multiple sources, personally I really like how that looks and doesn't require a matrix view -

I'm not really bothered having two parallel modulation assigbment processes yet but we'll see as I get seeper

[Fannon]

Just a small idea: For getting an overview what happens in a patch, it could help a little if those modules / mod sources are "greyed out" in the bottom area of the synth. E.g. if there's only OSC1, grey out the other 3. With the mod sources, same - but you can still drag them out, then they become active. This would help with getting a better overview what's -active- in the current patch.

And I also agree with many people here in this thread, it's tricky to get an overview what's modulated and how. Maybe on thought here, too: Reserve and use a particular color (maybe violet?) for everything that is modulation. The direct slots where modulation can be added, a future "modulation indicator" and then the mod matrix blocks. Btw. I like the idea to put them not just in the "Matrix" tab, but also context-dependent into OSC, MSEG and Mappers. I've seen that Urs is working on a visualization of how modulations affect each other, maybe this could go together with a "full upper view" of getting a summary of ALL modulations. Maybe in the future, having a mod remap curve per modulation there, too. This could save up the mod-mappers for other purposes.

[hihat]

"I upgraded to Zebra 3, but it's not possible to play Zebra 2 presets on version 3. I moved all version 2 presets into the version 3 preset folder, but they sound all the same . "
Is it normal or just not possible ? thanks