The long DIVA thread

[penguinfromdeep]

Over at Gearslutz the reactions are a bit more "balanced" and quite few members find the filters to sound a little too harsh and tad less musical than their hardware counterparts.

Majority of the posts on Gearslutz are very positive towards Diva. I have ms10 and Juno-60 myself and I can get very very close with Diva to those.

But I actually agree with your other idea about the noise, call me crazy but this it the only thing I'm missing in Diva Otherwise its pretty damn near perfect.

[bmanic]

Of course every ms-20 is different so that might be the case (the one we have at the studio is not in mint condition).

Indeed they do vary quite a bit but surely you must recognize the overall strange korg filter character? And definitely notice it's superiority over the korg version, unless you mean some new emulation (I've only tried the vst plugin they released a while ago). Especially at high resonances the korg version does not work properly in my opinion.. at the border line where cutoff gets very high the korg emulation falls to pieces.

Cheers!
bManic

[EvilDragon]

The ms-20 filters are nice, but far from sounding like the real deal. Here Korg's emulation wins hands down.

What on earth are you smoking? I want some of that shit!

I agree with this. Korg's MS-20 emulation is puny and miserable (in KLC, iMS-20, and OASYS/Kronos) in comparison to what Diva achieved.

[bmanic]

But I actually agree with your other idea about the noise, call me crazy but this it the only thing I'm missing in Diva Otherwise its pretty damn near perfect.

Have to agree on this.. adding the option of emulated circuit noise would probably be a good idea. Diva does indeed sound a bit clean in this regard which is both a positive and negative thing. Hmm.. gotta check some of our analogue stuff and see how noisy they really are. I've been so lazy lately, it's more than a year since I tried any of the toys we have in the studio. Plugins have completely consumed me.

Cheers!
bManic

[bmanic]

<OT>btw, thanks for your post and audio example about Valhalla. I bought it from that recommendation without even demo'ing it and it is an incredible no brainer for that price! </OT>

You're very welcome! It's one of those plugins the world NEEDS to know about. Absolutely stunning value. Heck it's an absolutely stunning reverb, at any price!

Cheers!
bManic

[Urs]

Well, I can just say, we worked quite a lot on this. While the MS20 filters are not perfect in Diva, the ones in iMS20 and the VST plugin are, well, not on the same level. I might post a video with some simple tests that anyone can perform. For instance, look at the shape of the self oscillating highpass filter. We're very, very close and they're not. Which means that they have used the wrong filter model, with wrong position and shape of nonlinear elements.

However, it's true tha Diva has more high end than e.g. the Rev1 MS20 or a Juno 60. That's because we don't need to filter noise and other brittle artifacts that happen in analogue circuits by crosstalk and leakage. The analogues would sound just like Diva, if they could. I don't perceive this as harsh though. But we'll happily add another round of oversampling should people complain about aliasing.

[fceramic]

@Bmanic Hah I wish I was high!

Im not a synth geek, and to be honest I had no idea that the MS-series filters where Sallen Key.
I agree that Diva is very close and the sound is obviously more detailed and "deeper" than iMS-20 (I highly doubt that synth got any sort of oversampling), but in terms of feel and overall character I think it sounds closer to my impression of the original.

EDIT: @ U-he
Believe me, I think Diva is gorgeous in it's own right, which is why I bought it right away.

To me the charm of classic analog synthesizers are all the imperfections and the raw uncompromising sound.
If I want the real analog, nothing beats the real deal.

I think the most analog sounding softsynths I've tried are the XILS lab synths. Especially the XILS3 gives me goosebumps.

[Echoes in the Attic]

Diva just kills the Korg software MS-20's, no doubt about it. MS-20 VST is thin and kinda lifeless, although fairly nice filters, not near as good as DIVA's. Korg's MS-20 was my least favorite of their Legacy collection actually, which is too bad because I have the MS-20 controller. But now with DIVA, I'm hoping I can get a good midi mapping of the MS-20 compoents to the MS-20 controller. For all the other models I'll use my novation.

[Urs]

It's also important to note that the sound of the filters depends on the gain of the oscillators quite a lot. I've realised that I turn down oscillator volume on a hardware more often, because I can match the output volume with the other hand at the same time. On a softsynth it seems as if turning down oscillator volume entails a step too many, so they're always fully up, and a lot of goodness gets lost in overdrive. We shall make a video about that, too.

[Urs]

Diva just kills the Korg software MS-20's, no doubt about it. MS-20 VST is thin and kinda lifeless, although fairly nice filters, not near as good as DIVA's. Korg's MS-20 was my least favorite of their Legacy collection actually, which is too bad because I have the MS-20 controller. But now with DIVA, I'm hoping I can get a good midi mapping of the MS-20 compoents to the MS-20 controller. For all the other models I'll use my novation.

We're actually rewriting the Midi engine shortly (about time!). We also have the contoller, I'll see what's possible.

[geronimo]

But we'll happily add another round of oversampling should people complain about aliasing.

Seriously, I like the aliasing for low notes and bass.

[cis-didge]

For how long will the pre-order/introductory offer last ?

[Urs]

But we'll happily add another round of oversampling should people complain about aliasing.

Seriously, I like the aliasing for low notes and bass.

You'd still have the lower quality settings... they're mostly just less oversampled (and a few bits less precision in the feedback solver)

[Echoes in the Attic]

Diva just kills the Korg software MS-20's, no doubt about it. MS-20 VST is thin and kinda lifeless, although fairly nice filters, not near as good as DIVA's. Korg's MS-20 was my least favorite of their Legacy collection actually, which is too bad because I have the MS-20 controller. But now with DIVA, I'm hoping I can get a good midi mapping of the MS-20 compoents to the MS-20 controller. For all the other models I'll use my novation.

We're actually rewriting the Midi engine shortly (about time!). We also have the contoller, I'll see what's possible.

Awesome. I sold my legacy collection but don't want to part with my MS-20 controller, since it's such a fun and immediate controller. Just wasn't that big on the MS-20 VST. It should be possible to match the MS-20 compoenents to the hardware controls as it's just simple midi. Even the plug-in the patch cables sent some kind of midi messages because the software recognized it when you changing routings. That would be a huge bonus to people who own an MS-20 controller and will probably even drive the price of the controller up!

PS Urs, could I get a comment on my question here? (The part where I quoted myself):
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 6&start=15

(If you have time between bugfixing and doing black magic in software that is...)

[Urs]

For how long will the pre-order/introductory offer last ?

I think we'll keep it till after xmas. So there's no rush