# U-He Zebra HZ



## Pier (Aug 7, 2020)

Since there isn't a dedicated thread for this beast I might as well start one :D

To be honest I just bought Zebra HZ to get Zebra 3 for free when it comes out, but I never used it seriously. After reading some comments it got me curious and I've been playing more with it.

The biggest feature are of course the Diva filters (in mono) but I just found it has something I've always wanted in Zebra. You can now use the XY as regular modulation sources!

So you might ask, what's the point of this? Can't we already modulate things with the XY sources?

Right. The point of using these XY modulators is that you can have a dedicated hardware controller with 8 knobs or faders just for that. It's like having 8 modulation wheels, always there at your disposal without any midi mapping (other than configuring the CCs the first time in your controller).

The problem is that in regular Zebra these XY modulators don't behave like other modulation sources such as the mod wheel. You can't use them in the mod matrix or assign them in the multiple modulation knobs around the Zebra UI (eg: filter cutoff). They do have their dedicated panel, which is not as immediate, and while you get more control with the scales and max/min values... I've personally never been too fond of those. I guess HZ wasn't either since he requested this feature.

It's even better if you're using Ableton Live, as you can have a dedicated controller for your macros.

So you tell Live that a device will be used for controlling macros using a little script and say CC21 will always be the first macro on any device that is currently selected (has the blue hand). So for example, I've configured my 8 macros for Zebra to be the XY, but also for Zebra HZ, and also for Hive. Also the macros of ANA2, or Massive. This means that my little NI controller with 8 rotary encoders will always automatically default to the 8 macros of the current device with the blue hand, without me doing anything. Like I said, it's like having 8 permanent mod wheels 






Here's a video on how to use a NI controller just for this purpose.



I used a NI controller because I already had it, but I think a better device for this would be this Faderfox controller:








 Faderfox EC4


Faderfox EC4 - Encoder controller




faderfox.de





Or maybe some small controller with just 8 or even 16 faders.


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## Dr.Quest (Aug 7, 2020)

Cool!


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## EvilDragon (Aug 10, 2020)

Pier said:


> They do have their dedicated panel, which is not as immediate, and while you get more control with the scales and max/min values... I've personally never been too fond of those.



You can drag&drop the X/Y slot onto a target, it's quite fast.


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