U-he will update a classic free synth with the coming release of Zebra 3. Here’s what we know about the forthcoming free Zebralette 3 plugin.
U-he is one of my favorite soft synth developers, and I’ve been a fan for some time, while Repro 5 has long been the go-to for me.
Any news from U-he interests me; however, this particular news is very interesting because it involves the return of a classic and one of the best free synths ever; Zebralette 3.
Zebralette is a mainstay in our best free synth VST list, and I expect this new release to cement that position even further.
U-he showcased Zebralette 3 at Superbooth 23, and I’m ashamed to say I didn’t get any time with it.
Superbooth is organized chaos in the most beautiful way, and as much as I planned to see everything, I got lost in blissful ignorance (and headphones) with too many instruments too many times and ended up against the clock.
Our good friend, Tom from Synth Anatomy, interviewed Urs Heckmann about the forthcoming Zebralette 3.

I might have missed out on U-he this year, but the release of Zebralette 3 will go some way to make up for that.
I should also mention that there will be a new flagship Zebra 3 release, and as with previous years, Zebralette 3 will function as a lite version of the paid product.
Despite not having the full functionality of the paid version and just a single oscillator, Zebralette 3 is a potential game-changer in free synths. The new engine looks to be deeper and more flexible than ever, which is quite an exciting prospect.
Some exciting additions to this release are an entirely new oscillator module and a powerful built-in editor. The new oscillator module offers various synthesis types, including Wavetable, Morphing, VA, Additive, and Spline Wave.
The editor allows you to draw and manipulate waveforms in more ways than we could list, whether you want smooth morphing or absolute carnage.
Like the Zebralette 2, the new release will feature an MSEG (multi-stage envelope generator), but this one has been completely reworked to be more flexible and easier to use. As expected, Zebralette 3 will feature a bunch of oscillator effects to extend the scope of possibilities even further.
It seems like Zebralette 3 will be familiar enough to anyone who has tried previous releases, but we should be in for a surprise with the depth of its capabilities, and that’s awesome because the old one was great!
Zebralette 3 won’t be released till the end of 2023, but it’s definitely one to look forward to.
It will be available for macOS and Windows.
And lastly, don’t forget it’s the last week to grab that free Moogerfooger at Plugin Boutique.
Watch video: Zebralette 3 preview
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Last Updated on May 24, 2023 by Tomislav Zlatic.