Zebra 2.5.1 is out!

[mcnoone]

Okay

Mac: http://www.u-he.com/downloads/Zebra251MacInstall.zip

Should fix odd mouse movements

Urs

dl'ing now.
I'll give it go in a second, then let ya know.
Thanks
EDIT:
The tune knob works correctly now, but other knob turning values are incorrect, or at least not as they worked in 2.5
The matrix knobs and other seemingly random filter and osc knobs turn in values of only zeros. 22.00 to 21.00 like that.
It works this way in both vst and au, using either a mouse or tablet.

[Vectorman]

Can't be said (written) often enough imho. Frankly speaking, despite the other qualities
of this synth, the brilliant included patches by Howard were the the main reason for me
to buy Zebra in the 1st place. Many thx for this update!

+1. Love Howard's sound design. Most of his patches aren't the "press one key and end up on Mars" kind of thing but rather nicely-crafted stuff with an ear for dialing things in just right, the kind of sounds that I play and think, "This is something I can see myself using in a song."

[bmrzycki]

+1. Love Howard's sound design. Most of his patches aren't the "press one key and end up on Mars" kind of thing but rather nicely-crafted stuff with an ear for dialing things in just right, the kind of sounds that I play and think, "This is something I can see myself using in a song."

What's even more confounding is his ability to make those sounds with so few devices! Most of the presets have 1-3 modules set up juuuuust right. I still have so much to learn.

[chardin]

Thank you to the entire u-he team for the Zebra update. The upgrade installation went smoothly and the new patches are brilliant.

[CS80]

+1. Love Howard's sound design. Most of his patches aren't the "press one key and end up on Mars" kind of thing but rather nicely-crafted stuff with an ear for dialing things in just right, the kind of sounds that I play and think, "This is something I can see myself using in a song."

What's even more confounding is his ability to make those sounds with so few devices! Most of the presets have 1-3 modules set up juuuuust right. I still have so much to learn.

+1 also Michael Kastrup has some fantastic stuff out there also. His 'farfisa' is a standby...

[Urs]

The matrix knobs and other seemingly random filter and osc knobs turn in values of only zeros. 22.00 to 21.00 like that.

I tnought that was what you wanted?

Parameters with large ranges go by integers, parameters with lesser rangs go by .50ies or less.

[mcnoone]

The matrix knobs and other seemingly random filter and osc knobs turn in values of only zeros. 22.00 to 21.00 like that.

I tnought that was what you wanted?

Parameters with large ranges go by integers, parameters with lesser rangs go by .50ies or less.

Yea it'll work.
Guess I was expecting the values to move, the same as they were in 2.5
I'll load 2.5 up, as I forget how the value knobs went before.
I thought they all moved in .50 or even quarter increments before, never in whole increments.

I also may be making too big a deal over this.
I'll do some sounds and see if it has a negative effect on work flow first.

EDIT:
Yea these knob values work fine. No problems (crashes) to report either.
I just realized I only pay attention to the values for a few knobs, like tune, and wave modulations, but most knob turning, doesn't have me looking at their values.
Strange that.

[rasputin]

Does it fix the GUI bugs in Fl Studio?

1) Where those weird lines appear on the GUI.

2) When you resize the GUI (make it larger), it doesn't display the GUI correctly half the time?

Yes! I thought it was just my setup. I have a GeForce 210 in a PC running Windows XP (Q6600 CPU). In Ableton Live 8.2, I always get these vertical white lines when I move the GUI part way off the screen. It's annoying but since Zebra always works perfectly I just put up with it. Will try 2.5.1 and report back...

Cheers,

TPS

[Urs]

On the issue with the white lines, it's some oddity with a mixture of the vector library I'm using and my own fast blit routine. Obviosuly I'm doing something wrong, or that library is just a tad too complicated.

Hence one of the next big projects is a switch in gui stuff, towards better font rendering and faster blitting on Windows... maybe we go OpenGL, don't know yet.

[opus_diaboli]

Yeah OpenGL and everything in 3D, movable, scalable, rotatable. I always want to know how a Zebra 2 looks like from behind.

[godprobe]

Hi godprobe,

What if you relocate Zebra2.data into your Documents folder, as described in the last chapter of the install&update manual?

Usually crashes are related to file permission issues, ever since Vista (and maybe SPxx of XP...?)

Cheers,

Urs

Misread the advice at first, and tried installing with a custom path...
D:\Resources\u-he\Zebra\Zebra2.data
...for the data file, since it's similar to the way I handle resource files for other plugins and programs when they have large sound libraries, and got this error...

Creating that path before running the installer still results in the exact same error. End result with the custom path: zebra not installed.

Reinstalled to my prior setup...
Read your post again and tried moving the Zebra2.data folder. (Had to create the "Documents" folder, although Users/[myusername] did exist from another program creating it, despite my being on XP where that sort of thing should be in "Documents and Settings".)

Some success with that... Reaper no longer complained when scanning the DLLs and I could view them in Reaper's plugin browser.

Upon loading, however, they give this error...

...and nothing at all shows up in Zebra. It's a blank window, although it does look to be the correct dimensions in width and height and it does play the demo static. (Didn't try any MIDI input to see if anything's actually loaded.)

Noticing that the path specified in that error is pointing to a "Zebra2/data" instead of "Zebra2.data", I moved the "Zebra2.data" folder back into the former location within VSTPlugins and tried two more things...
1) I tried deleting the ".data" portion off of the folder name. That resulted in Reaper crashing on plugin load.
2) Tried moving the contents of Zebra2.data into my Zebra2 folder. That didn't work either.

Reinstalled.

Tried Live 8... plugin works fine there.

Tried downgrading back to Reaper 3.76... still the same old error. (Possibly a Reaper bug then?) Searched for other instances of "executed invalid operation while scanning" and pulled up a few hits -- most of them seem to have gone unsolved, although one for Image-Line's Ogun is immediately fixed in the next dev post with no additional details. 6_o

Tried reinstalling Zebra 2.5.0 and that... still works perfectly fine.
So, I'm guessing I'm at the confluence of some random instance of some part of memory just happening to have the same ID as some other part of memory in Reaper in some way that shouldn't ever happen (or at least, the odds are slim), but it is happening, and it's kind of a bummer.

I'm not sure what else to test/check and I don't think I can do anything on my end to actually solve it. All of the other instances of the error across the net are somewhat random -- lots of different plug-ins and usually (as far as I can tell) only one person suffering the issue.

Here's a KVR thread where the issue actually *did* get fixed by the Wusik Station dev...
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/printview ... 818&page=3
...so hopefully that might help!

Also, thank you for the quick reply the other day.

[bmrzycki]

Tried downgrading back to Reaper 3.76... still the same old error. (Possibly a Reaper bug then?)

Unlikely. I run both the 32-bit and 64-bit version of Zebra2 on Reaper 3.76 and the latest Reason 4.0 beta x64. All the error screens you show I've seen in the past and were related to Zebra not being able to read (or being able to find) the Zebra2.data/ directory. One thing to be very careful of: make sure if you are using a shortcut to rename it to Zebra2.data and not the default Shortcut to Zebra2.data. Here's a command prompt listing of my VST direcctory:

Code: Select all

D:\EMusic\VST\u-he>dir Z*
 Volume in drive D is Apps
 Volume Serial Number is 5C60-5507

 Directory of D:\EMusic\VST\u-he

12/31/2009  03:50 PM               746 Zebra2.data.lnk
07/12/2011  07:05 PM         2,720,768 Zebra2.dll
07/12/2011  07:05 PM         2,720,768 Zebralette.dll
07/12/2011  07:05 PM         2,720,768 Zebrify.dll
07/12/2011  07:05 PM         2,720,768 ZRev.dll
               5 File(s)     10,883,818 bytes
               0 Dir(s)  416,771,080,192 bytes free

This is the latest version of Zebra2 running on Reaper 3.76.

[fateamenabletochange]

awesome, thanks for the update.
sounding ? smoother ? in some of my old zebra projects.

[losan]

Hi Urs,

I am currently running into a problem with the x64 version of Zebra (v. 2.5.1)
I played with the preset "HS Argoblitz", and get audio crackles,
also noticed ASIO spikes (inside Cubase - ASIO performance meter -
going into red), while holding more then one note.

I get this behavour both in Cubase 5.5.3 x64 and within SAVIhost x64
on Win Vista x64,
Soundcart RME Fireface 400, set to 256 samples.

Not a problem with the 32bit version of Zebra inside Cubase x86.

Let me know, if you need more informations.
Cheers

[mcnoone]

Possible bug report.
Not sure if it's reproducible yet.
Zebra 2.5.1 had a note stuck, but unlike normal midi controller type sticking, where it will just stick notes of whatever is played.
This stuck note, would not respond to pressing other notes.
I had to close the project to stop it, and when I reloaded Zebra in a new project again, I got no audio at all.
Another user has reported a similar issue in this forum as well.