Zebralette 3 Oscillator Effects Discussion

[pdxindy]

Slope control for the filter effect would be cool

Sure, there is an empty space for it.

In the meanwhile, you can create any slope or filter shape you want with Curve Filter

[Dalle]

In the meanwhile, you can create any slope or filter shape you want with Curve Filter

Yep On most days I just tend to prefer sound designing with the osc effects without going deep into curve editing.

Drambo’s wavetable oscillator has a filter slope control that can be smoothly adjusted between zero (no effect) to infinity (brickwall partial isolation) which I find fun to modulate.

[suthnear]

Evening all. I don't suppose there's a document/explaining how the z3 oscillator effects map to the z2 ones? I was under the impression that z3 would include all of the z2 ones in some form. There are quite a few that don't seem to have z3 equivalents (I am thinking of the ones with phase in the name specifically) but possibly I am just missing something

[Urs]

Not all of them have made it over. Some have been combined (e.g. Scrambler and Scatter of Z2 are both in Scrambler of Z3).

The new possibilities such as Spectral Decay have become such centrepieces of this... they stole the show of some of the old ones, and I simply might not have had any good idea on how to make them fit in the new concepts.

Are there any particular ones missing that we should take another look at?

[suthnear]

I'll make a list tonight or this weekend. I need to go through my rather large set of z2 presets to see which ones I use habitually

[Korg Supporter]

Will there be a way to make stepped 8-Bit waveforms a la SCC or PC-Engine style?

[Urs]

Will there be a way to make stepped 8-Bit waveforms a la SCC or PC-Engine style?

Yeah, probably... adding a few more OscFX is not the highest priority on my list though. If it's not there in December, it'll certainly come down the road.

[Urs]

Oh, to a degree you can already do that btw. Like, build a Guide with a fine grained staircase, like 32 steps, then use Map-O-Matic to RePhase the original waveform.

[Urs]

So here's how you can do it today:

Z3 Decimate Map-o-Matric.jpg

White Curve: Oscillator waveform
Orange Curve: Guide Curve 1
Red Curve: Resulting waveform after OscFX 1

[Korg Supporter]

Oh, to a degree you can already do that btw. Like, build a Guide with a fine grained staircase, like 32 steps, then use Map-O-Matic to RePhase the original waveform.

Just 32-step waveforms. But bitcrusher or downsampling degradation would be cool.

[suthnear]

Are there any particular ones missing that we should take another look at?

I'll make a list tonight or this weekend. I need to go through my rather large set of z2 presets to see which ones I use habitually

I forgot to return to this. On a deeper examination there is not much overlap and z3 definitely doesn't surpass z2, at least not in this area. There are many z2 osc fx that don't seem to have any z3 equivalent at all: bandworks, turbulence, phase xfer, phase root, trajector, formanzilla, fractalz, exophase, scale, scatter, chop lift and hypercomb. You can get similar-ish results at least for some of these using spectral dist with the additive osc, though.

But the biggest difference (for me anyway) is that the fx control is bipolar so e.g. fundamental, symmetry and expander all operate quite differently even though there are z3 equivalents: e.g. expander expands and compresses; filter you get a high pass and low pass on a single control; etc. It's more useful to have this on a single control rather than two separate ones imo

[Urs]

I have deliberately changed the polarity. In Z2 it is often very inconsistent. Some Osc FX sound neutral at -100, which essentially makes them unipolar. Some do the same thing but different in the negative range. Only few have a truly consistent use of the bipolar depth range.

Instead, we now have multiple options for some of those effects. About half of the ones you miss are integrated in other effects as such options, e.g. Scatter of Z2 is an option in Scrambler of Z3.

Exophase sounds great, but uses excessive CPU. I'll bring it back if I can lower CPU, but I have not yet found a way to do so.

Some I left out on purpose - those which are very hard to understand and thus rarely used (e.g. Trajectory), or produce artefacts I don't like (e.g. Fractalz), those which produce inconsistent results (Turbulence, Hypercomb), and those which I found a bit boring, if not redundant.

In any case, with all the options, the number of algorithms has almost doubled. Zebra 2 started out with 10 or so effects and got to about 20, Zebra 3 IIRC has about 36 algorithms baked into its currently 20 modes.

[suthnear]

Morning Urs. Apologies - that came across as a criticism. It wasn't intended to be: I was just going through my presets and seeing what osc fx I'd used and then (rather quickly) trying to recreate them. That I wasn't able to (yet, anyway) speaks more about me than about Z3 Z3 will require a different approach (and will result in different sounds) as it has different tools. You're a very considered person and I trust your judgment.

On the plus side, it did remind me how good Z2 can sound.

p.s. and I do take your point about the inconsistency of the polarity. Speaking of that, though, one effect I am definitely going to try to reproduce is the positive effect of fundamental in Z2. Fundamental in Z3 is the same as negative fundamental in Z2. I have used positive in a lot of my bass patches.

[Shiek927]

I do think there's something to be said about "less is more". If it's possible to create a certain effect with the tools that are already available, better even, then bringing back a certain algorithm from the past wouldn't be worth it. Sometimes the challenge is that it's actually a skill issue why it's hard to create a certain sound and not an issue with the tools already available.

I imagine the best path forward would be to release the plugin, give it a year to let sound designers and producer's play with it, and if there's something that truly can't be emulated or done in Z3 that was possible in Z2, it's something that can be looked at.