Hello, perhaps someone can help me figure out what is going on with z3ta...

When browsing the default presets I have noticed that the "render" field in the lower right hand part of the interface can alter the sound in drastic ways.

What I am referring to here are the presets that sound horribly high pitched and "ringy."  Most of the time these presets have "draft" mode enabled and when I switch it to "normal" the ringing/horrible sound goes away.  Should it really be altering the tone that much?

It seems that there are buggy sounds all over the default bank like this.  

Also, sometimes nothing is heard at all, until the limiter switch is disengaged.

Anyone figure out how we can get this little gem of a synth working right again?

Hopefully there will be someone who can help me with these issues...

thanks

Click on options and go to real time and off time rendering and change them to 2x oversampling, you may hear a difference

The other big 'gotcha' to watch out for ( particularly in user contributed banks ) is that the 'RealTime and Off-Line' options need to get checked and if needed set correctly. I've had lots of problems with patches where there is no value selected and apparently no default occurs.
 
For some reason, the Initialize Patch option doesn't set a default value for these which can be a real problem and ocassionally makes Zeta squeal like a loud pig. This is a known bug really needing a fix to avoid hearing loss.
 
While I doubt CW will do another update, I'm surprised that this hasn't been fixed. In fact, a quick tool to check a bank and set these to some default value for each patch is needed, though if an update occurs perhaps it could be made an option ie. Set Patch/Bank Rendering or something.

I recently updated to 1.5.3 and came across this "broken presets" issue.
As a result I did some searching here on the forum to hopefully find a solution, and while so doing I bookmarked all relevant threads (I likely missed some).
 
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=1690417
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=1693142
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=1775546
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=1698000
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=1690417
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=1210235
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=1135137
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=1064300
 
As a sidenote, given the existence of all these threads, it's troubling that there's no official statement by Cakewalk about this bug, and also troubling that in some threads it's treated like "user error".  I don't recall any thread where it was acknowledged by a Cakewalk representative :(
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Anyway, after all this research I thought I'd post my findings here, since it's the most recent thread on the topic, and hopefully help consolidate everything for other z3ta users.
The issue appears when loading older banks created using a z3ta version prior to 1.4.  The Oversampling feature was introduced at 1.4, so presets saved in earlier versions miss this information bit.  They'll load properly in version 1.4, but do not load correctly in any version from 1.5 on.  (Preset compatabilty was broken at the 1.5 mark).
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To spot a "broken bank" just load it in the latest version of z3ta and check the "real-time quality" setting under Options.  If nothing has a check mark by it, it is an older bank.
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As for the limiter bug, I'm not sure what is causing this, but a guess is that it may involve loading presets/banks created with a version prior to 1.1, as that's when the limiter feature appeared. 

The fix for both issues (aside from Cakewalk fixing this 'Preset Compatability' bug) is to download the 1.4 demo from the Cakewalk website, load these older banks into it, then resave them out again.

I've fixed the following banks I found to be "bad".
v13 default
50 Arped Tunes by MfLI
10 Trance bank
Bruce Rainier Cat9-1 Pads
CCpurnos Dual Reality
EddoGQ MoreQuality
Harald Karla Cat1 (Jonson stuff)
Kire Fat Analog
Kire Trancemania
KVr Collab 1
KVR Collab 2
Llunasol32
Matt Baka Disco Treats
Power Supply
Pschel Vintage & Dance
Simesf Zeta bank
Speed 16Soundbank
Speed NextLevel
Trancebank (this is NOT 10trancebank)
.
These fixed banks can be found on my weebly site - http://1-2-many.weebly.com/vsti-banks.html

Thanks for your work on the Z3ta presets and trying to get Cakewalk to finally address the problems still present in Z3ta.

Teksonik


Thanks for your work on the Z3ta presets and trying to get Cakewalk to finally address the problems still present in Z3ta.

Sure Tek ;)
To me it's a shame z3ta isn't given more love and attention from Cakewalk (aside from dumping it off for 20 bucks every now and then).  With a few fixes and improvements it could be brought to the front with anything out today.  Although, it's still a great synth "as-is", and retains a spot in my lineup.

I've just bought the Z3TA+ because I've tried the demo wich worked like a charm but... What the hell is this 1.5.3 version !

Each preset with oversampling 2.0x is corrupt and does an horrible noise !
Also, while switching between presets, sometimes this leads to a host crash wich was not the case with the demo !

Is there someone who can help me because even the factory presets are broken ! The only solution that I've found is to fix the presets one by one but this is too much time consuming ! I've paid 89€ for this synth and I'm really not happy :-(

Excuse my English cause it's not my mother language ;-)

I have investigated further, and, my conclusion is that Z3TA+ has trouble with oversampling x2.0 while using a high sample rate like 88.2kHz or 96kHz even if your audio interface is able to run at a 192kHz sample rate wich is my case...
I tried this experiment with differents soundcards and each time I noticed the same behaviour !
All my test were made with Reaper v3.75

So my current workaround is to work with low sample rates like 44.1kHz or 48kHz...

I'm still thinking that Cakewalk should warn their "ZETA+ users" about this "bug" wich is not an "user bug" but an oversampling implementation bug...

I gonna make a preset bank without oversampling x2.0 activated ! This will be long, and certainly a boring work but maybe this will be usefull to someone else ;-)

EDIT :

Here is the link : Z3TA+ Default bank with Oversampling deactivated

Suntsu


I have investigated further, and, my conclusion is that Z3TA+ has trouble with oversampling x2.0 while using a high sample rate like 88.2kHz or 96kHz even if your audio interface is able to run at a 192kHz sample rate wich is my case...
I tried this experiment with differents soundcards and each time I noticed the same behaviour !
All my test were made with Reaper v3.75

So my current workaround is to work with low sample rates like 44.1kHz or 48kHz...

I'm still thinking that Cakewalk should warn their "ZETA+ users" about this "bug" wich is not an "user bug" but an oversampling implementation bug...

I gonna make a preset bank without oversampling x2.0 activated ! This will be long, and certainly a boring work but maybe this will be usefull to someone else ;-)

EDIT :

Here is the link : Z3TA+ Default bank with Oversampling deactivated

Hi,
This problem is fairly well known and has to do with preset compatability being broken from version 1.41.  (Even the 1.5 factory bank has issues).  The solution is to load the bank in version 1.41 and resave it out, it should then load fine in 1.5.3.
 
I've done this already and posted the corrected banks here - http://www.kvraudio.com/banks.php?s=list&what=306&format=&order=date  It's called "1.5.3 Bad Banks Fixed"