Hive 1.0

[garryknight]

We've all been thanking Urs and the preset designers but I wanted to express my thanks to whoever it was made the tutorial videos. They're excellent quality and really simple to understand, provided that you know just the basics of subtractive synthesis. Yet another example of the quality of u-he products.

[2ZrgE]

Indeed, life would be so much easier if other companies would also invest a bit in similar videos. Much more fun than reading a manual.

[Howard]

Much more fun than reading a manual.

You aren't in the Hive to have fun, you're hear to learn drill

[SoundGoddess]

If you don't have fun reading the manual then you're trying too hard. Lots of really helpful tips in there

[takaii]

I need init button, also the lock parameters that keeps the parameters locked while changing presets are still active even on choosing init preset. Pretty annoying for that, thats why i want an init button that just turns everything to default state

[exmatproton]

I need init button, also the lock parameters that keeps the parameters locked while changing presets are still active even on choosing init preset. Pretty annoying for that, thats why i want an init button that just turns everything to default state

+1. That would be a great addition!

[fourthmanfire]

I need init button, also the lock parameters that keeps the parameters locked while changing presets are still active even on choosing init preset. Pretty annoying for that, thats why i want an init button that just turns everything to default state

+1. That would be a great addition!

+2 for INIT button on main interface. Doesn't have to be too large, either.

Speaking of this, do any u-he synths have init buttons? If not, are Urs & co. against them? haha

[Urs]

Uhm we've started doing inits in drop downs in Presswerk, but also in Hive's module presets.

We don't have any init button for all of Hive. Yet.

[involver]

An chance we could get some more useful units for some of the parameters? For example: main output volume in dB, detune in cents, envelope time in ms(or BPM-related) etc.

[Urs]

An chance we could get some more useful units for some of the parameters? For example: main output volume in dB, detune in cents, envelope time in ms(or BPM-related) etc.

It's more complicated than one might think

Output and most volumes are linear on a synth, so it's really difficult to do a proper dB scale. We could visualize values in dB, but the knob movement would suddenly feel uneven, i.e. not correspond to values evenly over its range.

Detune is not just done in pitch but also in frequency, depending on the engine's detune laws. That is, any note might have a different detune in cents. Unsion oscillators additionally have non-linear detuning, so all we could give is maybe an "average detune" or a "max detune", which again would need to be a mix of cents and hertz.

Lastly, the only envelope stage that has a measurable duration is Attack. While the attack time is somewhat matched between the engines, I would have had to spend another month or two to match them exactly. Therefore, and because in some engines Decay *never* reaches Sustain, we'd rather keep things abstract.

Cheers,

- Urs

[Shiek927]

Wonderful to slowly see reviews for Hive coming up! (http://fr.audiofanzine.com/synthe-virtu ... pique.html).

Unfortunately, I have to rely on Google Translate to understand any of it. One thing that caught my eye was the note that it doesn't sound as "hot" as Diva which is true. Hive can definitely deliver fat sounds, but it's not 'quite' as hot. I always saw it as a combination of being designed with modern dance music in mind (hardly a downside) and the filters not being 'quite' as analogue as Diva for the sake of a lower CPU hit.

Hive definitely has some 'fire' to it though if you listen to some of the pads ^__^. Someone else happily noted that its sounded like a JV-2080 .

[maltin]

[quote="Urs"][quote="involver"]An chance we could get some more useful units for some of the parameters? For example: main output volume in dB, detune in cents, envelope time in ms(or BPM-related) etc.[/quote]
It's more complicated than one might think

Output and most volumes are linear on a synth, so it's really difficult to do a proper dB scale. We could visualize values in dB, but the knob movement would suddenly feel uneven, i.e. not correspond to values evenly over its range.

Detune is not just done in pitch but also in frequency, depending on the engine's detune laws. That is, any note might have a different detune in cents. Unsion oscillators additionally have non-linear detuning, so all we could give is maybe an "average detune" or a "max detune", which again would need to be a mix of cents and hertz.

Lastly, the only envelope stage that has a measurable duration is Attack. While the attack time is somewhat matched between the engines, I would have had to spend another month or two to match them exactly. Therefore, and because in some engines Decay *never* reaches Sustain, we'd rather keep things abstract.

Cheers,

- Urs[/quote]

Maybe I'm missing something, but are the values referenced anywhere for each parameter? It would be nice if there was some way to convert the numerical values to relevant values.

[Urs]

Maybe I'm missing something, but are the values referenced anywhere for each parameter? It would be nice if there was some way to convert the numerical values to relevant values.

Most values have relevant units - oscillator and filter frequencies are set in semitones and cents, Gains are in dB, most timing parameters are measured in note lengths, milliseconds or seconds. Volumes and many other parameters are measured in %.

However, some parameters are not that easily mapped to particular units. LFO rate for instance is an exponential value in most of our plug-ins, multiplying a base speed by 2^x, such that -3.00 is 1/8th of the rate, 0 is exactly the rate and +5 is 32 times the rate. Unfortunately there's no useful word for this kind of unit, or maybe we simply haven't put enough thought into this yet.

Nevertheless, while no-one asked for this kind of thing ten years ago, it's been asked for more often as of late. We're aware of that and we'll continue to put more effort into meaning units for our parameters.

[EvilDragon]

However, some parameters are not that easily mapped to particular units. LFO rate for instance is an exponential value in most of our plug-ins, multiplying a base speed by 2^x, such that -3.00 is 1/8th of the rate, 0 is exactly the rate and +5 is 32 times the rate. Unfortunately there's no useful word for this kind of unit, or maybe we simply haven't put enough thought into this yet.

Why not show the exact value in Hz, then (when it's in non-sync mode) ? Or you could simply show it as a multiplier (1/32 to 32x)?

[Urs]

However, some parameters are not that easily mapped to particular units. LFO rate for instance is an exponential value in most of our plug-ins, multiplying a base speed by 2^x, such that -3.00 is 1/8th of the rate, 0 is exactly the rate and +5 is 32 times the rate. Unfortunately there's no useful word for this kind of unit, or maybe we simply haven't put enough thought into this yet.

Why not show the exact value in Hz, then (when it's in non-sync mode) ? Or you could simply show it as a multiplier (1/32 to 32x)?

Because we hadn't had time to try that yet. It's certainly something I might spend some time on.

I have always been fond of keeping parameter values linear, i.e. 10 pixels mouse movement always change a parameter by the same amount. We have given this up in Presswerk, and I have yet to wrap my head around whether or not this was a good decision.