u-he at NAMM 25

[Urs]

If Zebra 3 will be anything like Zebra 2, many of the sounds will sound just like acoustic samples, but less static.

The Texture effect might also become a stand alone at some point, as the feature set in Zebra is what suits Zebra, and a stand alone effect could present more parameters and use cases.

[buffalo roam]

Congrats on pulling together an alpha for NAMM! Looks fascinating.

My only nudge is, Will there be a 32-step note-adjustable sequencer added? I love the one in Zebra Legacy, but it needs more steps!

Like many things in Zebra 3 we don't just want to use any of our existing solutions - even if they were originally designed with Zebra 3 in mind, such as Hive's combo of Arpeggiator and Step Sequencer.

About those things in particular, something interesting happened when I went into modular synthesis. I hardly ever used traditional step sequencers. Instead, I preferred independent sources for clock, trigger and voltage sequencer. This made me question the classic approach in software synthesisers, and thus what we already have.

In addition, as a result of Uhbik development, ModMappers have optionally become sequencers. This is absolutely great fun in Zebra 3, triggering a ModMapper and an envelope by an LFO, running the ModMapper through a quantiser and sequencing polyphonic per voice.

So we still want to do a dedicated kind of sequencer. This might again get its own tab, either at the bottom like in Z2 or global like Repro-1. This sequencer needs to however integrate with the new trigger options and polyphonic sequencing options within Zebra 3's voice architecture.

Therefore, instead of hastily adding "the usual", we'll wait it out and add it at a later date, possibly somewhere around 3.1 or 3.2, but I usually decide these things once prior milestones are reached.

Thanks so much for your thoughtful reply! I'll be very curious to try the "ModMappers" and other sources for sequencing. The capability of polyphonic sequencing per voice sounds especially intriguing. If you could eventually add "the usual" sequencer as well, this old-school user would be happy to see that if the other approaches don't allow for changing the duration and pitches of individual notes. I wish you the best!

[machinesworking]

As for sampling and stuff, my stance has not changed - Zebra is a synthesiser, not a sample playback machine. But there is a granular texture synthesiser in the effects section, something akin to Clouds by Mutable Instruments or Arbhar by Instruo in Eurorack. It is a slightly different concept than these as there are different possibilities within Zebra.

I’m guessing the general consensus among end users to be like mine, I would love to see the U-Haul take on hybrids like Falcon or Pigments, but realistically owning both it’s not like I need Zebra to do those tings.

[justin3am]

Exciting!

[kodnin]

Congrats on the progress, exciting!

Can you talk a bit more about the on board audio effects? Will they be new? How many will be there? What kinds? Will all of them be modern, like Hive, or will some also be more vintage, like Repro?

[EvilDragon]

Yes there are new effects. Texture verb is amazing.

[Fannon]

We'll try to release a new Zebralette 3 soon, possibly something close to a release version.

So we'll get Zebralette 3 update, then some Zebra 3 beta and then GA? When you mentioned hopefully a release this year, did you refer to a stable release or did you mean the beta?

Will Zebralette 3 be bundled together with Zebra 3 (same plugin) like with Zebra 2?

[egbert]

Yes there are new effects. Texture verb is amazing.

Any further info on that reverb? Is it part of another package?

[Urs]

We'll try to release a new Zebralette 3 soon, possibly something close to a release version.

So we'll get Zebralette 3 update, then some Zebra 3 beta and then GA? When you mentioned hopefully a release this year, did you refer to a stable release or did you mean the beta?

Will Zebralette 3 be bundled together with Zebra 3 (same plugin) like with Zebra 2?

They won't be bundled this time.

By "this year" I'm hoping for a 3.0, not just an alpha or beta.

[Fannon]

Great to hear! I would also prefer if Zebralette 3 is not bundled with Zebra 3.

In general, what you (Urs) explain in this thread sounds really promising. Although its looks much like Zebra 2 on first glance, there's a lot of innovative and new ideas in there, which will set Zebra 3 apart from so many other modern synths (which are usually very similar). Can't wait to try out on my own when the beta drops

[Urs]

Yeah, I think we had long enough time to think of something original here and there

[bmanic]

This looks super promising! I may have to purchase my first Zebra this year.

Any chance of getting a polyphonic EQ module at some point that could be key tracked? It's one of those rare beasts that only Camel Audio Alchemy seems to have.. and it's so damn useful for fine tuning a preset to be "perfect". What about some kind of modulation mapping where we could customize velocity/key tracking curve & range?

[EvilDragon]

Of course there's modmappers. Z2 had them too...

Z2 also had polyphonic EQs (the VCF module had EQ Peaking, EQ Low Shelf, EQ High Shelf. Would be definitely nice to have them in Z3 too (they are not in there yet).

[bmanic]

Ah I mean an "extra" EQ, not one that steals a filter slot. That we have in other synths too. A single band would be enough as long as it can do frequency, width and bipolar gain.

But yeah, glad to hear about the mod mappers! It's like at least 5 years since I tried Zebra 2 demo so I don't really remember much about it's capabilities.

[Urs]

Yeah, I'm sure there'll be EQing per voice. This is the least rocket science though, and while we work on UI features we need the smallest number of modules possible (otherwise reorganising the UI becomes very tedious). So we only have modules currently that take a lot of R&D effort, which we absolutely need to work on.