Getting Hive?

[ghettosynth]

GS I don't think there's really a debate here, I quoted Morello to illustrate a mindset more than a scientific fact -- gear of course matters, but I thought the spirit of the statement was rather "what I have is good enough for what I want to do now let me go and do it."

No doubt, I probably sound more argumentative than I intend, it's my nature. BTW: I rather feel the same way, believe it or not. That's really my driving philosophy with new gear. If it doesn't bring something new to the table in a technological sense that will translate to better sound, I don't really care that much. I've purchased very few synths "on purpose." Most just come along for the ride in some sort of bundle upgrade.

If what you want to do is have the thickest, most luscious synth tones, exploring the most cutting edge sounds using the most advanced tech yada yada then this philosophy might not have relevance. A bit different though if you're e.g. doing chiptunes.

That's the problem with adjectives like thick and thin, they help, but only to a point. It's not that Hive sounds "thin" per se, it just doesn't sound good (enough) to me to justify its price. It's easy to find synths that have compromises to meet CPU demands, that's most of them on the market. They're not really compromised, per se, they just aren't doing enough to sound good so it's equivalent to being compromised.

YMMV, and take with a grain of salt and a bit of tongue in your cheek, I am posting on KVR after all.

Like I said, I sound more argumentative than I intend to be.

[ATS]

If you have Omnisphere that is all you really NEED, I mean I have it and it's all I need but I WANT more so I got tons of stuff I don't need. Make sense?

[ghettosynth]

Sorry guys, anyone who's saying that Hive isn't state of the art technology or lacking in whatever department is bullshitting himself. I suspect they are either evaluating Hive with confirmation bias or just come in here to say something negative.

"Sylenth style snappy and punchy envelopes and filters" takes the crown of this. Envelopes can either be snappy (more than exponential) or punchy (less than exponential). If someone attributes both to some random synth with textbook envelopes (i.e. neither of each) you know they do so only because they got nothing else to say.

If you want to slam Hive, show an audio demo, mention an *objective* fact or use Twitter instead (think Trump). But please don't insult us here with stereotype killer arguments that you can slap onto any synth in existance.

Love you man, but, this the instrument forum and someone is asking the community for their opinion. We're under no obligation to "prove" our opinions in order to share them.

I've got no skin in the sylenth game, I'm not a fan, but a lot of people who like it seem to prefer it to Hive for whatever reason. Do you really think that demanding an objective assessment from them is going to change their mind? You can't even really dismiss bias, it doesn't just impact what we think that we hear, but actually what we hear.

OP is asking what it will add to the sonic palette over Omnisphere and Diva, saying "not much" isn't "slamming" Hive, it's just not a recommendation in this instance.

[Soarer]

If you have Omnisphere that is all you really NEED, I mean I have it and it's all I need but I WANT more so I got tons of stuff I don't need. Make sense?

Haha ATS I know what you mean
But still I much prefer Diva now for analog synth stuff so it is possible to find better options now and then.

[Soarer]

OP is asking what it will add to the sonic palette over Omnisphere and Diva, saying "not much" isn't "slamming" Hive, it's just not a recommendation in this instance.

And that is what I got so far but I also cannot agree about Hive being thin.
I too was listening to the Hive Science 2 video and there are many fine sounds in there with fullnes and character. I mainly like the arps and sequences in the beginning. Great programming.

[Urs]

Ok, let's go about it a bit more light headed and less annoyed.

About them "snappy or punchy" envelopes.

Google "howard scarr programming analogue synths" and download the PDF - it's an amazing source of knowledge about how to make synthesizers sound the way you want. Goto page 92, "non-standard envelope shapes" and "recursive modulation". What it explains is, you can change the shape of an envelope in a lot of ways. You can make it as snappy or as punchy as you want it by modulating the envelope rates with the envelope itself. Now guess what:

In Hive you can. In Sylenth you can't.

Ok? Bogus argument falsified.

I'm not going around listening to people's music and say "your composition style is dated since Mozart". I would maybe say "hey, it's not my cup of tea", but I would not invent bogus arguments to somehow justify my subjective thoughts with objective arguments, as if trying to make my opinion a fact. It's stupid behaviour.

Don't give me bogus arguments like "Hive sounds bad because it doesn't sound like Repro". Of course it does not. It is not supposed to. And here's the clue: It is not a bad thing, no matter how often someone repeats it. If you don't like Hive for whatever taste you have, good. If you don't like Hive for an objective fact, name the objective fact (i.e. don't make it up).

[ghettosynth]

Don't give me bogus arguments like "Hive sounds bad because it doesn't sound like Repro".

You're overgeneralizing. In a nutshell, you can't really have it both ways. Hive was designed to be low on CPU, it was made to fit a market niche, you can say that you designed it that way, but you can't complain that people don't like the outcome. People may not be able to objectively state why they don't like something and so it comes out as "it sounds thin" or "it doesn't sound like repro-1." It's even possible that it's nothing but preconception, but I don't think so.

Honestly, I think that you know the answer. Why doesn't Hive use as much CPU as Diva? Answer that question and you will know why some people don't like Hive. Moreover, since you are the expert, you will be able to translate their non-technical answers into the technical ones that you prefer. You can't, however, simply dismiss their perceptions on the grounds that you don't like them.

While a few people here are talking about Sylenth, many, if not most of us, are responding to the OPs question directly. What does it add to Omnisphere and Diva in terms of the OPs musical interests? I don't think that it adds much. Instead of complaining about our responses, why don't you state more specifically what you think that it adds?

TBH, I thought your response about orchestral layers sounded a tad on the puffed up side myself. What does that even mean? What other synths can't be used in that way? You can highpass a synth that is too "thick" without losing all of the character of a filter.

Google "howard scarr programming analogue synths" and download the PDF - it's an amazing source of knowledge about how to make synthesizers sound the way you want. Goto page 92, "non-standard envelope shapes" and "recursive modulation". What it explains is, you can change the shape of an envelope in a lot of ways. You can make it as snappy or as punchy as you want it by modulating the envelope rates with the envelope itself. Now guess what:

In Hive you can. In Sylenth you can't.

Ok? Bogus argument falsified.

No, you've falsified their statement of the issue, not necessarily their perception of the sound. If you don't trust their technical expertise, how can it be so easy to dismiss their arguments which may not be correct in the first place?

We've been using that trick forever with the matrix 12, but you'll never get an M12 to sound like a minimoog. There's a lot of debate about the minimoog envelopes and what makes them sound so punchy. Craig Anderton likes to propagate the idea that it's the flattened peak that has a minimum width that's responsible, but, the fatman sounds nothing like a minimoog either.

I don't know why people like Sylenth, but they do for some reason. Maybe it doesn't really have anything to do with the actual envelopes, rather, it's the perception of some other attribute of the sound that the listener believes is attributed to the envelope?

[nineofkings]

I think it's a bit more nuanced than "People say they don't like Hive's sound, U-He says it's actually a good sound." U-He's point seems to be that Hive is versatile enough to be able to change that sound, within reason. If you don't like the envelopes, for example, they're pretty completely configurable.

[ghettosynth]

I think it's a bit more nuanced than "People say they don't like Hive's sound, U-He says it's actually a good sound." U-He's point seems to be that Hive is versatile enough to be able to change that sound, within reason. If you don't like the envelopes, for example, they're pretty completely configurable.

I get that, my point is that when people say "I like the envelopes in Sylenth" it may not, in fact, be the envelopes that are responsible of the attribute that they like. Consequently, being able to change the envelopes may be of no consequence.

Or, it may be much simpler. It may be that changing the envelopes isn't even on their radar and, out of the box, the Sylenth envelopes are more to their liking. Arguing to that audience that you can modulate them to change them may not be convincing. This could especially be true if you are talking about people that just like to make quick tweaks to presets or program sounds quickly. You can't underestimate the friction that adding additional modulation routings contributes to someone's perception.

[nineofkings]

I think it's a bit more nuanced than "People say they don't like Hive's sound, U-He says it's actually a good sound." U-He's point seems to be that Hive is versatile enough to be able to change that sound, within reason. If you don't like the envelopes, for example, they're pretty completely configurable.

I get that, my point is that when people say "I like the envelopes in Sylenth" it may not, in fact, be the envelopes that are responsible of the attribute that they like. Consequently, being able to change the envelopes may be of no consequence.

Or, it may be much simpler. It may be that changing the envelopes isn't even on their radar and, out of the box, the Sylenth envelopes are more to their liking. Arguing to that audience that you can modulate them to change them may not be convincing. This could especially be true if you are talking about people that just like to make quick tweaks to presets or program sounds quickly. You can't underestimate the friction that adding additional modulation routings contributes to someone's perception.

That's a very fair point. But that doesn't mean we should be lazy consumers and say it's the sound that's the issue . "I don't like the workflow" or "I don't like tweaking a lot" are more accurate and very reachable conclusions for the average or even below average synth user.

[ghettosynth]

I think it's a bit more nuanced than "People say they don't like Hive's sound, U-He says it's actually a good sound." U-He's point seems to be that Hive is versatile enough to be able to change that sound, within reason. If you don't like the envelopes, for example, they're pretty completely configurable.

I get that, my point is that when people say "I like the envelopes in Sylenth" it may not, in fact, be the envelopes that are responsible of the attribute that they like. Consequently, being able to change the envelopes may be of no consequence.

Or, it may be much simpler. It may be that changing the envelopes isn't even on their radar and, out of the box, the Sylenth envelopes are more to their liking. Arguing to that audience that you can modulate them to change them may not be convincing. This could especially be true if you are talking about people that just like to make quick tweaks to presets or program sounds quickly. You can't underestimate the friction that adding additional modulation routings contributes to someone's perception.

That's a very fair point. But that doesn't mean we should be lazy consumers and say it's the sound that's the issue . "I don't like the workflow" or "I don't like tweaking a lot" are more accurate and very reachable conclusions for the average or even below average synth user.

But that sounds like you're expecting people to actually be aware of their own limitations? Until they know that the envelopes can be tweaked, in their minds, it's legitimately the sound and legitimately the envelopes, assuming that the second case is where the truth lies.

I think that's too much to expect in a casual conversation on KVR where a request has been made for opinions in the generic instruments forum.

The thing with Sylenth is that there's no legitimate technical reason for it to be so popular. It's the Kardashian of synths, it's not popular because it's good, it's popular because it's popular. Given that, IMNSHO, it doesn't really have a very critical audience and so to the extent that any other synth sounds different, no matter how trivial the explanation, that alternative synth is going to be viewed as inferior.

[keel]

Urs, chill out. I love you man, i have huge respect on you. But the fact is, Hive sounds thin. At least to ME. And like I said, its hard to explain. Punchy or snappy. I didnt meant to say both. It is really hard to explain. Sylenth just sound more snappy. The attack of sound and filters. Its fast and powerful. It makes it perfect synth for fat chords with nice filter cut off's. Fast leads and basses. Not so much for pad sounds. For pad sounds I prefer more soft sounding synths, like Hive. Sylenth has been or still is perhaps the most popular soft synth ever and there is a reason for that. The sound.

I hope someone with better english will explain what I am trying to say here, lol. But again. These are personal opinions. And this is mine.

[EvilDragon]

And it's wrong. Hive can be plenty snappy, and Urs explained how to get it there.

[Soarer]

I'm much more interested in what can actually be done sound design wise with a synth rather than what it sounds like out of the box or from it's presets or from popular (preconceived) ideas. I value sound design skills higher than just getting a new synth because the ones you have don't sound like some other synths when you could probably often achieve good results from getting deeper into your current synths and really experiment and learn. But when there are real new timbres and sounds to be found, then usually I must have it.

[beely]

The thing with Sylenth is that there's no legitimate technical reason for it to be so popular. It's the Kardashian of synths, it's not popular because it's good, it's popular because it's popular. Given that, IMNSHO, it doesn't really have a very critical audience and so to the extent that any other synth sounds different, no matter how trivial the explanation, that alternative synth is going to be viewed as inferior.

I was going to say the *exact* same thing.

I don't know *why* so many people like Sylenth, I've always found it rather meh personally. I suspect it has something to do with critical mass and luck - Sylenth was used for some high-profile track, therefore everyone wanting to imitate everyone else wants the same synth, and that becomes the reference... (There's more to it, sure, I'm oversimplifying, but still...)

People like what they like, sure, but also a lot of people don't know how to evaluate things properly and just take someone else's stamp of approval as their own.