U-He has introduced Zebra Legacy, a package that includes Zebra2, plus all U-He-hosted Zebra2 soundsets.
Zebra is described as a “wireless modular synthesizer”. It combines many different types of synthesis with a powerful modulation engine, so you can combine additive, freehand or spline-based waveforms, apply a vast selection of spectral effects, morph between those waves and send them through classic synth filters.
The included soundsets are:
- The Dark Zebra (Hans Zimmer and Howard Scarr)
- Chronospheres (Bigtone)
- Crystallia (Vincenzo Bellanova)
- Energy (Bryan Lee)
- Inspiration (Nick Moritz)
- NYC (Alexander Hacke)
- Skools (Michael Kastrup)
- Soliton (Michael Cavallo)
- Stratospheres (Bigtone)
- Transmission (Ben Hall)
- Traveller (Samulael Bereczky)
- Vision (Michael Cavallo)
- Zebra Oldies (a selection of the original factory presets)
- Zebra Science (Howard Scarr)
- Zebratron (Howard Scarr)
Pricing and Availability
Zebra owners can download and install the package free of charge, while the regular price for a new Zebra Legacy license is 99 €.
I am a happy owner of both Zebra and Zebra HZ, so it is free for me, and I have a free upgrade path to Zebra 3 (whenever it comes out). Dealing with company like U-he is very pleasant, and encourages you to buy more from them. Spectrasonics is also in the same league. But unfortunately, those are the exceptions.
This article needs to note Zebra 2 Legacy doesn’t include an upgrade path to Zebra 3, so no idea how long it will be updated/supported. Lots of companies (like Arturia) offer discounts at the end of product cycles, which would have been more useful imho.
U-He stated in the kvr forums that the purpose behind creating the Z2 Legacy bundle was to not only slowly usher in the transition to Z3, but to help fund support for Z2 well into the future. So at least in this case it would appear that he is planning on keeping Z2 alive for some time.
It really is a great value. The money saved can be put towards Z3 in place of an official upgrade path. With all the soundsets it looks like at least $500 worth of products if not more, for the $99.