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[Sendy]

No, he means Hive.

Are they actually developing a product called hive? Seriously?

NOT THE BEES!

[EvilDragon]

NOT THE BEES!

Oh hahah. Dat reference!

[ObsoleteAcc99]

Well, it shows that a major bunch of people prefer simplicity over complexity

I would have expected Diva to fare better and I'm glad that Zebra got up there. I also think that ACE is underrated. But then, I'm also surprised at some of the results of the others synths - some in good, some in surprised ways.

If we can take these results as a bit of a market research, I'm quite confident that the things we've planned are in line with what's reflected here and next year we'll improve

Agreed. I thought Diva would be top 3 and sylenth would no longer be number 1, and that ace would be higher (i often call ace an underrated gem and the sweet spot of the uhe stuff).

[Erkenfresh]

I used ANA a little bit and it's incrementally better than Sylenth at least. It just doesn't have the wide exposure and the "first to market"-ness of Sylenth. Still no Zebra there though.

[Urs]

No, he means Hive.

Are they actually developing a product called hive? Seriously?

The sound of supersaws always reminded me of bees. There's a supersaw-ish preset in the Wavestation EX called something like "BEEhive" if I recall correctly.

Hive has been a vessel for me to explore the fastest possible supersaw algorithm with at least the sonic quality of Sylenth1. I stopped working on it when it went down to just about half the CPU usage of Sylenth1, or considerably less aliasing at a bit more than the same CPU.

This was triggered when magazines started to state that "u-he plug-ins are known to be heavy on CPU", which of course is utter bullshit. Diva in draft mode doesn't take up more CPU than many synths out there but still sounds exceptional.

So yeah, we kind of do a low-on-CPU synth targeting a similar audience as Sylenth1. It's a side project with very low priority atm.

[BBFG#]

It seems to me that this list also shows the people that vote on these.
As well as price points. I like Synthmaster for what I find useful in it, but probably wouldn't have thought much about it if I hadn't lighted onto certain sound sets for it.
That, and the fact it can be bought cheaply during their regular sales, puts it in more hands to make it more popular. But otherwise doesn't warrant its position either.
Given that consideration, that puts Zebra & Diva much higher than what they list it at. I personally don't consider their top five to be in my top five in any event.

[pdxindy]

It is something of a dance music popularity contest.

I think it is absurd that String Studio is not on this list... Innovative, unique and sonically rich synth. Exceptionally expressive and playable.

I think it is absurd that Spire rates higher than Zebra...

Also, the blurbs can be crap. They are saying the same ancient history about Zebra now being available for the PC... wtf? That is many years out of date.

[Coorec]

I consider Spire a well sounding synth. Its not as flexible as Zebra, and not as pristine in sound as Diva, but its an easy to use Synth. Like Urs stated, sometimes simplicity wins over perfection. For me thats often the case when "sketching" a song-idea or an arrangement-draft.

[pdxindy]

I consider Spire a well sounding synth. Its not as flexible as Zebra, and not as pristine in sound as Diva, but its an easy to use Synth. Like Urs stated, sometimes simplicity wins over perfection. For me thats often the case when "sketching" a song-idea or an arrangement-draft.

There are lots of simple synths... Spire is aimed at the dance music audience that populates MusicRadar and it's a current darling...

I'm just thoroughly bored with that sound and style so feeling a bit pissy about it. Don't pay any attention to me

[Coorec]

If it helps to lighten your mood...

.. see .. after 20 years with synths, what still amazes me most is, that different people get different things out of the same machine. I have even heard patches on Massive that got me to tears, because better programmers than myself got them out of it.

So the conclusion is: It's never the Synth's fault ..

[V0RT3X]

I played with Spire and it's easy to use, but i would easily prefer something like Zebra, Ace or bazille for hardcore sound design stuff.

I guess if i had to bump out a bunch of dance tracks to keep the masses content.. i might like spire more. I've thought about producing EDM but the more i've read into it the less i want to be involved with that crowd.

[pdxindy]

If it helps to lighten your mood...

.. see .. after 20 years with synths, what still amazes me most is, that different people get different things out of the same machine. I have even heard patches on Massive that got me to tears, because better programmers than myself got them out of it.

So the conclusion is: It's never the Synth's fault ..

Aha... so it is the fault of the Spire users... Thanks for helping me get that sorted out

[~Pd~]

It's a shame ACE isn't higher in the poll. ACE is like the Tardis, bigger on the inside.

[LFO8]

Diva in draft mode doesn't take up more CPU than many synths out there but still sounds exceptional.

Draft mode is the only mode I am using lately to keep CPU use at normal levels (running a 2008 Mac Pro) and only use higher quality modes for offline rendering. What I am wondering though Urs; when Diva is concerned, does freezing a track in Ableton count as offline rendering for Diva?

[Urs]

What I am wondering though Urs; when Diva is concerned, does freezing a track in Ableton count as offline rendering for Diva?

I hope so… that would be a question best asked in Ableton forums.

We could check it out with some debug messages though… we're implementing a bit of a deeper host analysis tool chain anyway, so to harvest information about oddities and limitations of hosts. We'll certainly include "does offline processing properly" into our database, and we'll notify the user of possible problems with hosts straight away. I.e. if someone touches the render quality settings in a host that doesn't do proper offline processing, we'll display a little message in the gui (hehehe, possibly with a link to the host manufacturer's website for feature requests)

- Urs