zebra + MIDI control + distortion

[exh]

So cheers to Urs on creating one of the most incredible synths I've ever seen. From sound quality through to GUI it'd be brilliant coming from a team of people but having one person behind it is amazing. I have two small questions/comments:

If it's not there, it'd be nice if there was a mode to have MIDI controllers globally assigned to the XY pads. I know I can learn each one individually, but I'd really like at least an option to have, I don't even care which, MIDI controllers assigned permanently, across all zebra instances. It would just make things a little faster and more reliable.

Also, while I see there's a whole lot of places to introduce various flavours of distortion, I haven't found anything to give things real bite, like you'd get out of say amp modelling in a guitar FX unit. I've played with the FX in the osc, the global FX, and drive on the various filters but I haven't heard anything that's lo-fi crunchy like basic bit decimation. Am I just missing something? I love the zebra sound for being warm and organic, but as far as I've heard and explored it's sorta always warm and organic, it'd be nice to be able to get more of an edge at times.

Finally, as a side note, I really like the demo mode on zebra, i.e. the random pitch thing. It gives me long enough to use it that I spent a few months playing off and on, but then when it hits demo mode it's not so obnoxious that it irritates me and makes me want to never come back to it. Actually, I kinda like the effect the pitching gave a lot of bass lines. My only issue is, for the longest time I thought it was a bug in zebra, and held off buying for that reason. It'd be nice if there was a splash screen informing you what was going to happen or even if it just put the words 'RANDOM PITCH DEMO MODE ENGAGED!' or something in the GUI once you hit the time limit.

Anyway, like I said, brilliant synth. I'm excited to see what u-he comes up with in the future.

thanks,
eric

[Urs]

Hi Eric,

Thanks man!

Well, amp modelation hasn't been my kind of beef, yet, as hasn't overly screaming distortion. The Shaper modules offer Bitreduction which I personally find quite noisy - Nevertheless, I'm doing some research on the topic currently (for distraction while waiting to get all things together for Z2's final release), so there's some hope for more tasty scream!

Assignments of MidiCCs should be preserved after opening/closing instances. So, if you assign controllers to XYs once, they should always be there... if not, let me know...

Cheers,

Urs

[spritex]

Some crunchy distortion FX block would be nice, indeed. It would suit well with the organic nature of the Z2.

[exh]

The Shaper modules offer Bitreduction which I personally find quite noisy

Ah yes I see -- must be the Crush setting. Yes, you're right, noisy is a good description. So far my experiments with distortion in zebra have produced either pretty subtle overtones or just sort of generic noise. This isn't a criticism, I'm a really crap preset designer, and anyway zebra's so good at so many things it's no big deal, but one thing I've learned is that good amp modelling is an easy way to compensate for lack of sound design skills when you're looking for an aggressive in-your-face sound. So really, it's just my laziness that's driving this.

Assignments of MidiCCs should be preserved after opening/closing instances. So, if you assign controllers to XYs once, they should always be there... if not, let me know...

Yep, my apologies, seems to be working fine. Either I just spaced something trying to get it to work earlier or there's some odd edge case. It seems like it didn't start retaining it until after I saved a song containing zebra with the assignments made, but it's definitely retaining it every way I try now so most likely I just spaced it.

thanks much,
eric