Zebra 3 feature suggestions

[Urs]

Creeping up on three years since this thread was started.....

Tell me about it. People have been asking for Zebra3 long before Zebra2 was officially released. There are mentions from 2005, which is seven years before we felt pressed to actually acknowledge the idea, and another ten years before we have the slightest chance to release it

[Teksonik]

So probably a bad time to ask for Zebra 4 then.......

[Urs]

It's bound to happen

[EvilDragon]

Oh no, now you done it.

[MitchK1989]

I heard a rumour Z4 was going to use Elon Musk's brain implant to auto-generate that sound you can't get out of your head

[MitchK1989]

Jokes aside, any chance some of the drum synthesis stuff you guys researched a while back winds up getting us some type of modal resonator/drum membrane type filter modules? Combined with the existing wavetable+fm+comb options and MPE in Z3 this could wind up being the physical modelling synth I've been waiting for as well as all the other refinements/a nice update to an "old friend" in my plugin library.

[N__K]

In my personal experience, after getting used to that flexibility, going back to having only pre-set filter curves in a synth is comparable to wearing a straitjacket. YMMV, of course

My mileage varies...

What you are describing sounds like a nightmare of endless manual work to me with levels of complexity I would never be able to make meaningful use of.

It's not much work at all in Harmor. It has simulated conventional filter shapes as selectable, so there's no need to draw own filter shapes, unless one wants to.

Users who do want to make custom shapes, can click in as few or as many control points for the "filter" as they wish, or even or draw any kind of curve with a pencil.

Harmor filter shape drawing.gif

At all times, user can control the "filter's" center frequency, width and "resonance" amount (with its curve also customizable, if user wishes) via knobs in the GUI, and there are also all the usual envelope control options one would find in a subtractive synth, such as envelope for the center frequency/cutoff.

The meaningful usefulness of such flexibility are sounds which are not possible with traditional filter shapes and controls.

Basically, if you've ever wondered how "kids these days make those weird sounds", this might be one of methods they utilize - in addition to the better-known methods of wavetable position and FM parameter automation, of course.

Also, coupled with ability to set partials in all kinds of inharmonic orders (that too manually, if user wishes) it's part of what allows Harmor to make drum and cymbal sounds with surprising ease and flexibility.

[Hanz Meyzer]

So I wanted to answer more detailed now, EvilDragon:

Use two filters in series and you get 48dB slope. Moreover, you can then create all sorts of passband types you can't get from a single filter module.

That is an ugly workaround. Since the slots, esp. in parallel are so limited, you will quickly run out of possibilites, in combination with layering for sure.

Ring+Sync in Radias is not possible in Zebra. It's basically osc 1 as sync master to osc 2, and then output of osc 2 is ring modulated with osc 1. You can get it in Reaktor or VCV Rack or any other modular synth.

Ok, but my request was if Zebra could do this. I don't like Reaktor that much, nor VCV rack.

Regarding the envelope - just use MSEGs if you need more flexibility with slopes.

Damn, always forgetting about this, thanks! So my request would be that any kind of envelope will look similar to the MSEG graph in Zebra 3. The bottom position does not seem to be a bad idea either.

Mix module should definitely be 50:50, not 100:100. Agree to disagree but 50:50 is correct.

Then please add a gain control to the mix module, too. Also a gain that can reach -infinity.

Noise generator using 6 dB filters is also correct, as it's how you shape white noise into pink or blue noise.

That might be an appropriate approach if you want to design analog synth like sounds. It surely is too limited for any kind of natural sound or even very modern stuff. Tilt + variable frequency band limiting filter might be way more flexible.

You have tilt filters in Dist modules. Use them. They can also be keytracked through the mod matrix.

Nice, thanks. Will try this. Though I would need a mode "pure tilt, without distortion" then :p

Also don't expect one synth to be EVERYTHING. So don't expect Avenger features in Zebra. Then use Avenger! Use Zebra for the things it has and does better than other synths.

I don't expect Zebra to be everything. But I want to open your eyes for some details that others might do better simply or is more easy to use over there. VPS Avenger sadly is not really usable in production due technical issues (and a very limiting copy protection), so it is not an option. But it has huge envelope editors, a lot of nice visualisation. Also you can "preprocess" in FFT style any kind of sound. You will get much faster to an early result in here, since there is such a visualisation. Instead of denying anything else you could take a deeper look at least and maybe even learn from it.

[pdxindy]

I don't expect Zebra to be everything. But I want to open your eyes for some details that others might do better simply or is more easy to use over there. VPS Avenger sadly is not really usable in production due technical issues (and a very limiting copy protection), so it is not an option. But it has huge envelope editors, a lot of nice visualisation. Also you can "preprocess" in FFT style any kind of sound. You will get much faster to an early result in here, since there is such a visualisation. Instead of denying anything else you could take a deeper look at least and maybe even learn from it.

It is not that you want it to be everything... but you have specific interests. As does another person and so do I... add them all up and Zebra ends up trying to be everything.

I really like the modulation curves editor in Vital. I can put an LFO on multiple targets, and finely adjust the curve/timing of how the LFO changes for each target relative to other targets. Very powerful for nuanced expression.

In the end, I would rather u-he follow their own path and make their vision of Zebra and not give in to the endless feature requests for everything. Nothing wrong with us all asking of course

[Cepheus]

Don't know yet what he is saying but Katsunori Ujiie seems to be quite impressed by version 2.9/HZ. English sub-titles will soon be available ...... He also did one on DIVA

[Hanz Meyzer]

It is not that you want it to be everything... but you have specific interests. As does another person and so do I... add them all up and Zebra ends up trying to be everything.

I really like the modulation curves editor in Vital. I can put an LFO on multiple targets, and finely adjust the curve/timing of how the LFO changes for each target relative to other targets. Very powerful for nuanced expression.

In the end, I would rather u-he follow their own path and make their vision of Zebra and not give in to the endless feature requests for everything. Nothing wrong with us all asking of course

Thanks, absolutely agree with you. But now still might be time to overhaul this or that approach. Still I think just adding white/pink/blue noise to a sound is a very outdated approach. Vital is extremely nice, yet it totally lacks of any U-He style "magic" sound. You might emulate this by adding lots of tiny random modulation or so. But I like U-He most, hence my interest here. Sure, U-He will know best, better than me.

[EvilDragon]

Nice, thanks. Will try this. Though I would need a mode "pure tilt, without distortion" then :p

You can get that by setting Input to minimum.

[accessdune3]

I heard a rumour Z4 was going to use Elon Musk's brain implant to auto-generate that sound you can't get out of your head

It also will have an integrated Doge coin miner

[pitchdrifter]

(...)There are mentions from 2005, which is seven years before we felt pressed to actually acknowledge the idea, and another ten years before we have the slightest chance to release it

So what you're saying is next January first, then?

[andesiro]

I know, it may have been mentioned 100 times, but I miss individual outputs for "main", "bus1" and "bus2" to the DAW. Would be nice maybe possible before version 3?