I hear people rave about how awesome Diva is and I just don't see it. It's a nice synth but I feel that it has some weaknesses.

I find it sounds somewhat harsh in the higher frequencies, it's an unpleasant harshness that neither zebra or ace have.

The filters have some nice warmth to them, but the front to back depth is just not there. When you sweep the filters on the KLAE MS-20 or V-Station there is a front to back sensation of the sound jumping out at you, whereas in Diva the sound stays flat and 2-dimensional, regardless of the interesting warmth and harmonics going on.

The oscillators by themselves have a thinness in the upper registers.

For the sound it gives you it uses up rather large amounts of CPU.

Maybe this post will trigger some new ideas and thoughts. God bless.

You might be alone (or in a very thin minority) with those thoughts.

The only conclusion I make of your posting is:
a) You want to create a commotion
b) Your rig isn't up to scratch
c) You need to make a doctor appointment to check your hearing
d) All of the above

The conclusion of the lengthy test in Sound on Sound is that Diva is startlingly good.

I'll take their word over yours any day.

If anything sounds harsh out of Diva, Zebra, or ACE, I would definitely say it's ACE. Zebra is the thin one. Diva is 'just right'.

http://www.anthonywebster.com/audio/diva_strobe.mp3

I hear the harshness more on certain sounds than others, if you lower the low-pass filter enough you can mask the harshness pretty well.

But when I play more aggressive lead sounds in Legacy Cell, V-station, and Dune, there isn't the tinnyness in the upper-frequencies that Diva has. On that sound demo when the filter was raised, you could definitely hear the harshness a bit that you wouldn't hear on other synths.

You can try to EQ it out, but it doesn't really work because then your sound becomes fundamentally different and it isn't just at one narrow frequency. I'd say it's centered around 6 kilohertz but EQ doesn't really eliminate it. In other synths the harshness isn't there to begin with.

Diva does sound quite good and is a valuable tool for the toolbox. But does it sound a lot better than the very best virtual analogs? IMO, not really.

Yes, surpasses them, and competes nicely with real analogs.

Zebra sounds thin? how much did you spend feeding her?

but 1st we got to define terms, terms like harshness and warmth.

daExpert, can you please describe (with examples if possible) what do you mean by those terms?

It's really a waste of time to discuss how things sound, because we don't share the same pair of ears. It might be interesting to discover that not many people share your opinion, though. This would open up several possibilities:

- maybe your setup is at fault (bad converters, bad monitoring, whatever).

- maybe your "tinny" is my "crystal clear".

- maybe you just happen to like the sound of other VAs better

- maybe you're desperately trying to find fault with something because it is supposedly "hyped"... you know, going the other way for the hell of it. (I think this happens a lot, really. I know I've done it. There's a nice German word for that phenomenon, it's called "Trotz" - "defiance" is the translation, but it doesn't quite nail the meaning)

- maybe your initial post is pure flame bait, because I don't know what you're expecting. Do you want us to show you you're wrong by telling you so? Will that change your opinion? Do you think you'll change our opinion? Do you think Urs will go "by Jove, he's right! I'll get to coding straight away! How come no one's noticed this before!"?

As far as triggering new ideas and thoughts - good luck with that. All I get are old ideas and nasty thoughts.

The harsh sound I've come to associate with Diva is endless petty bickering.

Pretty much, yes.

The harshness goes away when you render at higher sampling rates. Try both 96 and 192kHz.

Or try using a 32-bit OS. Some people say this sounds more analog...


Ingo

What function do such reviews fulfil these days?

Download the demo. Try the synth.

OK, lets say I download a plugin, I don't get the sound that I want from it straight away, and thus make a quick conclusion that it's a crap plugin, which sounds thin.

What you must understand is that people writing for such magazines as Sound on Sound have expert knowledge, and thus are much more capable to make a general conclusion about an instrument than either you or I.

The guy reviewing Diva has been producing and making records for over 30 years.

It has nothing to do about believing blindly in authority, but about taking sound advice from craftsmen.