The Hive Hexagon Thread

[J-909]

Did I read Hive with wavetable synthesis??

[Urs]

Did I read Hive with wavetable synthesis??

Not really I'm afraid... I was just saying that we might do a little more than additional sets of static waveforms. Wavetables are one option out of many, but as I said as well, I've never been very drawn towards them.

[HcDoom]

I would rather go with more static waveforms than with wavetables, theres already too much synths on the market with wt’s. I can only hope for additional 2x OSCs...do I dream too much? I would settle with 1x additional as well. It will open a lot more doors for sound designers.

[Teksonik]

A vote for the ability for selected Oscs to bypass the FX and or Arp......

[Sound Author]

I think FM might be my strongest desire here. Of course, then you have the issue of where to put the FM routing and depth controls. I guess you can hide them in the matrix. It does reaffirm the need for a re-design. I just hope the new look is as slick and sharp as the current look. Hive is such a sexy b****!

[clangorous]

A vote for the ability for selected Oscs to bypass the FX and or Arp......

Selected OSC bypassing the arp is something that came up for me also, specifically with Hive but not other synths for some reason. It would be cool.

Bypassing effects would be excellent because I could have one OSC going through Distortion and another one unaffected by it. But (sometimes) I'd still want to send it through delay and reverb

[J-909]

Did I read Hive with wavetable synthesis??

Not really I'm afraid... I was just saying that we might do a little more than additional sets of static waveforms. Wavetables are one option out of many, but as I said as well, I've never been very drawn towards them.

Cool, would be fine with just more wave types. How about some sort of waveshaping (bend, sync, etc)? That only needs to occupy one or two knobbs.

[jbw]

There are loads and loads of other alternatives, including sample playback, FM and what not. We do have to find something that pairs well with Hive's modulation capabilities though. Sample playback usually isn't it (apart from glitch or granular) and FM requires a whole different set of parameters.

My vote would be for sample playback, if you could get it to blend even halfway decently into Hive. I'm trying to envision what that might be like, and draw a blank, but samples themselves offer so much variety and possibility just due to the fact that you could throw any sample in there (well maybe not anything, considering time constraints, but you get the idea).

[tony10000]

How about a A/B section like Sylenth and Harmor? That would provide 4 oscillators and two subs. Easy enough to not use it or turn it off to conserve CPU.

[Urs]

How about a A/B section like Sylenth and Harmor? That would provide 4 oscillators and two subs. Easy enough to not use it or turn it off to conserve CPU.

It's exactly the problem we have solved in Hive. In Sylenth you have to tab back and forth, in Hive it's all on one screen. The sub oscillators in Hive offer less choice than a full oscillator, yet I haven't seen many Sylenth presets that are completely impossible to do in Hive. We believe that for this kind of 2-layered synth, Hive offers just the right feature set *without* any A/B section.

[HcDoom]

How about a A/B section like Sylenth and Harmor? That would provide 4 oscillators and two subs. Easy enough to not use it or turn it off to conserve CPU.

It's exactly the problem we have solved in Hive. In Sylenth you have to tab back and forth, in Hive it's all on one screen. The sub oscillators in Hive offer less choice than a full oscillator, yet I haven't seen many Sylenth presets that are completely impossible to do in Hive. We believe that for this kind of 2-layered synth, Hive offers just the right feature set *without* any A/B section.

But still, please, think about adding additional 1 or 2 oscs! It could fit on one screen/tab!

[Soarer]

So lately I'm thinking vector synthesis, maybe with spatial qualities ("stereo waveforms", if that term exists) or even wavetables. Both methods (vector & wavetable) have never really resonated well with me though. So I have yet to find the spark that makes me jump into development. I do however find the open source editor from Synthesis Technology quite intrigueing, and I'm of course knee deep in the realtime wave morphing technology for Zebra 3. So it might very well be that something like it pops up one day.

Urs why do you not like wavetable synthesis?
It provides so many waveforms and it's simple to scroll through them. Of course Hive is not presently a wavetable synth so in this regard I can see that it still might add a whole new complexity to the synth. Anyway I hope you find something interesting!

[ariston]

Urs why do you not like wavetable synthesis?
It provides so many waveforms and it's simple to scroll through them. Of course Hive is not presently a wavetable synth so in this regard I can see that it still might add a whole new complexity to the synth. Anyway I hope you find something interesting!

Seems to be a matter of taste... Urs has frequently mentioned that he never took to the "Waldorf" sound.

[Urs]

Urs why do you not like wavetable synthesis?
It provides so many waveforms and it's simple to scroll through them. Of course Hive is not presently a wavetable synth so in this regard I can see that it still might add a whole new complexity to the synth. Anyway I hope you find something interesting!

Seems to be a matter of taste... Urs has frequently mentioned that he never took to the "Waldorf" sound.

Yeah, that.

To me there's something boring about one waveform transitioning to another in always the same way, either as one way djooouuum or back and forth as boyoyoyoyoy. It's always "not quite PWM" and "not quite sync" and never quite FM. Yet there needs to be a 100+ of these in a synth to keep it interesting. To me this seems like the sheer number of wavetables is used to hide that they're essentially doing all same boring, one dimensional thing.

I much prefer smooth transitions between a much broader palette. Like, going from a to b to c and back to a, but this time over d, next time with a short stop at e. And definitely something that has more degrees of freedom than just 1.

Let me give another example:

I have always lusted for the E-MU Morpheus. Now that its filter is available for Eurorack, I'm kind of put off by it. There are hundreds of different models. How long am I supposed to try this thing to figure out what works in which situation? Most of them sound like a phaser or a flanger, and an ordinary dual peak filter gives me way similar sounds that I have better control over and a clearer understanding of.

I believe that "mass accumulation" is a stupid thing in synth design. I prefer synthesis methods which don't need endless lists of options. For synthesizers I prefer Rubik's Cubes over 1000 piece puzzles.

[EvilDragon]

But wavetable sweeping doesn't have to be one-dimensional, once you start playing with Waldorf's modifiers and mod matrix... you can very easily end up in vector synthesis territory, of sorts.