Zebralette 3.0 released (Revision 20399)

[Urs]

I'll spend some time on this. Unfortunately the mathematically inclined algorithm to select the best cycles has a few holes where this can take an infinite amount of time. I kind of have a hunch on how to improve that, but my priorities have been on more core technologies.

[lukalebanidze]

Hi Urs - congrats on the release! The work is impressive.

I know audio-input support is probably not a priority right now, and I also remember the reasons you mentioned in the past for why it might be excluded or postponed. This isn’t meant as pressure - just a curiosity check.

In an older beta thread you mentioned that, instead of a dedicated FX plug-in, audio input routed into the voice structure could potentially cover similar ground. I’ve always found Zebra’s resonators and comb filters especially inspiring on external audio. In the past my team of sound designers and I’ve relied a lot on Zebrify, and also on Objeq (essentially Chromaphone’s resonator extracted into a plug-in) for that kind of work.

I completely understand that, from a product and marketing perspective, it often makes more sense to package modules as dedicated effects. At the same time, for users who are very deep into Zebra, having access to audio input inside the full modulation and routing ecosystem opens up some uniquely powerful possibilities for building complex systems.

So I mainly wanted to ask - with full understanding of the constraints whether audio input is still something you consider potentially planned at some point, or if it’s effectively off the table. Thanks again for all the work that’s gone into this release.

[Urs]

Audio Input is still on the table, but we need to do this later down the road.

Zebrify is not going away though. We're gonna keep it up to date for many years to come.

[joradn]

I know the manual says morph vectors can cause dramatic transitions, but why does it jump so suddenly? I cannot really comprehend what's happening. Transition is set to closest x & y.

[Urs]

You can click and drag the waveform to see the transition. What certainly happens here is that points "overtake" each other, and that creates sudden jumps. In Closest XY things can go really wild that way.

[Urs]

You can see that the cyan coloured lines cross each other. When that happens, points cross each other from left to right.

[Urs]

Here's me dragging between the morphed curves, which then shows the transition:



(no audio)

You can clearly see that points change order, and that causes sudden jumps in the shape.

Good for loads of nice glitches and happy accidents.

[joradn]

Oh yes that makes a lot of sense watching it transition, thanks!

[Crazy_Vale]

Hallo Urs,
besides all my compliments for the excellent work you're doing, I've a question about save/recall/managing of MSEG's and OSC's.
In Zebralette 2 there used to be a "Presets" button in order to open a window with all saved MSEG's or OSC's. Easy and clean.
In Zebralette 3 that's gone. It seems we have now to click on "MSEG" on the main GUI to open a drop-down list with the following options: "Copy/Paste/Save MSEG settings/Show in Explorer". Same thing for OSC's.

Ok, we're still able to save MSEG's and OSC's... but not anymore by a clean dedicated window. Instead we've to manage the saved MESG's and OSC's from Explorer.
Moreover, recalling saved MSEG's and OSC's from their own editors is a really messy thing. It seems to me I'm just able to cycle the saved presets using the tiny "previous/next curve" arrows. That's a nightmare if you have many saved MSEG's and OSC's, even more if you have them organized in sub-folders.
Unless I'm missing something I'm a kind of disappointed because that's a bit user unfriendly (while it used to be brilliant). I fear you'll implement the same thing into Zebra 3 and I'm crossing fingers hoping that's not the case.

Many thanks and always thumbs up for your great job.

[Urs]

I think the browsers will come back as soon as we have some content to browse... maybe in 3.1?

[Crazy_Vale]

Thank you! I should have imagined that (because we all know you improve features, you don't ruin them).
My thumbs are always up for you!
Good work and have a nice day.

[atticmike]

Is Zebralete it's own release? It won't be part of the Zebra 3 installation later on?

[Urs]

Is Zebralete it's own release? It won't be part of the Zebra 3 installation later on?

It's its own thing. Separate installers and such.

[icaria36]

Hi, new Zebralette user (on Linux, thank you very much!) and still learning the basics. I have a question about the assignable MIDI controls. The documentation mentions two controls: Control A and Control B. However, the Preferences, the "Per instance control" page, the Matrix, OSC FXs, LFOs... also feature Control C and Control D. And yet, the presets in rev 20399 use only A and B at most, so maybe there is a limitation somewhere else. Does Zebralette offer 2 or 4 assignable MIDI controls?

[sQeetz]

Zebralette offers 4 MIDI CC controls: CC 2, CC11, CC75, CC76 by default. If Control C & D aren't used as much, it definitely isn't because of a lack of support