u-he

fluffy_little_something · Thu Jul 02, 2015 3:47 pm

Radeon HD 4290 chip on the mother board, no dedicated graphics card. But that has never been a problem so far (never tried video games, though).

Windows simply lag a lot when dragging them, it's as if the screen froze every half second or so.

And please add an option to turn off the last-note memory in mono mode. Currently when playing fast bass lines sometimes wrong notes slip in...

Ikariya · Post by **Ikariya** » Sat Jul 04, 2015 7:42 pm

Hi guys,

So I bought Hive and am loving the flexibility and fast workflow. Congrats Urs on making such a friendly synth that doesn't take a year to learn!

But alas, now I'm using it lots I've hit an issue that cripples it for me. When I feed Hive fast non-legato MIDI notes (e.g. a sequence of 16th notes with 1/32 duration, 1/32 silence - typical for my basslines) I don't want the notes smearing together so I ideally need to set amp env attack <10, release <30. But this produces pops and clicks. The artifacts are low dB so you might not notice at first. But once you add any processing that enhances treble they become quite audible. I do some heavy volume maximizing on my busses so by that stage the pops are painfully loud, and they occur for pretty much every note.

Can easily reproduce like this:
1. Open Hive to the default patch.
2. Set OSC1 to sine wave - lack of harmonics makes the problem more obvious.
3. Switch on Distortion, high Amount, high Tone.
4. Switch on EQ, boost High freqs.
5. Play some notes. You should hear loud pops.

The only way I've found to get rid of the artifacts is to crank up the attack and release values beyond what I want musically. But I have a patch with attack 15 / release 30 that still pops... Have also tried setting Phase mode to Reset, this sometimes reduces it but not fully.

Please can this be fixed?

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64
DAW: Bitwig Studio 1.1.7
VST: Hive 1.0.0 Rev 3514 (x64)

Ikariya · Post by **Ikariya** » Sat Jul 04, 2015 8:04 pm

I should also note that various functions in Hive (especially the effects activation buttons) can randomly output noise when you touch them.
e.g. With playback stopped I switch on an effect, and hear it dump what sounds like a tiny piece of old buffered audio.
My chain of other plugins amps these noises to be really loud, so it'd be nice to see this fixed too.

Thanks!

fluffy_little_something · Sat Jul 04, 2015 8:05 pm

What parameter value does 10 ms correspond to?

Audio example?

D-Fusion · Post by **D-Fusion** » Sat Jul 04, 2015 8:24 pm

fluffy_little_something wrote:Radeon HD 4290 chip on the mother board, no dedicated graphics card. But that has never been a problem so far (never tried video games, though).

Windows simply lag a lot when dragging them, it's as if the screen froze every half second or so.

And please add an option to turn off the last-note memory in mono mode. Currently when playing fast bass lines sometimes wrong notes slip in...

What host/Daw do you use?

fluffy_little_something · Sat Jul 04, 2015 8:34 pm

Mixcraft, but that is not the reason, after all no other plugin I have behaves that way...

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Sat Jul 04, 2015 8:37 pm

@Ikariya: Extremely fast envelopes will almost always produce clicks. That's just a fact of life.

Naturally, distortion and EQ will emphasize the clicks. The only real solution is not to use Attack time of 0. Somewhere around 5-6 should alleviate the clicks, yet still produce a sorta punchy attack. Alternatively you can try taming those clicks with a compressor at the end of the FX chain.

kaiyoti · Post by **kaiyoti** » Mon Jul 06, 2015 4:50 pm

@Urs

Feature request... Any chance of adding delay intervals that's not clock synced? eg. fractions of seconds etc. I use ultra short delays to certain plucked sounds which makes it slightly more organic. The problem is that a person using the patch in a different tempo will result in a different sound.

Example
Eg: https://github.com/kaiyoti/synth-preset ... 20Harp.h2p

Paul

Shiek927 · Post by **Shiek927** » Mon Jul 06, 2015 9:24 pm

The feature request thread is here: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 3&start=30. It should be tagged ^^.

mutantdog · Post by **mutantdog** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 6:06 am

I'm still having a problem with the arp starting at different positions each time.

edit: to clarify, its the arp that's the problem and not the step seq.

fluffy_little_something · Tue Jul 07, 2015 8:24 am

I suppose they are moving house now and don't have time for such things, yet. Maybe they don't even have Internet access at the moment, Germany is a bit backwards in this respect (as well), an IT developing country

fluffy_little_something · Tue Jul 07, 2015 8:38 am

kaiyoti wrote:@Urs

Feature request... Any chance of adding delay intervals that's not clock synced? eg. fractions of seconds etc. I use ultra short delays to certain plucked sounds which makes it slightly more organic. The problem is that a person using the patch in a different tempo will result in a different sound.

Example
Eg: https://github.com/kaiyoti/synth-preset ... 20Harp.h2p

Paul

Well, that happens when you stick to the original too much

It is the same on Sylenth

Anyway, what I also noticed is that Hive consumes a lot more CPU than Sylenth, while not really sounding better, especially not to a degree that would warrant that higher CPU load. I have made an all but identical pad on both with chorus, reverb and longer envelope release times. When playing the same chord repeatedly, on Hive the voices build up fast and the sound starts to crackle. On Sylenth that is not the case, even when I increase the number of waves per voice to a number higher than on Hive. The voices build up as well, but there is no crackling at all when I hit the voice limit, voice stealing seems perfect as well.
(On that note, with both synths I don't know what the purpose is of allowing the same notes to build up like that, i.e. 5, 6, 7 times etc. I think two should be the limit, either a complete restart of the envelopes or a pick-up mode from the previous note, but not from 2, 3 or more notes back. That is a total waste of CPU power without any audible advantage in my view. Sure, I could manually limit the number of voices to 3 or so, but that is not an ideal solution because the number of notes played can vary quite a bit during a track.)

Regardless of that, I don't know whether or not Hive uses 0df filters, but something about it seems much less efficient than with Sylenth. Since my computer is not that strong, that is a bit of a problem and for this and other reasons already mentioned I have switched back to Sylenth. Hive is good, but I will sell it as soon as the waiting period is over

I suppose as long as I have this computer (another 5 to 7 years or so based on my experience with my previous computers), there is just no reasonable alternative to Sylenth, no other synth seems to be as highly optimized, perfectly balanced, and carefully thought-out. Sorry to say that

MikeCallon · Post by **MikeCallon** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 8:55 am

Since my computer is not that strong

I suppose as long as I have this computer (another 5 to 7 years or so based on my experience with my previous computers)

Wow .... your computer is already 'not that strong' and you plan to keep it for another 5 years or so .... I'm sure I have an old 386 in the attic somewhere ... you want to borrow it ?

fluffy_little_something · Tue Jul 07, 2015 9:22 am

No thanks

Yes, I always keep my computers until they break, usually after 10 years or so. I am not the consumerist kind of guy, I try to lead a sustainable life, to the extent possible that is. I know my mere existence is a problem for our planet...

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 10:49 am

You then seem to have an old CPU that doesn't have registers on it for all the neat optimizations that Hive is using, which DOES make it less CPU intensive than Sylenth. You cannot blame u-he for that, only yourself.

Besides, Hive sounds like much better than Sylenth in each and every aspect, IMHO. The filter especially, Sylenth can only dream about it.