Which u-he product to use the newsletter voucher on?

[Tappistry]

organic and gritty

All U-he synths can deliver that, but the one that fits the most for me is Bazille.

Agreed

Depending on how familiar you might be with synths, and if you don’t own any from u-he yet, I’d say Zebra is a great place to start.

[triggerthehorizon]

I have zero experience programming synths so having a decent amount of presets as starting points would be nice. I have tried syntronik and although the presets are vast, a lot of the sounds are redundant and I feel the sample based approach to synths is not the most convenient or logical. I try to limit the amount of sample based instruments I use in my projects to drums.

[triggerthehorizon]

So guys, Diva or Zebra for organic and gritty?

[KBSoundSmith]

So guys, Diva or Zebra for organic and gritty?

That's a bit too vague, tbh. Those descriptors can vary based upon genre pretty wildly, as well as whether or not you're trying to do "analog" tones or "acoustic instrument" tones or "sfx," etc. Can you post an example of what you mean?

That aside...in general, Zebra will give you a far greater variety of sounds. You can think of Diva as a subset of Zebra's functionality, but optimized/specialized for that subset.

If your question was..."what is the ONE synth from U-he to get?" my answer would be Zebra, hands down. FWIW, I have a license for both Zebra and Diva.

[triggerthehorizon]

So guys, Diva or Zebra for organic and gritty?

That's a bit too vague, tbh. Those descriptors can vary based upon genre pretty wildly, as well as whether or not you're trying to do "analog" tones or "acoustic instrument" tones or "sfx," etc. Can you post an example of what you mean?

That aside...in general, Zebra will give you a far greater variety of sounds. You can think of Diva as a subset of Zebra's functionality, but optimized/specialized for that subset.

If your question was..."what is the ONE synth from U-he to get?" my answer would be Zebra, hands down. FWIW, I have a license for both Zebra and Diva.

Thanks for the response KBSoundSmith, the genre I’m working in is rock à la Queens of the Stone Age so I’m looking for synth tones that will not sound out of place with real drums bass and guitar. I did own Zebra in the past and I admittedly did not spend enough time exploring it before I sold my license, but I found the tones were more akin to ambient, sfx and cinematic. So would Diva be better for me or did I simply not spend enough time with zebra ?

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Which synth would you guys recommend for rock music? I make guitar bass and drum oriented music and would like to incorporate synth in there for additional texture, but I need something that will sound organic and gritty, not “plasticky” to blend in with the other instruments. Is Diva what I’m looking for?

I do mostly rock music, but what you're looking for may depend on the type of rock. If you're doing anything in the classic rock or indie genres, I'd say Diva and RePro-5/1 both fit in very well. Diva is great because it can get you classic Minimoog type sounds in addition to the sounds of some classic poly synths, but RePro just sounds fantastic [and eats CPU for breakfast]. These would be the choices if you were looking for pre-90's synth sounds, or the types of things that started coming back en vouge beginning in the early 2000's. If you're doing something more aggressive, like metal or proressive, I'd probably go with Zebra2. If you're new to synths though, Zebra may be a bit much due to it's modular architecture (then again, there are something like 16,000 patches available for it on the library though). Zebra would work for more experiemental stuff, but hey at that point, you could even look at Bazille or anything else.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

So guys, Diva or Zebra for organic and gritty?

That's a bit too vague, tbh. Those descriptors can vary based upon genre pretty wildly, as well as whether or not you're trying to do "analog" tones or "acoustic instrument" tones or "sfx," etc. Can you post an example of what you mean?

That aside...in general, Zebra will give you a far greater variety of sounds. You can think of Diva as a subset of Zebra's functionality, but optimized/specialized for that subset.

If your question was..."what is the ONE synth from U-he to get?" my answer would be Zebra, hands down. FWIW, I have a license for both Zebra and Diva.

Thanks for the response KBSoundSmith, the genre I’m working in is rock à la Queens of the Stone Age so I’m looking for synth tones that will not sound out of place with real drums bass and guitar. I did own Zebra in the past and I admittedly did not spend enough time exploring it before I sold my license, but I found the tones were more akin to ambient, sfx and cinematic. So would Diva be better for me or did I simply not spend enough time with zebra ?

I'm a big QOTSA fan. When it comes to their synth sounds, nothing really stands out as being outside the realm of a basic analog synth architecture. I'd go with Diva or RePro.

Here's a photo of their keyboard rig BTW:

https://s3-media1.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto ... x1gA/o.jpg

Everything's been custom finished in brushed aluminimum so it's a bit hard for me to make out what's what, but I'm seeing an organ, maybe a melotron, and an electric piano/clavinet along with a analog-style synth.

[mevla]

So guys, Diva or Zebra for organic and gritty?

Organic and gritty would be Diva IMHO. (Dark) Zebra is a bit more clean. To substantiate that claim I would point to the Diva soundsets:

Shale, Sequoia, Friction, Twilights, Artisan, Director's Cut, Original Score, Aethra, Performer, VSP Analog, Arksun, Deform, Oxide.

I simply referred to the Presets/ directory. If you wish the authors' name also, I can list them by actually loading some sounds and looking at the notes.

Sounds from those soundsets are expressing IMHO Diva's grittyness. This said, (Dark) Zebra is simply sounding great and can have some grittyness, although these above can show that Diva has an edge in respect to that.

Get both, and you'll cover all bases.

Cheers.

[spunkmuffin]

Which synth would you guys recommend for rock music? I make guitar bass and drum oriented music and would like to incorporate synth in there for additional texture, but I need something that will sound organic and gritty, not “plasticky” to blend in with the other instruments. Is Diva what I’m looking for?

Repro1 can sound grittier and dirtier than anything in Diva. Diva sounds fat...I mean FAT. Fat and full and kind of lush and beautiful. Repro1 is sort of rough with character - not pretty sometimes. Actually it can grate your ears off if that's what you enjoy. You also get Repro5 in the Repro bundle but I havn't tried it yet because it's polyphonic and poliphony is stupid. None of the u-he synths sound plastic. My 2c.

Why not demo them?

[mevla]

Repro1 can sound grittier and dirtier than anything in Diva. Diva sounds fat...I mean FAT. Fat and full and kind of lush and beautiful.

That depends. Hear the first part of the Deform soundset by Kyhon. Or Oxide by The Unfinished. Or Friction by Sound Dust. These are all high quality sound sets. Two of them are sold by u-he. I mean, a synth does not necessarily sound 'lush and beautiful'. It depends on what the sound creator made. Diva's expression is much more than only 'lush and beautiful'. It can be snappy and ugly (or mean), like 'Chupacabra Snort' and many others in Deform. Or thin and strung like Talky_Walky in Friction.

[spunkmuffin]

You're right hehe. When you use words to describe sounds...well you know. Best to go to the website, download and install the demonstration versions, play and listen. What could be better than that? Haha good luck.

An don't forget to try Hive. It comes with like 2700+ presets.

[mevla]

It's not easy to describe how a synth can sound. We might even not agree on the words themselves.

I run Linux. Not many plugins for this OS. When I first heard about u-he synths about 2.5 years ago I got almost all. Almost because one was given to me. U-he said, well you got almost all our synths so here\s the last one free. That's how great u-he is. And over time I got sound sets and started learning about the synths and started creating some sounds. It means that I have no use for u-he vouchers

Cheers.

[benheman]

twitewhite wrote:
And also, I just read that they will be switching all their store currencies to Euro starting July. Is this going to make things more or less expensive for someone purchasing using US dollars?


It will be to U-he's benefit to continue accepting other currencies in their store. Why exclude the US Dollar?

[Urs]

twitewhite wrote:
And also, I just read that they will be switching all their store currencies to Euro starting July. Is this going to make things more or less expensive for someone purchasing using US dollars?


It will be to U-he's benefit to continue accepting other currencies in their store. Why exclude the US Dollar?

Out of all options, legal and technical, a one-price-for-all displayed in Euro seemed best. I'm quite happy that we finally fully comply with EU marketing laws.

You can still buy in USD, and *hint* *hint* we added our complete catalogue of plug-ins to the KVR store, should you run out of promo codes.

[triggerthehorizon]

Thanks for all the responses guys, I have installed the demos and I am having fun experimenting. I think Diva is my favorite for now