Diva versus Ace

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Uncle E wrote:I totally agree! Some of my first favorite synths were things like the K2000 and K5000S, my tastes only grew myopic when my hair turned gray. ;)
Oh, you had a K5000? I sooo wanted one back then. :love: Didn't have the money though. Today additive synthesis is so much cheaper and easier to work with on a computer screen.

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alphadelphi wrote:I am really interested in understand differences but this thread is not so useful due the presence of personal and subjective posts.
Sorry about that. :drunk: In my defense, I generally try to give personal accounts simply because everything else can be googled. However, I also see that I sometimes go too far, so sorry for that.

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alphadelphi wrote:
Zebra is a great great synth that i've used for a couple of years but i've sold it after i tried ACE that, compared to Zebra, sounds so fat and snappy to me (BTW i don't know why and i am really curious: oscillators? filters? envelopes?).

So i've sold my beloved Zebra to buy ACE but now i am thinking to buy Diva to enjoy the intro price but i know that i want all of them: Zebra for pads, ACE for basses and Diva for re-creations of the sounds already presents in my memory... :D
You cannot go wrong with any of them... ACE does sound snappier than Zebra, but for me, I only want some percentage of sounds to be that way. Lot of other sounds I want different ways. Zebra can do so much ACE cannot. I'm very glad to have them all... (na na na na na ;))

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pdxindy wrote:You cannot go wrong with any of them... ACE does sound snappier than Zebra, but for me, I only want some percentage of sounds to be that way. Lot of other sounds I want different ways. Zebra can do so much ACE cannot. I'm very glad to have them all... (na na na na na ;))
This!

They don't have too much in common. To me it's clever to use what the others can't do and not the other way round. Yeah, it's cool to have them all. 8)

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Uncle E wrote:
Bronto Scorpio wrote:I somehow get the feeling that people think that ACE and Zebra suddenly sound bad since Diva is released.
Yeah, I wrote "accurate analog modeling" as opposed to "sounds better" for that very reason. For me personally, DIVA actually does sound much better than those two (in their present forms) but I totally get someone else might want to move into more experimental territories than DIVA can provide.
Okay, this one is experimental... Here is an audio example from Zebra. Just Zebra osc's and filter's... no effects at all, internal or external. Just 2 notes and some realtime modulation... Diva couldn't begin to do something like this (it's okay if you hate it ;) )

http://draigathar.org/sounds/Zebra1.mp3

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pdxindy wrote:
Uncle E wrote:
Bronto Scorpio wrote:I somehow get the feeling that people think that ACE and Zebra suddenly sound bad since Diva is released.
Yeah, I wrote "accurate analog modeling" as opposed to "sounds better" for that very reason. For me personally, DIVA actually does sound much better than those two (in their present forms) but I totally get someone else might want to move into more experimental territories than DIVA can provide.
Okay, this one is experimental... Here is an audio example from Zebra. Just Zebra osc's and filter's... no effects at all, internal or external. Just 2 notes and some realtime modulation... Diva couldn't begin to do something like this (it's okay if you hate it ;) )

http://draigathar.org/sounds/Zebra1.mp3
Awesome again! :love:

Cheers
Dennis

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Some Ace. One instance and a little modulation automation.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2148367/ACEY%20PAD.mp3

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Huh. You mean the decay is snappy?

imo, ACE has a wimpy attack envelope, as compared to Diva, or especially Zebra, which has the snappiest attack of any VA. :? The wimpy attack is one of few things I don't like about ACE. It's decay may be snappy, but the attack sure isn't.

Those are both really cool patches!
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Gonga wrote:Huh. You mean the decay is snappy?
imo, ACE has a wimpy attack envelope, as compared to Diva, or especially Zebra, which has the snappiest attack of any VA. :? The wimpy attack is one of few things I don't like about ACE. It's decay may be snappy, but the attack sure isn't.
Well imo, it's not that envelopes are or aren't snappy.
There are sound programming techniques that can make envelopes react and sound different (soft or hard, snappy or wimpy) on the attack-decay.
I feel that's more up to the sound designer than the synth.
If I listen to those 3 synths init patch, I can't tell which sounds snappier or whatever. In Zebra, you can do much more to the attack, and that's where it helps most. Individual velocity settings to each envelope parameter is great to have in helping things to sound snappier. ACE has env mods, but less.
I don't really care to compare envelopes, but for me...I just wish Zebra had a (1)Diva(minimoog) filter, and those circuit/filter slop settings.
That would be enough for me.
I'd love to use an mseg modulated on that filter...with that combo, and some good env settings, there would be snapping turtles coming out of it.

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Gonga wrote:Huh. You mean the decay is snappy?

imo, ACE has a wimpy attack envelope, as compared to Diva, or especially Zebra, which has the snappiest attack of any VA. :? The wimpy attack is one of few things I don't like about ACE. It's decay may be snappy, but the attack sure isn't.

Those are both really cool patches!
That is a good question... I think it is not so much the attack shape of the envelop but maybe the audio rate modulation in ACE that makes sonic transitions have a kind of 'snap' or vitality. I find it all elusive stuff, and the terminology we use has too much noise to signal ratio. What I mean is, the size of the difference in how we personally define and understand various terms such as snappy is greater than the sonic differences we are talking about.

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mcnoone wrote:
Gonga wrote:Huh. You mean the decay is snappy?
imo, ACE has a wimpy attack envelope, as compared to Diva, or especially Zebra, which has the snappiest attack of any VA. :? The wimpy attack is one of few things I don't like about ACE. It's decay may be snappy, but the attack sure isn't.
Well imo, it's not that envelopes are or aren't snappy.
There are sound programming techniques that can make envelopes react and sound different (soft or hard, snappy or wimpy) on the attack-decay.
I feel that's more up to the sound designer than the synth.
If I listen to those 3 synths init patch, I can't tell which sounds snappier or whatever. In Zebra, you can do much more to the attack, and that's where it helps most. Individual velocity settings to each envelope parameter is great to have in helping things to sound snappier. ACE has env mods, but less.
It is my guess that the internal sample rate plays a significant part in how a sound is perceived in different synths. In Zebra, most everything is control rate. In ACE most everything is audio rate. IIRC the env's in ACE are control rate. How does that rate compare with Zebra?

Perhaps the biggest Zebra feature request I have (besides more modmappers ;)) is a quality setting for Zebra similar to ACE or Diva. I think the sonic difference of a preset in Zebra between 44.1khz and 96khz is more significant than it is in ACE. It is easy to have presets sound dramatically different in Zebra with a higher sample rate. Not as much with ACE. Perhaps because it is already audio rate or higher for most operations.

Zebra is more optimized for CPU and less so for ultimate sound quality than ACE or Diva. So I'd like a 'divine' setting for render in Zebra that says hell with cpu, we want ultimate sound quality! hehehe

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mcnoone wrote: I don't really care to compare envelopes, but for me...I just wish Zebra had a (1)Diva(minimoog) filter, and those circuit/filter slop settings.
That would be enough for me.
I'd love to use an mseg modulated on that filter...with that combo, and some good env settings, there would be snapping turtles coming out of it.
You can do the slop stuff with modmappers

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pdxindy wrote:You can do the slop stuff with modmappers
True this, and a testament that after years of use, there's still things not yet tried.
Thanks for the tip.

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pdxindy wrote:
Uncle E wrote:
Bronto Scorpio wrote:I somehow get the feeling that people think that ACE and Zebra suddenly sound bad since Diva is released.
Yeah, I wrote "accurate analog modeling" as opposed to "sounds better" for that very reason. For me personally, DIVA actually does sound much better than those two (in their present forms) but I totally get someone else might want to move into more experimental territories than DIVA can provide.
Okay, this one is experimental... Here is an audio example from Zebra. Just Zebra osc's and filter's... no effects at all, internal or external. Just 2 notes and some realtime modulation... Diva couldn't begin to do something like this (it's okay if you hate it ;) )

http://draigathar.org/sounds/Zebra1.mp3
there's nothing to hate about your demo. (maybe it's too short, but...) diva may not be able to recreate your demo (and i'm not too sure that's true), but it definitely has experimental potential. i was just playing with it and some of the 'experimental' sounds seemed to rival those of aalto (with higher sound quality, as well).
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aaastronomer wrote:
pdxindy wrote:
Uncle E wrote:
Bronto Scorpio wrote:I somehow get the feeling that people think that ACE and Zebra suddenly sound bad since Diva is released.
Yeah, I wrote "accurate analog modeling" as opposed to "sounds better" for that very reason. For me personally, DIVA actually does sound much better than those two (in their present forms) but I totally get someone else might want to move into more experimental territories than DIVA can provide.
Okay, this one is experimental... Here is an audio example from Zebra. Just Zebra osc's and filter's... no effects at all, internal or external. Just 2 notes and some realtime modulation... Diva couldn't begin to do something like this (it's okay if you hate it ;) )

http://draigathar.org/sounds/Zebra1.mp3
there's nothing to hate about your demo. (maybe it's too short, but...) diva may not be able to recreate your demo (and i'm not too sure that's true), but it definitely has experimental potential. i was just playing with it and some of the 'experimental' sounds seemed to rival those of aalto (with higher sound quality, as well).
I completely agree... Diva has great experimental potential... And its complex modulation capabilities should not be under estimated. I absolutely love it for moody, noisy, somewhat atonal sounds. Here is one example I did...

http://draigathar.org/sounds/Diva-12.wav

but really, there is no realtime way it could play something like that Zebra example. Maybe I could come close by making lots of snippets from Diva and cutting them together as audio and use some effects... but that is not realtime. Those changes and sense of a reverse delay in the Zebra example are all played in realtime and using no effects. Just different palettes...

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