Now Hive is here, is it RIP Sylenth?

[EnGee]

I believe Hive is a great concept/project. From the beginning I was hyped and glad for such project (although, it took few tries to finally be convinced of it, like a difficult to know woman, but once you understand her well, you fall in love with her ).

Why do I believe it is a great concept/project in u-he? Because it is not complex as Zebra, not mainly for Analogish side like Diva, and not Modular or semi modular like ACE and Bazille. So, it fills a good space IMO. Nice looking and easy going synth, who can dislike such a synth?!

It needs time and to be polished more and more but u-he should keep it nice looking and easy going Of course I prefer Hive 2 with reasonable upgrade price, but any improvement to the current one is welcomed as well

[recursive one]

Ironically, my impression is the people who are hard on Hive don't really know it.

This pretty much may be. Given the amount of possible alternatives, the frist impression is often crucial, especially when a synth is marketed as an instant gratification tool for EDM producers. The avreage user may be testing it like that: "intall - > play the presets - > they don't sound like the Sylenth presets used by [a "bigname" producer] - > uninstall", 15 minutes at best. Why people are spreading their superficial and biased opinions? Well, because people are people Also I have to say that the U-he fanbase is sometimes too vocal about their preferences, praising the U-He synths as the tools which each and everyone must have, totally replcaing all other synths, etc, this causes counter-reaction from people who don't see these synths as something special

[Urs]

the frist impression is often crucial

My synths are like me, according to some girls I used to date. I'm more of a second impression guy

It's what I talked about before, something that makes a great first impression will often (probably almost always) become tedious in the long run. I prefer designs that support power users. Some may call that geeky, but then geeks have become the predominant flavour of cool ever since Sheldon Cooper has surpassed Charlie Harper's popularity.

Mind you, I have nothing against users who are the musical equivalent of Charlie Harper. There is certainly more struggle in a user base made out of Sheldon Coopers, but I guess I still prefer it. I like the idea that my stuff gets used by people who overcame the first hurdle and thus know what they got.

Anyhow, what I find interesting with those people who may be considered "u-he fanboys" is that I don't see them go around threads and post negative stuff, just to stirr things up. I'm sure there are examples of that too, but I can't remember any of my evocative users appearing in each and every thread of company XY repeating the same kind of litter over and over, as if it became more true the more often they repeated it. But I can see them calling out bullshit when they see it, just like I do myself.

[ATS]

I think it's safe to say right now many more people are using Sylenth than HIVE

I think it's equally safe to say right now many more people are using Hive legitimately than Sylenth.

Seems to me it would be more on both counts but maybe I am just thinking of the target audience.

[mcnoone]

I think it's safe to say right now many more people are using Sylenth than HIVE

I think it's equally safe to say right now many more people are using Hive legitimately than Sylenth.

Seems to me it would be more on both counts but maybe I am just thinking of the target audience.

@ ATS: You still ignored the fact that the two synths haven't been available for the same amount of time, which clearly has an effect on your original post.
Anyone can say anything they want when important details are left out.

[Urs]

I think it's safe to say right now many more people are using Sylenth than HIVE

I think it's equally safe to say right now many more people are using Hive legitimately than Sylenth.

Seems to me it would be more on both counts but maybe I am just thinking of the target audience.

Yeah, hmmm... what I mean is, we can't be equally sure on both accounts. In my opinion however I think your statement is right and mine is too. I mean, I have gathered enough sales information from many companies to know what's a a good seller and how many sales one can expect for a plug-in. I furthermore think I know a lot about how businesses like ours are run, and how that correlates on their level of revenue. I think one can likewise correlate in the other direction, to some degree. It's very vague though, but I'd be baffled if I was wrong

[recursive one]

the frist impression is often crucial

My synths are like me, according to some girls I used to date. I'm more of a second impression guy

It's what I talked about before, something that makes a great first impression will often (probably almost always) become tedious in the long run. I prefer designs that support power users. Some may call that geeky, but then geeks have become the predominant flavour of cool ever since Sheldon Cooper has surpassed Charlie Harper's popularity.

Mind you, I have nothing against users who are the musical equivalent of Charlie Harper. There is certainly more struggle in a user base made out of Sheldon Coopers, but I guess I still prefer it. I like the idea that my stuff gets used by people who overcame the first hurdle and thus know what they got.

Anyhow, what I find interesting with those people who may be considered "u-he fanboys" is that I don't see them go around threads and post negative stuff, just to stirr things up. I'm sure there are examples of that too, but I can't remember any of my evocative users appearing in each and every thread of company XY repeating the same kind of litter over and over, as if it became more true the more often they repeated it. But I can see them calling out bullshit when they see it, just like I do myself.

I don't know who are these guys you are talking about But I see your point, and in this sence changing the Hive's marketing focus from "a brand new EDM machine" to "a general purpose VA synth with some U-He twists" seems to be a good idea, i think, as it would give better representation of what Hive actually is.

All in all, I guess you're personally not a big fan of the trance/Virusy sound (let alone this "trance 2.0" thing as they call it), are you?

[Urs]

All in all, I guess you're personally not a big fan of the trance/Virusy sound (let alone this "trance 2.0" thing as they call it), are you?

I can appreciate the sound, but because my musical taste is different doesn't mean I have no friends who enjoy trance music

[recursive one]

All in all, I guess you're personally not a big fan of the trance/Virusy sound (let alone this "trance 2.0" thing as they call it), are you?

I can appreciate the sound, but because my musical taste is different doesn't mean I have no friends who enjoy trance music

I know next to nothing about synth development but in my view in order to make a synth suited for certain sound/genre you must really love this sound/genre, that's what I mean . When you are into trance, you know what works in the trance context and what doesn't despite sounding amazing per se, same with, say, Berlin school, or synthpop or [insert a genre name here].

Having thus said, Diva is amazing for oldschool goa trance, despite i highly doubt goa was its intended purpose

https://soundcloud.com/recursion-loop/divagoa1m

[aumordia]

there's shades of truth in everything here, yeah it probably helps to love the genre you're targeting, but then, look at the 303, nobody thought that was going to kick off an acid revolution. hell fl studio started as a midi drum sequencer, created by a belgian anime fan who is on record, multiple times, as being "not that into music."

all that said, i don't think u-he has had a single flop yet. also i think hive is probably more successful than ace, and the latter is certainly more a labor of love.

tangentially, i don't think u-he fans tend to troll other threads, IME though, a small but vocal percentage of them melt down autistically if you're like "eh i don't think diva sounds that great." (which i don't, but then, the only analog i've ever played is an acoustic guitar, so what do i know)

Urs, a UX case study for you: i picked up zebra because of sylenth1's very limited (amazing you can do it at all really) FM/PM/AM capabilities, i wanted to broaden my palette to include some of those sounds. Now one of my bread and butter types of sounds are plucky-belly sorts of things. I've got probably 30 something of these programmed for Sylenth1, but they most sound quite traditionally subtractive -- there are a couple where I shoehorned in some AM, but it's pretty limited.

So I fired up Zebra to program an FM or AM bell sound. It must have taken me half a dozen tries over several hours before I finally got something I liked. Here's the thing though: once I finished it up and setup the X-Y controllers, I realized I could, with this one single patch in Zebra, cover about 80% of my existing Sylenth1 pluck sounds, as well as create a whole host of new ones that Sylenth1 can't do.

This might be a useful way to look at what differentiates the use cases for these types of synths. You could look at Zebra as the thing that makes big, flexible sounds, but takes longer to program, whereas Sylenth1 is faster to program for any one given sound, but each sound is less flexible.

Now, what if you looked at Hive in this paradigm, and then said "what can I do to keep it fast to program, but bring it closer to the range of sonic possibilities Zebra has?" Not sure if you're already thinking along these lines, but it might be compelling.

[EnGee]

All in all, I guess you're personally not a big fan of the trance/Virusy sound (let alone this "trance 2.0" thing as they call it), are you?

I can appreciate the sound, but because my musical taste is different doesn't mean I have no friends who enjoy trance music

I know next to nothing about synth development but in my view in order to make a synth suited for certain sound/genre you must really love this sound/genre, that's what I mean . When you are into trance, you know what works in the trance context and what doesn't despite sounding amazing per se, same with, say, Berlin school, or synthpop or [insert a genre name here].

This is indeed the best of what I read so far

Urs, IMO and in conclusion, if you want to conquer that territory, you need to cooperate with a Trance guru or artist from the very first steps. With his/her guidance, you will understand what their needs are.

[fluffy_little_something]

You could also make a special HipHop edition of Hive, complete with golden FX chain, MF filter, bitch modulation etc.

[ATN69]

Hive is actually great for anything from Film scores, Trance, House to Ambient music. Even some decent acoustic kind of sounds can be made with it. I made a wooden flute for example. It is easy to work with as well. What I love the most with Hive is how easy it is to modulate things. One of the sound designers who made presets for the original factory library is Aiyn Zahev. He know a thing or two about Trance and his presets are great. Hive is already very capable and if anyone want more capabilities there are both Zebra and Diva.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fZkL0y_TxA ..Aiyn Zahev trance sounds for Hive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQB6qZDttoI ..Joseph Hollo amazing pads for Hive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bG0JPMXtrOk ..Kevin Schröder great movie music

...and there are much more

[Urs]

if you want to conquer that territory, you need to cooperate with a Trance guru or artist from the very first steps.

If the people/groups mentioned on the wikipedia article about Trance Music are considered "Trance Gurus", I just checked and more than half of them have Hive, two of the other half have Diva and Zebra, while one guy only has a bunch of our effects. Some have almost everything. I remember we got a similar outcome when we went through Forbes Mag's top earning DJ list.

I guess that says a lot about how "geeky" it is to have our stuff in the context of Trance music production

[fluffy_little_something]

Was just comparing init patches and noticed that when playing the same note, Hive's pitch is slightly higher than that of Sylenth1 and Hybrid 3, which seem to have exactly the same pitch. I don't have analyzers, so I can only rely on my ears.