KVR Audio

aaastronomer · Post by **aaastronomer** » Wed Sep 07, 2011 7:30 am

to all of you with too many synths:

i'm now running a Harmor vs. Diversion shoot-out, but i can't decide which has the sonic edge. i believe Harmor has it, but Diversion sounds really great as well. practically, Harmor's price ($99) put's it ahead of Diversion ($150), as the are so close sonically.

Or are they? Anyone have an opinion on this? (thanks ahead of time.)

tony tony chopper · Post by **tony tony chopper** » Wed Sep 07, 2011 7:38 am

Harmor shouldn't have a "sound", you get access to every single harmonic. (even though the included presets might have a sound)

yairhol · Post by **yairhol** » Wed Sep 07, 2011 7:41 am

tony tony chopper wrote:Harmor shouldn't have a "sound", you get access to every single harmonic. (even though the included presets might have a sound)

Can you please elaborate?
Do I load my own audio files into Harmor?

kmonkey · Post by **kmonkey** » Wed Sep 07, 2011 8:05 am

yairhol wrote:
tony tony chopper wrote:Harmor shouldn't have a "sound", you get access to every single harmonic. (even though the included presets might have a sound)
Can you please elaborate?
Do I load my own audio files into Harmor?

He basically meant to say "what goes in or what is generating is what goes out" - it does not have any hidden tricks or whatever. You have full control over sound.

gkaspy · Post by **gkaspy** » Wed Sep 07, 2011 8:08 am

@yairhol you can manipulate your own audio files too. Just search for Harmor videos on youtube.

sonicpowa · Post by **sonicpowa** » Wed Sep 07, 2011 8:31 am

without a doubt Harmor, and it's cheaper too.

tony tony chopper · Post by **tony tony chopper** » Wed Sep 07, 2011 8:56 am

Can you please elaborate?
Do I load my own audio files into Harmor?

Harmor does resynthesis too. I'd have advised to check the few tutorial presets included, but they don't all load because of a problem with the release (will be fixed soon). They show timestretching/warping/pitch shifting/etc.

Ingonator · Post by **Ingonator** » Wed Sep 07, 2011 9:21 am

IMO those two synths have a totally different approach and are very difficult to compare.
Personally i don't really like the GUi of Harmor. It's very crowded and it's difficult to see which control does what.
In that respect Diversion seems to be much better and besides that it still seems to be easier to program a subtractive synth like Diversion than an additive synth like Harmor.

Personally i really like Diversion but even after selling a lot of my unused softsynths recently i still have too many and some which are very close to Diversion.
For additive synthesis i still prefer Alchemy, Cameleon 5000 and Synthmaster 2.5.

Ingo

gkaspy · Post by **gkaspy** » Wed Sep 07, 2011 9:32 am

Ingonator wrote:...It's very crowded and it's difficult to see which control does what...

can you be specific? which controls are difficult to see/understand

hakey · Post by **hakey** » Wed Sep 07, 2011 9:41 am

Ingonator wrote:it still seems to be easier to program a subtractive synth like Diversion than an additive synth like Harmor

Harmor has filters - ignore the additive synth features and it's a subtractive synth.

Image-Line · Post by **Image-Line** » Wed Sep 07, 2011 9:44 am

yairhol wrote:
tony tony chopper wrote:Harmor shouldn't have a "sound", you get access to every single harmonic. (even though the included presets might have a sound)
Can you please elaborate?
Do I load my own audio files into Harmor?

See here -

You can just drag-and-drop samples and images on Harmor to load.

You can even multi-sample by loading your bank as a continuous sample and using envelopes to pick different start-points with MIDI note number (play key).

As it has two parts you can even velocity layer.

Regards Scott

yairhol · Post by **yairhol** » Wed Sep 07, 2011 9:58 am

I'll check out the videos.
Thanks.
edit: still can't figure out if Harmor is a VSTi or VST effect?
How do you load it in a DAW? as an effect or instrument?

Ingonator · Post by **Ingonator** » Wed Sep 07, 2011 11:02 am

hakey wrote:
Ingonator wrote:it still seems to be easier to program a subtractive synth like Diversion than an additive synth like Harmor
Harmor has filters - ignore the additive synth features and it's a subtractive synth.

Yes, but the additive synthesis is the core of the synth.
Had a try with the demo and programming the synth from scratch without using resynthesis or image import is a real pain IMO. I don't see where Harmor is a step forward compared to other additive synths like e.g. Alchemy or Cameleon 5000 (which got filters, image import and resynthesis too BTW).

For more "experimental" synthesis i currently prefer Hamburg-Audio Nuklear which also got an improved demo version (longer time until Noise burst and saving of patches/banks works now in the demo) now:
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 52#4638852

Ingo

tony tony chopper · Post by **tony tony chopper** » Wed Sep 07, 2011 11:16 am

Had a try with the demo and programming the synth from scratch without using resynthesis or image import is a real pain IMO.

It shouldn't be, the idea behind Harmor was that additive synthesis could do subtractive synthesis, but in an easier way, one that makes sense.

Only problem with that is when you already know all the tricks to program a classic subtractive synth. In Harmor it's easier, but it's different. In classic subtractive synth you would typically layer 2 detuned oscillators, assign a phaser or flanger, use PWM. But you have to realize that all 4 are the same effect: phasing. Just different mathematical tricks to achieve the same effect, which are only used because they all give slightly different phasing effects.

In Harmor it's much simpler: you get a phaser unit, with all the controls you need to achieve all of the above, & much more (how about drawing your own phaser shape?). Of course it's disorienting if you already know your subtractive tricks, but it's simpler, & I'm pretty sure it's the future. Right now someone programming presets for a subtractive synth has to have part of the knowledge of a DSP engineer, while he should normally be tweaking units that are designed for a clear purpose.

It's also for that same reason that people are used to classic subtractive synths that I display oscillator shapes, so that they can identify their beloved square & sawtooth. But once you learn the synth you realize that square & saw are only names given to waveforms according to their look in the time domain, and that all this doesn't really makes sense, and you will start seeing waveforms in a totally different way, in the freq domain.

Ingonator · Post by **Ingonator** » Wed Sep 07, 2011 11:39 am

tony tony chopper wrote:
Had a try with the demo and programming the synth from scratch without using resynthesis or image import is a real pain IMO.
It shouldn't be, the idea behind Harmor was that additive synthesis could do subtractive synthesis, but in an easier way, one that makes sense.

Only problem with that is when you already know all the tricks to program a classic subtractive synth. In Harmor it's easier, but it's different. In classic subtractive synth you would typically layer 2 detuned oscillators, assign a phaser or flanger, use PWM. But you have to realize that all 4 are the same effect: phasing. Just different mathematical tricks to achieve the same effect, which are only used because they all give slightly different phasing effects.

In Harmor it's much simpler: you get a phaser unit, with all the controls you need to achieve all of the above, & much more (how about drawing your own phaser shape?). Of course it's disorienting if you already know your subtractive tricks, but it's simpler, & I'm pretty sure it's the future. Right now someone programming presets for a subtractive synth has to have part of the knowledge of a DSP engineer, while he should normally be tweaking units that are designed for a clear purpose.

It's also for that same reason that people are used to classic subtractive synths that I display oscillator shapes, so that they can identify their beloved square & sawtooth. But once you learn the synth you realize that square & saw are only names given to waveforms according to their look in the time domain, and that all this doesn't really makes sense, and you will start seeing waveforms in a totally different way, in the freq domain.

Hi,

i know the difference of subtractive and additive (i got alchemy and Cameleon 5000 like already mentioned). What i found confusing is the editor for the harmonics which in other synths is a more or less long row of bars and e.g. in Alchemy you could edit each of those bars.
In Harmor this seems to be more or less continuous which is difficult for editing certain harmonics.
That is what i meant when i talked about "programming from scratch". Importing images or resynthesis is a different thing (and has been done in Alchemy and Cameleon 5000 already). Besides that i don't really get how some controls like "Harmonizer", "Blur" or "Prism" work. When i use them in the demo version almost nothing seems to happen to the sound. Are those not working in the current demo? Based on a message which i get while installing the demo this is not the final version of Harmor.

BTW i like how the additive synthesis works in ImpOSCar 1 and 2. It only got a few harmonics but it still works nicely. Same for the additive oscillator in Synthmaster 2.5.

Ingo