u-he

DJBenniBoy · Post by **DJBenniBoy** » Sat May 04, 2013 4:10 pm

So Urs, Just to clarify, what will be the next version of Zebra, will it skip to version 3 or just go version 2.7/2.8 etc etc? also Im thankfull that 2.6 has the added MS20 filters and things, are they actually modeled off the Real hardware?

Adrian B · Post by **Adrian B** » Wed May 08, 2013 4:57 pm

This is more of a question for developers, than a suggestion.

Some synth-emulation VSTs market their product by saying, effectively, each cycle of the audio oscillator is a little different. (http://www.arturia.com/evolution/en/pro ... ators.html "In addition, original analog oscillators were unstable. Actually, their wave shape was always slightly different from one period to another.")

Indeed, when I demo a certain Arturia product with a scope, I can see each cycle is a little different. In U-he Diva, by contrast, the oscillator seems completely steady.

Now, my question is, is this just marketing snake oil and did U-he analysis of hardware synths not exhibit oscillators changing shape? Perhaps it was a conscious design decision to keep the oscillators regular?

It's just something I've been wondering about since yesterday. If you would like to share the design rationale, I would consider myself more informed, and curiosity satisfied

Thanks.

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Wed May 08, 2013 6:35 pm

Adrian, it's like I always say: Analogue isn't about imperfection - it's about perfection, and something else.

Moog, Roland and others have sussed out oscillators perfectly early on, at least for sawtooth and square wave. If you grab the signal right from the oscillator, there is no "belly shape", no warble and none of the bandwidth constraints that digital systems have. It's continuous, and things happen within nanoseconds rather than within some crude samplerate.

There is however some chaos as well. There's a bit of noise, there is a tiny (!) bit of crosstalk and whatever else effects a few electrons have one on each other a few centimeters apart from juggling their ways through different components. On good, well serviced machines this is just a noise floor. On buggy machines this may cause sudden motion and moments of "huh, what was that?", but nothing we were particularly interested in modeling.

And also, where there's a flow of energy, there's entropy. A lot of the energy ends up as heat and ultimately as electromagnetic radiation. Hey, this is where it happens: Oscillators detune a few cents after a couple of minutes. Pulsewidths suddenly go down to zero where they used to always be a percent or so left over. But these are slow effects, they don't happen from one second to the next.

To cut things short: Analogue is about perfection, with a tad of evolving motion. But there's nothing ever that makes a waveform look visibly or audibly different from one cycle to the next.

- Urs

Adrian B · Post by **Adrian B** » Wed May 08, 2013 7:07 pm

Urs wrote:Adrian, it's like I always say: Analogue isn't about imperfection - it's about perfection, and something else. etc.

Thank you for a very interesting reply. After using Diva for a few months now, it's hard to use anything else, since it always sounds so beautiful. So, whatever "something else" you put in, it works.

telogic · Post by **telogic** » Wed May 08, 2013 7:55 pm

Hi all i like to see diva with a better preset browser as i have a large amount of presets and keep loosing them i have no way of searching or adding as a favourite .

regards

terry

olikana · Post by **olikana** » Fri May 10, 2013 3:48 pm

Urs wrote: On good, well serviced machines this is just a noise floor

i was actually wanting to make a FR about "leakage".

would it be possible to add a control to the trimmers to increase/decrease the noisefloor?
in monark's sub panel there's a leakage amount knob which i believe is just that(adds a veil of noise), and i find it useful for placing a sound in a mix.
by default is set to maximum which makes the synth sound more fizzy and therefore more piercing in a mix...but also sounds harsh in some cases...so i usually put it to medium value which seems to be spot on for most uses.
at lowest value it's basically identical sounding to diva....so i guess diva has a superlow noisefloor value if any (obviously HZ moog was superserviced).
a subtle veil of noise helps excite the sound a little. i know there are many post production ways to add that veil of noise (from tape to noisy mixers) but a simple noisefloor knob for diva i think would be sweet.

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Fri May 10, 2013 4:29 pm

olikana wrote:a simple noisefloor knob for diva i think would be sweet.

As long as it doesn't cannibalise our Satin sales

Ch00rD · Post by **Ch00rD** » Fri May 10, 2013 9:55 pm

telogic wrote:Hi all i like to see diva with a better preset browser as i have a large amount of presets and keep loosing them i have no way of searching or adding as a favourite .

regards

terry

Oh, but there is a way to add favorites (right-click in the patch browser!). There just isn't a way to show all favorites in one view, though, which would indeed be very useful.

I generally like the preset browser as it is, though. And given the fact that any halfway decent OS has multiple ways to let you search for specific files already, I don't see very much value in u-he reinventing that wheel. YMMV, of course.

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Fri Aug 09, 2013 3:58 pm

Little update: I finally added support for modifier keys to the MouseWheel handling of controls. Faders and Knobs will from now on go 0.01 steps when Shift is pressed

KBSoundSmith · Post by **KBSoundSmith** » Fri Aug 09, 2013 4:21 pm

Urs wrote:Little update: I finally added support for modifier keys to the MouseWheel handling of controls. Faders and Knobs will from now on go 0.01 steps when Shift is pressed

I've been dying for that, thanks Urs!

bmrzycki · Post by **bmrzycki** » Sat Aug 10, 2013 2:16 am

Urs wrote:Little update: I finally added support for modifier keys to the MouseWheel handling of controls. Faders and Knobs will from now on go 0.01 steps when Shift is pressed

Yay! fine/coarse tuning with one control! Now I need finish my keyboard guts + mouse guts + hockey puck + ball bearing hackenstein to make The One Knob to Rule Them All!

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Sat Aug 10, 2013 2:43 pm

Here's another:

Re the everlasting font and text rendering issue... I think we're going to switch from Lucida Grande (Mac) and Lucida Sans (Win) to Adobe's freely distributable Source Sans for all standard text rendering in our UIs. Lucida Sans has always been looking either a bit anorexic or blurred when we tried to match user interfaces. A few tests with Source Sans on Windows look just fine. Plus, it comes in various weights.

Also, we might switch to pixel fonts for anything < 8px.

Further suggestons for freely distributable fonts are welcome

- Urs

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Sat Aug 10, 2013 2:48 pm

Plenty of free bitmap fonts:

http://www.dafont.com/bitmap.php

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Sat Aug 10, 2013 3:30 pm

EvilDragon wrote:Plenty of free bitmap fonts:

http://www.dafont.com/bitmap.php

Yeah... loads... need to find a freely distributable in there

xh3rv · Post by **xh3rv** » Sat Aug 10, 2013 4:41 pm

http://openfontlibrary.org/ seems to have the GNU-y ethic. I guess I have a lot more trust in Adobe or Knuth's Computer Modern ... http://cm-unicode.sourceforge.net/

u-he

KVR Audio

Improvements!