I like the sound and cpu usage of Saurus, but I love Minimonsta too.

Sort of a quandry, as I alway wished for MM, but then Saurus came along.

Both have a great sound, though they are different.

I wish I could afford both!

Thoughts?

These synths couldn't be more different from each other. What's the point? Hey guys, should I buy a boat or a Motorcycle? I can't decide!

do one now, one later. saurus is amazing, it's got enough oldskool flavor, but the arp etc bring it into the 21st century...and there are soundsets coming...

I wish I had more $$... I would just get both

...but leaning towards Saurus

Diva replaces both of them.

You've done it now...

I'm at least a little familiar with both and I have to agree that the answer is actually Diva UNLESS you're talking about using it live. There's a note hanging bug in both Diva and Zebra that rule them out as a live option. This bug is acknowledged by Uhe but the timeframe for a fix is vague and it's been around for at least nine months.
cheers.

Honestly, I was going to say the same thing but I didn't want to take the thread down that road again. If someone doesn't know the answer by now, then it's hopeless anyway.

2 choices and yet there's always people that go OOT, and do you really think a good sound designer like TS never tried diva? Maybe he wanted to spend time making music rather than repeating freezing over and over again. And people already makes fine music despite of all the crazy aliasing back in the day.

I'd go with saurus, it's pretty fun to program, and the sound is great. It's my main synth right now, and i have high hopes on the next updates.

Ha! I guess I didn't look at who was asking. Now that you mention it, I am kind of surprised that someone so experienced would be asking such a question. I just assumed it was another newb post. Nevermind. Carry on.

The OP has an old cpu which cannot handle Diva...

Sure you can use them live! Just don't switch presets while holding notes and it is fine.

I demoed Diva and Saurus extensively before purchasing. I bought Saurus. I just preferred the sound. To me, it sounded more analog.

But getting back to the op. Saurus does sound very good. And very flexible. I'm also amazed at the low CPU usage. Very impressive.

I agree to that. I got both Diva and Saurus but while the sound quality of Diva is nice i am still using Saurus more. While programming presets on Saurus i also found that for some of those presets the sound quality difference becomes very small and with an additional EQ for the "low end" gets almost zero.
Like i already mentioned in one of my first comments after the release of Saurus the sound quality vs CPU use ration of Saurus seems to be really excellent.

Not to forget that Diva misses some features in comparison to Saurus like e.g. the Arpeggiator/step sequencer and Notch + Formant/Peak filters. With the Sub oscillators you could play up to 6 waveforms at once (some of the Sub Osc waveforms use a second lower octave). With the mod matrix several advanced faetures like e.g. change of the envelope slopes are available.
Another nice features is that you could do PWM with all available waveforms which means that each selectable waveform contains a minimum of two different ones.

Markus has done a few step by step procedures for certain features of Saurus:
http://www.tone2.org/forum/index.php?topic=950.0
http://www.tone2.org/forum/index.php?topic=1000.0

Anyway if you want to get a nice Moog emulation with some extra features Diva would be the better choice than Minimosnta IMO. As i also got a Moog Slim Phatty most of my "Moog needs" is covered by that but as a software replacement Diva seems to be the best for those specific sounds. Anyway Saurus could do some really great Moog-like sounds too. Saurus seems to be a kind of "swiss-army-knife" while Diva (and Minimonsta too) is for some more specific kind of sounds.


Ingo

And with some sounds the sound quality difference is huge. Push the boundaries more and Saurus sounds harsh and digital with tons of aliasing. Analog can sound thin, piercing, shrill, but it does not have that aliasing harshness. Anything with lots of aliasing harshness is not accurately emulating an analog counterpart. Saurus does fine within a basic range but go outside that and it doesn't sound like an analog at all. Diva can go much farther into that territory and retain its sonic integrity. So if you like to go there, and I do, then the performance to cpu ratio of Saurus is not so good.




And Saurus misses some features in comparison to Diva... and Minimonsta too has features that Saurus does not. Minimonsta can have an individual LFO or ADSR for most of the main parameters. That is a lot of modulation capability not at all possible in Saurus or Diva. Saurus and Diva both only have 2 LFO's. Minimonsta also has preset morphing with realtime control and neither Saurus nor Diva can match that. Minimonsta also has audio in.

Saurus has more waveforms than Minimonsta. Minimonsta has the basic 5-6. Saurus has many when you factor in the pwm for every waveform. Diva has about 20 different waveforms you can choose from across the 4 different osc's. That is a lot of variety too.

I'd say Saurus and Diva are roughly equal in sonic variety at the osc level. Minimonsta is more limited and only has the 24db filter, but it has much more modulation capability with so many LFO's, Env's, and the preset morphing.

Zebra, Tera, Helix etc... these are swiss army knife synths, not Saurus. I'd say Saurus, Diva and Minimonsta are all about equal in their variety in their own way.