Ableton Forum

Urs wrote:

gnapier wrote:...and Urs is great. Totally top-notch dev with an amazing vision.

I think Zebra will get snapped up like Absynth did...who knows maybe even by NI. Truly outstanding piece of kit.

GN

Nope, I have no plans to sell out and absolutely no reason to do this. Instead I have plans to expand.

Seriously, you wouldn't believe the quality of job offers I'm getting every other month, including green card for Cupertino, nice living in Tokyo or a lame flat in Hamburg. But the point of doing what I do is, THIS is the real fun, and to my own surprise it pays off almost like a decent position in any other company. I'm pretty happy with that, and as long as stuff like Filterscape or Zebra finds a market, there's no point in giving up.

Cheers,

Urs

Good for you, thats very rare in this day and age but if you ever did sell your soul I wouldnt hold it to much against you.

As a developer your self are there other programmers you respect. I mean in your world is it the same as musicians.?

leonard wrote:is there no stand alone version?
all i could see on the demo page was AU/vst et. al.
also how would this compare to something like tera3?

different approach please different folks

I find Tera3 hard to understand. I spent a solid bunch of hours trying it out and it was still confusing what was going on and how to use it. I find Zebra 2 GUI much clearer and easier to understand. But maybe someone has the opposite experience.

One thing I do to try out the synth is turn off effects and make some sounds. I like how Zebra2 sounds better with effects turned off.

The thing is, you should try demos for yourself and see what works for you. I would not think twice about picking Zebra over Tera.

urgh... I played with Z2 for a while yesterday... I can't afford more softsynths at the moment. Can anyone spot me 169 ?

Machinate wrote:urgh... I played with Z2 for a while yesterday... I can't afford more softsynths at the moment. Can anyone spot me 169 ?

Just sell the rest!

Again, this thread got me to buy.

Deva - your very cool presets were part of that decision. Nice work.

The Kranky One

koranek wrote:Again, this thread got me to buy.

Deva - your very cool presets were part of that decision. Nice work.

The Kranky One

Hey Urs, look at the extra people checking out your synth 'cause of the thread I started!

Discount for the advertising?
broke-ass student rate?

ah just kidding, you deserve the cash. Hopefully I'll be able to spare the dough sometime soon.

I don't suppose a roland VG-88 would qualify for the dinosaur cross-grade eh? Maybe then I could splash. Technically it's a guitar synth as well as an effects board....

I ran home from work tonight to start playing the demo and I absolutely love it. I thought I was trippin for a minute when notes other than what I was playing started popping out. I started looking for some random note modifier in the arp or something... I swear I just spent 20 minutes scratching my head while beautiful sounds streamed from the speakers.

Ooops... guess I should have read the "demo" limitations before diving in.

So, like many people I checked the demo out based on this thread but I don't get it. What are you guys using it for? The filters sounded nice but the interface seems needlessly complex for what I want to do. I guess it's a personal thing but I'm just surprised that it seems so unanimously loved.

melocoton wrote:The filters sounded nice but the interface seems needlessly complex for what I want to do. I guess it's a personal thing but I'm just surprised that it seems so unanimously loved.

The simplicity of the interface is one of its main selling points. Designing a functional interface for building such freely constructable modular patches isn't easy, and that's exactly what Zebra 2 pulls off remarkably well. I feel the interface is intuitive, inspiring and doesn't get in the way.

koranek wrote:Again, this thread got me to buy.

Deva - your very cool presets were part of that decision. Nice work.

The Kranky One

Thanks!

melocoton wrote:So, like many people I checked the demo out based on this thread but I don't get it. What are you guys using it for? The filters sounded nice but the interface seems needlessly complex for what I want to do. I guess it's a personal thing but I'm just surprised that it seems so unanimously loved.

If you want a straightforward 2 osc -> filter synth, then Zebra might not be for you. If you have no use for the vast sonic potential, then the interface would be more immediately complex than you need. If you do want/need to make use of such diverse synthesis possibilities then the interface is a marvel to allow you to use all that in an easy and understandable way. The interface is nice too, in that looking at a preset someone else made, it is easy to see what is happening. Some synths take much more looking and figuring to trace the signal path, modulations etc

I particularly like Zebra 2 because I do not want to have piles of different synths. It is capable of such a wide range of sounds from solid string emulations, to organ/ep sounds, some nice percussive stuff, bells, leads, pads, ambient textures as good anything out of synths like absynth etc. It also has enough osc's and modules that it is easy to design a preset, say an ep sound, then think, hmmm, I want to add a little percussive sound on key release and just do it. It is visually very easy to create a preset with 2 or more component sounds which have a completely distinct signal path, so that percussive sound on key release can have its own filter, envelope, effects etc. There are some powerful tools out there, and different people will have different opinions, but I have never enjoyed sound design as much as I do with Zebra2.

At the same time, it is easy to use 1osc and 1 filter and get rich solid sounds. It will not be as immediately easy as a simple VA synth, but once comfortable with the interface you can use it this way as well.

Add in a developer who is responsive to user suggestion, an open good person, and obviously not just in it for the money, and then you know some of why it is almost unanimously loved.

melocoton wrote:So, like many people I checked the demo out based on this thread but I don't get it. What are you guys using it for? The filters sounded nice but the interface seems needlessly complex for what I want to do. I guess it's a personal thing but I'm just surprised that it seems so unanimously loved.

What are you using at the moment? Where you are coming from makes a big difference to your perception of anything new.

D.

deva wrote:

melocoton wrote:So, like many people I checked the demo out based on this thread but I don't get it. What are you guys using it for? The filters sounded nice but the interface seems needlessly complex for what I want to do. I guess it's a personal thing but I'm just surprised that it seems so unanimously loved.

If you want a straightforward 2 osc -> filter synth, then Zebra might not be for you. If you have no use for the vast sonic potential, then the interface would be more immediately complex than you need. If you do want/need to make use of such diverse synthesis possibilities then the interface is a marvel to allow you to use all that in an easy and understandable way. The interface is nice too, in that looking at a preset someone else made, it is easy to see what is happening. Some synths take much more looking and figuring to trace the signal path, modulations etc

I particularly like Zebra 2 because I do not want to have piles of different synths. It is capable of such a wide range of sounds from solid string emulations, to organ/ep sounds, some nice percussive stuff, bells, leads, pads, ambient textures as good anything out of synths like absynth etc. It also has enough osc's and modules that it is easy to design a preset, say an ep sound, then think, hmmm, I want to add a little percussive sound on key release and just do it. It is visually very easy to create a preset with 2 or more component sounds which have a completely distinct signal path, so that percussive sound on key release can have its own filter, envelope, effects etc. There are some powerful tools out there, and different people will have different opinions, but I have never enjoyed sound design as much as I do with Zebra2.

At the same time, it is easy to use 1osc and 1 filter and get rich solid sounds. It will not be as immediately easy as a simple VA synth, but once comfortable with the interface you can use it this way as well.

I agree. I think the interface is amazing in that you only see the elements that have been created and that are being used. That is quite brilliant. And the routing matrix is great as well. It is the simplest modular synth I've seen. I haven't quite figured it all out yet (like the ... knobs which I see are modulation related, but not sure exactly how they effect things), but I'm sure I will (once I buy it).

And if you just want a simple synth, well , like I said, Zebra only shows whatever elements are being used, so you can just have a couple osc going to a couple filters if you want. Pretty straight forward. Deva, some of your patches exemplify this. You've got some great patches in there which only use one osc! Sometimes I was very surprised to see only one osc being used for such a full sounding patch. nice. I'm guessing that usually has to do with the additive synthesis capabilities.

Damn the more I think about, the more I think I gotta get it. Those random notes sneak up on you so fast in the demo! It's so hard to justify buying though, what with my komplete 4 universal binary upgrade coming soon. we'll see.

er... forgive me for sounding dense, but how do i get the presets to show up in AU mode in live on os x 10.4.7?
i put the presets in ~/library/application support/uhe/presets/, and also tried ~/library/application support/uhe/zebra2/presets/, but nothing showed up.

leonard wrote:er... forgive me for sounding dense, but how do i get the presets to show up in AU mode in live on os x 10.4.7?
i put the presets in ~/library/application support/uhe/presets/, and also tried ~/library/application support/uhe/zebra2/presets/, but nothing showed up.

You should know his name is u-he, so it probably does not work for you because of a typo.

Cheers,
J*