We have a set a timeline for the release of Zebra Legacy:
On November 15th we'll stop selling Zebra2 and its soundsets as individual products. Instead we'll only sell Zebra2 at a price of 99€, and the download has all soundsets (including The Dark Zebra) for free, and call this product "Zebra Legacy". This will ensure that we can maintain Zebra2 for many years to come while we focus on Zebra3 development.
From that switch, anyone who owns a Zebra2 license can simply download Zebra Legacy and get all the contents for free.
Zebra3 development is making great progress, but there is no ETA.
The announcement and the release of Zebra Legacy is however relevant for upgrade options to Zebra3: Anyone who owns a Zebra2 license from before the switch gets an €30 upgrade path to Zebra3 (free even in conjunction with a Dark Zebra license owned since before the switch). That is, once Zebra3 is finished. We do not know yet when that is, but we're confident it'll happen in less than "years".
Here's the catch: Everyone who obtains a license for Zebra2 by buying Zebra Legacy on or after November 15th for only 99€ will not have such an upgrade path. That's simply because it's such a bargain already.
Cheers,
- U
Dear everyone,
It’s been almost ten years since I first responded to speculation about an imminent Zebra3 release. We now know that the envisaged time frame was overly optimistic, to put it mildly! We had just released The Dark Zebra and Diva, and little did I know the extent to which these events would transform the company from being just one guy plus two employees into what u-he is today. Instead of “a year or two, max” it took all of eight years and a global pandemic to finally have something sharable...
Actually, that’s not quite correct, as we spent a good chunk of that decade on product maintenance, and developed a lot of technologies needed for Z3. Here are a few examples of the “milestones” required for Zebra3 development:
- A library of curve manipulation tools (powers e.g. Hive’s Shape Sequencer)
- A multicore-enabled modulation matrix which can be used in multithreaded software. Already implemented in Repro and Hive.
- Wavetable import, manipulation and export like in Zebra2 and Hive, but taken to new levels. Work in progress!
- Filter modelling technologies which rival Diva in terms of “beef” but use significantly less CPU by sacrificing a tiny bit of authenticity: Filters don’t really need to sound 100% like this or that synth if they still sound GREAT. Good examples are already in Hive, Bazille and Repro.
- Novel comb filter and physical modelling technologies, some of which have been deployed in Colour Copy and Hive.
Even though a skeleton Zebra3 project already existed several years ago, none of those technologies have been built into a working example of Zebra3 yet. Our most ambitious goal was always the unification of Zebra’s visual curve editors instead of the 6 different editors for oscillator “Geo” curves, “Blend” waveforms, MSEG curves, ModMapper steps, LFO steps and Key/Velocity scalings. The main incentive of Zebra3 development is to have just one kind of editor for all of these jobs. The new editor needs to be comprehensive, fast and must be ‘professional’ in every way.
Today we have a usable, almost feature-complete prototype of this editor. It does what it’s supposed to and is every bit as good as we had hoped! It’s also as extensible as it gets, so I could probably spend another decade on it. However, we decided to show it off at the Superbooth event in Berlin as we want to let you make music with it ASAP.
A release of “Zebralette 3” (freeware Zebra 3 oscillator plus MSEG) as precursor to Zebra3 has become a possibility in the near future, so we need to communicate a few things that have changed since 2012. Hence this post!
Back in 2012 I pledged that the upgrade from regular Zebra2 to Zebra3 will be 30 bucks, but free for existing owners of The Dark Zebra. Of course we will honour that pledge, but in the meantime we have switched our pricing from USD to Euro. There is a cutoff date: Some time later this year - not sure when exactly - we will stop selling Zebra2 and The Dark Zebra as individual products (see the next paragraph). We will post a gentle reminder when the cutoff date is getting close. So...
To ensure that Zebra2 and The Dark Zebra continue to be maintained and kept up-to-date, we will bundle the two in a new product called “Zebra Legacy”. Everyone who has a license for Zebra2 will automatically have their license crossgraded to Zebra Legacy. Zebra Legacy will contain all our existing soundsets (including The Dark Zebra) for a very attractive price. However, there’s a catch: There will not be an upgrade path from Zebra Legacy to Zebra3 for anyone who buys it after this cutoff date. The upgrade conditions will only be available to those who have bought Zebra2 (and/or TDZ) before these become “Zebra Legacy”.
I know we can’t make things perfect for everyone, but I think that letting you know our plans way in advance should preempt any bad surprises. We think this scheme, while unusual, is best suited to secure the investment of our most loyal customers, and at the same time allows us to keep going.
Now for the part that is probably the one people are most interested in. What must happen for Zebra3 to be finished? Unfortunately of course, a lot! We think half a year or so until the editors, oscillators and MSEGs are ready. That’s several months before we can start beta testing Zebralette 3, make presets, sound demos and so on.
On the module front, everything else is a piece of cake in comparison. We have half a dozen more or less mature modules (LFOs, filters, FMOs, comb filters etc.) and plenty which “just need to be slapped together from existing parts”. On the UI front we lack a few controls and upgrades (e.g. things that exceed 32 layers). All things MPE, CLAP, NKS will happen in parallel anyway. In total it’s optimistic to say “at least a year”. We’ll be super happy if we can show some more technology previews at NAMM 23 or at the next Superbooth.
I think the message you can take away from this post is that there’s a strong commitment to getting this done. There’s a plan!
Cheers,
Urs & team
