Official thread here: https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=607153

Zebralette 3 is a synthesizer and Zebra 3's little brother.
Zebralette 3 consists of a single Zebra oscillator with a few modulation sources and effects added, all wrapped in a fresh and modern, fully vectorized GUI.

The oscillator module alone is a world of its own, with a spline based wavetable editor at its core, up to sixteen wavetable snapshots featuring a variety of morphing options, two oscillator effect slots with over twenty effects to choose from, and an audio engine switchable between wavetable and additive synthesis.

Zebralette 3 Public Beta 15573 Mac
Zebralette 3 Public Beta 15573 Windows
Zebralette 3 Public Beta 15573 Linux

Zebralette 3 Spline Editor & Usability (UI, UX) Discussion - Let's talk about all the spline editor tools here, along with the user interface and your workflow experience.

Zebralette 3 Wavetable Engine Discussion - Discuss everything related to the wavetable and morphing features here.

Zebralette 3 Additive Engine Discussion - Any thoughts and ideas related to Zebralette's additive engine.

Zebralette 3 Oscillator Effects Discussion - All the questions and feature requests related to the oscillator effects.

Zebralette 3 Modulation Section Discussion - Comments about the MSEG, envelope, LFOs and the modulation system.

Zebralette 3 Bug Reports - Every quirk, every bug, every crash, every WTF just happened, let us know about it.

Zebralette 3 Tips & Tricks - Share your greatest and most surprising findings and insights with everyone else.

 

This is great! Every aspect has own discussion.
User has significant input into the development. Why every plugin isn't developed like that?

 

Tried it yesterday and this thing is really complex and sophisticated despite having only one OSC. There are so many ways to bend and modulate the OSC, that it would be hard to recreate many of the sounds on synths that have multiple OSCs. I hope the CPU tax gets reduced further, since playing a 3 voice chord on some of the patches brings my computer to its knees

 

You know its complex when even Urs gets to a point and says "err, um, yeh its deep".....

The UI is really impressive, the tools in the editor could grace a serious vector based art package. If they can bring down the CPU a bit I'm seriously looking forward to Z3.

 

I'm guessing that the quality modes like in other U-He synths are not yet implemented and/or not visible in the GUI, and it's running at full blast at all times. The "Resolution" setting seems to affect the usage most, and cranking up the unison.

But yeah, as of now it's really heavyweight for a single oscillator!

Given that it's a beta I guess we can only wait and see, but it's already sounding like a million bucks.

 

Impressed with the sound, thrilled for Zebra 3.

 

I'm hoping for an upgrade price and not a whole new money jump 'cause it's an instant buy.

 

Wonder when Zebra 3 will be released - seems im eligible for a free upgrade - looking forward.

 

Dark Zebra owners get a free upgrade to 3 and 2/legacy owners pay $30 for the upgrade. I'm very excited for 3, but to be honest, seeing how zabralette has evolved in complexity, I imagine 3 is a gigantic project and way off.

 

Have the same feeling

 

Holy fuckety fuck fuck this thing is absolutely insane.

I've not found anything like else this, and if it exists please please let me know.

I'm thinking of the Massive/Massive X performers/steppers, which are already pretty heavy duty mod sequencers by themselves. What if they had customisable morphing with 7 "scenes", with assignable modulation? Well this fucker does.

Modulating pitch for instance: define a sequence with the MSEG (you can use various curves for slides between pitches, like the aforementioned Massive(X) seqs), then add a morph point and assign the curve morph to, say, mod wheel. Now you got a seamless transition between the sequences. Then you adds points between and you can have crazy stuff like starting with sequence #1, morphing all pitches to maximum (so root note + octave), then sliding all pitches to root, then from there to seq 2. The MSEG also has guide morphs like the OSC has for the wave FX, but as for now, they don't seem to be mappable anywhere.

Last year brought us Synplant2, now this year we already got this (and later on the complete Z3, perhaps). 'tis a good time to be a synth nerd

*edit:* the fun doesn't end there, the export wavetable works a charm as well, so I can create the waves using the great tools in Zl3 and use the waves in Ableton's Wavetable. Ok you lose the rest of the tools, but gain some others. Still, an excellent feature to have.

 

Last edited: Feb 17, 2024

amazing how this little shit makes a huge difference

 

It helps get things real.

 

If Z3 will do what's advertised and hyped, we'll probably need one, unless we can get 400Gbit optical interconnects to our local server farms...

 

I've got one and a spare...hit me up in a PM.

 

I've been spending time with Zebralette 3 and it feels like using Adobe Illustrator now that the OSC preset is gone (or I couldnt find it, lol). Everything has to be drawn manually and you have to use your brain for it which is a bit turn-off for me when it comes to sound design where not being a pro sound designer, I prefer it to not think at all and just experiment with stuff and hope to get lucky with the knobs. I don't even know how to do a simple PWM and took me some minutes to realize that the Oscillator Sync function is now in the OSC FX (replaced my fav Sync Mojo) that will use a slot on that section. As for now, it's a shitty experience not knowing what is what, and how the previous style workflow with version 2 seems like inapplicable to this version. Feels like it's forcing the user to abandon the wavetable side of it and use the additive engine more.

Also, is plugin manual is after the beta period ?

On more thing, the additive renderer is causing crashes a lot if you're using it with MIDI, kinda need to pause, make adjustment, then play. It's understandable considering how the oscillator works but it's making user losing interest real quick. I rather stick with the Wavetable renderer. I think a lot of people is going to hate a free plugin like this and it will endup as preset based synth. Doubt it's going to be a lot of preset pack now that it's super hard to program (for a noob like me). Still pissed at the Abode style drawing. Urgh

Maybe it's my fault for not watching Urs introductory video about it, going to do it now.

 

Last edited: Feb 23, 2024

Really nice sounds after experimenting a while with it. A huge CPU hog (sure, it is a urs beta!"). The art of UI style is like NI Massive X (i hate this, like a medical instrument and turns me down) but Zebralette feels a bit better.

 

Last edited: Feb 22, 2024

I'm fairly certain that Herr Urs will tame the CPU considerably before he releases it. It'll go from Tasmanian Devil mode to Daffy Duck being really hyper and multi-core friendly.

 

Haven't checked yet, but not impressed. Bitwig can do anything this one pretends to do.

Nah I'm kidding. Urs is up there with Van Gogh, Karl Marx and Jamie Gillis for me. Love everything he does.
Will try this today at work.


Wonder why they don't do hardware synths. Fixed racks like Erica Synths or Make Noise, but it's Bazille, can you imagine how fokkin AMAZING that would be?