[Verified] Z3TA+ 2 Sounds an Octave Lower Than Played

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TomHelvey
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2014/08/06 04:03:28 (permalink)

[Verified] Z3TA+ 2 Sounds an Octave Lower Than Played

I was having some issues with Z3TA that I couldn't exactly quantify so I thought I would look at it with a spectrum analyzer. The first issue was that it seemed to sound lower than it should.
Here is a screen shot of A440 using Saw 4 with no filters on Z3TA+ 2.
 

Note that the fundamental is at 220 Hz instead of 440 Hz. Also notice the low end noise around 20 Hz, this looks like digital wraparound.
Here is A880 using the same waveform.

When A880 is played, Z3TA+ 2 plays A440. There is digital wraparound on this waveform at 20 Hz as well.
As a contrast, here is Sylenth playing A440. Note: I used Saw 4 on the Z3TA because it was the closest to a real saw, the vintage saw oscillators have way too much fundamental and not enough overtones.

Sylenth gets the pitch right, but there is another problem. I could never figure out why I couldn't get Z3TA to sound as bright as I wanted it to when using a filter envelope. It turns out the top of the filter is 18Khz instead of 20Khz. The problem is that once you turn the filter on, even if you have the cutoff maxed, you still get high end attenuation.
Here is A880 with a 24 db per octave filter with the cutoff all the way up.

Here is what it looks like when the cutoff is set to the default value (~542 Hz):

Once you combine the incorrect octave issue with the filter issue you end up with mud that is difficult to tweak even with the brightest waveforms available. Even using modifiers on the EG in the mod matrix, it still doesn't get it.
If you want bottom and don't care about sizzle, Z3TA is fine, no problem, you can probably get what you want. If you want that extra little bit, another soft synth might work better.
Even the random noise gen is a bit funky:

Good luck getting a great whoosh with that.
 
 
 
 
 

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    Paul P
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    Re: [Verified] Z3TA+ 2 Sounds an Octave Lower Than Played 2014/08/06 11:29:17 (permalink)
     
    I recently encountered this and have been wondering about it.  I cannot find a single post in this forum on the matter, nor find any mention of it on the web.  No review seems to have noticed.
     
    If no one cares about it, it can't be much of an issue in the real-world musical use of this synth.
     
    If, like me, you're analyzing the output off z3ta with frequency analyzers and oscilloscopes, you'll encounter all sorts of strange-looking things in the output, often at knob extremities.  They don't seem to have much impact on the sound of the synth though.
     
    Another thing I discovered is that Rapture wavetables don't work properly within z3ta since they're apparently normalized to 0db and z3ta appears to want no more than -6db for its wavetables or the waveshaper won't work properly.  Again, this is only something that shows up when you're comparing one synth against another, not using them as instruments in their own right.
     

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