From all the U-He synthesizers, Zebra2 is his most beloved one, it is the one that sums it all. So it should be better than DivA (although, I do not have Diva… so i couldn’t compare them). There is a lot of presets packs you can get also (which is why I haven’t bought Pigments yet… not too many people working on it I would guess)
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My opinion: the big part of the synth value are presets. The synth itself may be well programed (quality of oscillators, filters etc…), but without well designed presets it’s of low value to me. I can quickly find the way to tweak a good sound in any synth, but I don’t have time (even if I were an excellent synth sound designer) to design from scratch when composing - I need to catch the inspiration.
Here is my list:
- Whatever I tried from U-he is good. Zebra and Diva on the first place, but also the free stuff, like Tyrell.
- Air Music Hybrid: very good presets for various styles. I got this one for 1$ on black Friday
- Sylenth 1
- Synth1 - the free one, I like it. Lots of good community-presets, the only problem is to collect and organize them.
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You should get it. It’s on every track I make, at least one instance. It sounds amazing and will kill your CPU whatever it is lol
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I’ve been meaning to ask you Joseph, you are also a music teacher, but in a class room? What do you teach, music production?
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Very good point, I love sound design, and I could even call myself an expert on synthesis…but I still love good preset banks with lots and lots of great presets and categories.
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Yes @Mikael, I teach for Middle Tennessee State’s Recording Industry department located near Nashville. My specialties are sounds synthesis, MIDI and desktop music production. Lately, I’ve added Logic Pro to some classes and have began teaching a course on scoring to visual media. We also have Pro Tools, Ableton Live, Reason, all Spectrasonics, Toontrack and Native Instrument plug-ins. We also have hardware analog and digital synths. And this just our MIDI lab. We have five recording studios, a post lab, mastering lab and digital audio lab. We have about 1200 students. It’s a really cool place!
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Zebra is a good all round synth and there a quite a few cinematic patches for it - great for sound design overall
https://u-he.com/PatchLib/commercial.html
https://www.electric-himalaya.com/zebra2_cinematic_pulsation.html
https://www.loopmasters.com/genres/46-FX/products/6093-Niflheim-Zebra2-Presets
http://www.theunfinished.co.uk/shop/zebra-theta/
Diva is lovely but more geared to retro synth emulation and eats your processor if you use more than one instance or a complex patch.
The thing I like about Zebra is it’s a toy box - you can get retro synth sounds or more modern dance patches or huge evolving pads.
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Oh wow, what a great and creative environment to be working in!
And since there is always more we can learn, we are all still humble students even though we teach. At least that is how I feel. There is so much more to explore every single day! 
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That sounds really nice, does it come with a big and high quality preset bank to begin with?
I think you get about 500 patches and there all pretty good. I’ve added a few extra sound packs so lost track of which ones are factory.
You can get the cut down version of zebrette which is a single oscillator version (free) to get an idea of what Zebra is like - think it comes with about 300 presets
Here’s a youtube vid of some of the factory presets for zebra.
I’ve barely scratched the surface with it as its an amazingly deep synth.
Good list of free patches Here
Its usually on sale every so often so keep an eye out especially near black friday etc.
Some useful tutorials here
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Nudged in the general direction of UVI by the voucher that comes with the Expressive E Touché, I’m researching UVI Falcon 2.
Some say it’s not the most intuitive synth to work with, but coming from programming IDEs and game level editors, it looks fine to me…! Either way, I’m not looking for another wavetable speed programming tool here. I want all those synthesis methods and effects, to do stuff that the simpler synths just can’t do.
There are some seriously nice sounds in this new expansion, for the newly released Falcon 2. I particularly like the percussive/plucked sounds, which I assume are all or part using the Pluck oscillator. (Looks like Karplus-Strong synthesis, or similar.)
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Falcon 2 is on my wishlist. It pretty much has every sort of synthesis going along with the ability to use UVI libraries - actually that’s the only major thing that puts me off is it doesn’t come with a massive library with basic synth considering its price.
Usability wise it looks a complex beast - workflow kind of reminds me more of a sampler than synth but its got bucket loads of oscillators - 18 I think and about 90 or so effects and loads of modulation options. It looks amazing for layering up sounds and patches.
Definitively on my wishlist
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Oh, and Falcon 2 has Lua scripting as well, for live MIDI processing and whatnot. Looks like exactly what I need to do some serious Touché specific sound programming…
(I ran into a bunch of issues there with Phase Plant - and requested a few features as a result. Same problem with most synths; you’re just not supposed to play actual “notes” entirely with CCs, while just using NoteOn for pitch control, or not at all.)
BTW, also note that you get a $100/€100 voucher when buying Falcon 2, which counts towards Falcon expansions, and soundware, such as Whoosh or Meteor.
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Confirmed; the Touché $50 voucher works with the intro sale. I got Falcon 2, two expansions, and a $100 / 100€ voucher, for €130. Intro sale runs until October 27.
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Jaap, where did you see that by getting also Dark Zebra, you’ll get the Zebra3…? (I have Zebra2, should I buy now the Dark Zebra? —… and expect a free upgrade?
Urs Heckman from U-he confirmed it somewhere in a topic on on KVR, couldn’t find it as those topics are hundreds of pages long… but found a confirmation also here where somebody mentions it: https://macprovideo.com/article/audio-software/uhe-reveals-new-zebra-3-synth-concept-designs-details
No idea when Zebra 3 will be released. Can be soon, can still be a few years and that is also what I love about U-he, they take their time to craft a solid product and don’t feel rushed in order to release a product.
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Hey Jaap, you are the creator of that Black and White libraries. Very cool libraries, I am getting them… but I am not that certain about Dark Zebra… wouldn’t it be better to just pay the €30 for the upgrade from Zebra2? … it will be a new animal this Zebra3… all new efforts surely will be focus on it…
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If you don’t feel that the Dark Zebra is of any good use, then 30 euro upgrade option is a far better soluton indeed Marco!
And thank you in regards to my Black and White soundset. I have a regular version and as well a Dark Zebra version, so they are perfectly usable if you don’t have the Dark Zebra!
Small tip, probably in about a month I will run a Black Friday sale if you want to save some extra money.
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I definitively will, thanks Jaap.
I am taking a dive into Zebra2 analyzing the DZ, I will keep on it because the other one I am liking very much is Arturia’s V Collection -also, Black Fridays tend to put it 50% off (I don’t care much about all of it, but Specially MiniV and Jup-8 Sequences… I like them soo much,
Can you make the same sequences (very intricate) in Zebra2?? (like in MiniV the preset: “303 Sequence”, for instance) … in Arturia’s, sometimes it gets too complicated that the engine just halts… I am sure ion Zebra2 it will not happen (its not my computer I try it in the iMac and in the MacBook Pro… both recent)
What I like about this is that with an external sequencer (software based, like Kirnu’s Cream, or Cthulhu or native Arps…) and mixing synth sounds… is not possible to get it as cool as just inside one Synth.
Sadly I’m unable to afford many of the synths, so I use what I can find that is free, or very low cost. So far I’ve found that I like, Alpha-Ray, Emultuition, Keiratune, and some of the ones by DSK.