bitflipper
I no longer have any analog synths. I called a friend that did, but he said he'd sold his last one. I didn't know anybody else, so I paid the extra 50 bucks for Zebra. I was not happy about that. Like Spectrasonics, U-he never discounts, never holds sales or even offers introductory prices on new products. You wanna play, you pay.

Not exactly true.
Did you take time to read what qualifies & look at some of the pics? I received the $50.00 off & put it towards HZ Dark Zebra.

Alchemy was it for me.

Does the HZ pack come with or is it an added thingy?

It's an addon & separate. You use the user name & registration from Zebra so you need it 
as a prerequisite.
 

HZ was a custom build for Hans Zimmer that adds Diva's famous filters to Zebra. It's not included in the base package, but you get it with the Dark Zebra patch set for $99. Dark Zebra is a pretty nice cinematic-oriented soundset, with 400 presets made by two masters of sound design, Hans Z and Howard Scarr. I'm considering buying it, but that $200 pretty much blew my music software budget for the next 3-4 months.

bitflipper
U-he never discounts, never holds sales or even offers introductory prices on new products. You wanna play, you pay.

I kind of like that, in a way.  You can buy without the worry that you'll want to kick yourself a few months later for missing a really good price.  The one place you can get a discount is in Luftrum's annual (in Dec. IIRC) charity on-line sale supporting a very worthy cause.  Urs always offers some very generous contributions to that.  On the other hand, it's a lot like E-bay.  Unless you place the final bid a millisecond before the deadline, somebody else is sure to win.
 
Another great thing about Zebra (and SynthMaster as well, I might add) are some superb third party sound set offerings.  I don't know if they're even all listed on the u-he site.  But drop in at the u-he forum on KVR and ask for opinions.  You could easily spend an amount equal to the Zebra purchase price on these and it would be money well spent ... but the good news is that you need not spend it all at once.

You mean to say TTS-1 is not enough for you? Goes away in a huff!

Good choice bitflipper!  Zebra, Omni, and Kontakt make an excellent trio.

Another great thing about Zebra (and SynthMaster as well, I might add) are some superb third party sound set offerings.

I'm afraid that if I buy a bunch of patches it'll distract me from my primary goal of rolling my own. The factory sound set already contains plenty of good examples for reverse-engineering.
 
Oh yeh, I talk a good talk, but I suspect there will be a few bucks going down a new Zebra money-hole. I'm listening to the demo for the Transmission soundset right now. Just 30 bucks. Must be strong - I still don't have that Rick.
 

Congrats Bit - it's a very difficult choice to be sure.

I'm not sure I could narrow it to one myself, but I have imposed a rule that I won't add to the synth stable till I've either mastered, or discarded the stuff I already have, which includes FM8, Reactor and Massive from NI, Alchemy from Camel Audio, and Tassman from AAS. I really thing this should have me covered for anything I need to do, though I do drool over Zebra. Not sure why, but Synthmaster has never really captured my fancy - the demo songs just don't grab me like many of the Zebra demos do. But, any new synth will have to wait till I've spent a lot more quality time with what I have. I've even put off downloading the Zebralette freebie<G>!

I know that an awful lot of folks really love Omnisphere, and every demo I've heard has sounded amazing. I suspect if I ever had a chance to use it I'd change my tune, but I don't really understand why I need it.
 
Kontakt is, well, Kontakt, and yes, you really want the OTS Rick bass!!!