I was pretty disappointed in Diva

[woodsdenis]

What a bizarre thread, as someone who owned and used a Prophet 5, Minimoog, Oberheim Matrix 12 as well as many others over the years (even a Fairlight Urs ) I thank god that UHe and others have created amazing soft synths that sound equally as good as and in many cases better than the ones I used for many years.

[Apostate]

What a bizarre thread, as someone who owned and used a Prophet 5, Minimoog, Oberheim Matrix 12 as well as many others over the years (even a Fairlight Urs ) I thank god that UHe and others have created amazing soft synths that sound equally as good as and in many cases better than the ones I used for many years.

I agree with members here who feel that Diva stands both as an unavoidably-different-but-not-entirely-unlike analogue emulation and a freeky great synth on its own.

So, I'm on safe middle ground I guess lol!

[sqigls]

just modulating an oscillator pitch with an envelope, it should be fairly obvious how to go about doing it, but… how the feck?

How is that not obvious? If you know what "modulating an oscillator pitch with an envelope" even is, IMO you are half-way there and Diva is not that complex or different than other synth with stuff like this.

Personally, I find it quite a procedure to just figure out basic modulation in Diva. I don't own a modular, so multiply, add etc are all alien terms for me. Just making a snappy kick drum takes a billion times longer for me in Diva than pretty much EVERY other synth i've ever owned. I just want to effect the pitch of one oscillator by about 2 octaves, with an envelope, but I can only seem to manage about one octave?…

Ok, i'll read the fecking manual

should be Hz and ms etc!?

a dotted quarter would be dialed in as 6 x sixteenth.

Is it possible you could make an option for a readout displaying "1/8t" or "1/8." or "something?
Also, an on/off switch for each Left/Right and Center for the delay would be very handy for programming. The delay in Diva just gets abandoned in my studio, too often I find myself sitting there doing left-brain puzzles when I barely get any time to create as it is, i'd like to stay in the flow.

[Urs]

Is it possible you could make an option for a readout displaying "1/8t" or "1/8." or "something?
Also, an on/off switch for each Left/Right and Center for the delay would be very handy for programming. The delay in Diva just gets abandoned in my studio, too often I find myself sitting there doing left-brain puzzles when I barely get any time to create as it is, i'd like to stay in the flow.

Yes, that's planned for a feature update

[Dasheesh]

Probably going to tell you the same things others have said but...

1: you won't get it through youtube. Analog is about presence in the room.

2: It's not exact. It's based on...and pretty damn close as far as I'm conserned.

3: even the real machines, when compared next to each other, will vary from one machine to the next. That's analog.

[chk071]

1: you won't get it through youtube. Analog is about presence in the room.

But isn't that pretty esoteric? At least i wouldn't know for the sake of it what that means. Presence can already be achieved by raising the volume, or EQ'ing some highs into the signal. Or by positioning your speakers right, so the sound can spread out better.

[trance_lucent]

Well, any tuning in any of our synths is in semitones and cents, such as oscillator tune or filter cutoff. Scales in semitones have the advantage over Hz that they're linear to our perception of pitch.

Nonetheless I had a hard time while designing some physical-modelling sounds in Zebra. Having a table with resonant modes, and trying to tweak a filters and EQs to the exact values isn'to so easy. Would be great to have a second number in GUI indicator tweaking a frequency, such as "Cutoff: 50 (300 Hz)".

And as a comb filter in a dissonant mode is a great tool for designing resonant picture, it would be great to have a frequency graph in GUI with current frequency responce set by flavour ant tone knobs.

[V0RT3X]

Disclaimer : I'm not a scientist, nor am I programmer or synth designer. Don't eat me alive for my thoughts here.. I don't need that bullshit. Just wanted to chime in what i think about the "analog" sound as a regular guy who enjoys the sound of analog synthesizers.

I have been finding that the "analog sound" has lots to do with the following things.

1. The Oscillator Phase randomizes and the pitch can drift ever so slightly on certain OSC designs. This + Detuning is often associated with the "phat" sound that people hear. Eventually someone thought to make things more Phat and designed the supersaw.

2. Mild non-linear saturation introduced in the signal path from the various modules. Nothing too extreme though, but you can overdrive it with some modules such as the feedback module in Diva.

3. Filter saturation and grit as you increase the resonance and sweep the filter. You can hear this modeled very nicely in Monark and somewhat in Diva with certain modules.

4. Aging components can affect the sound of other things in the synth (Crosstalk, pitch instability, etc) So chances are a brand new jupiter-8 didn't sound like the jupiter-8 you hear today. This is actually modeled nicely in Monark, and maybe not so much in Diva, which is kind of nice. However it would be nice to see this added to Diva eventually, but i imagine it would take a bit of work to emulate the behavior of each aging component per module in Diva.

5. No Aliasing in the analog domain.

Here are 2 examples of an Arp2600 being played.
http://www.discretesynthesizers.com/arp ... 0duet1.mp3
http://www.discretesynthesizers.com/arp ... e_outw.mp3

My final opinion
Diva can come very close to that sound which is a godsend for people who can't afford a real analog. And for those who can afford a few analog synthesizers, Diva is still a great sounding solution! I am pretty sure if i won the lottery and went out and bought a Vintage Jupiter-8 & 6, Minimoog, MS-20, Juno 60, etc that I would still use a copy of Diva in my music.

I imagine a large part of analog stuff is also the hands on appeal and physical feeling of being around analog circuitry.

[Apostate]

1: you won't get it through youtube. Analog is about presence in the room.

But isn't that pretty esoteric? At least i wouldn't know for the sake of it what that means. Presence can already be achieved by raising the volume, or EQ'ing some highs into the signal. Or by positioning your speakers right, so the sound can spread out better.

Yes, that can be true (in many cases). But to me "analog" means something that has like a physical feel to the sound (I know, I'm putting this badly). Break out Z3ta, Helix, or even certain patches in Zebra. There's something physical to the sound. I'm so sorry I can't describe it better.

XILS 3, 4 is like that too. I don't get that as much from Diva, though it does occur (especially with tweaking); just not as much (for me) as the ones mentioned (Synthmaster seems to have gotten more of that sound with the last updates as well).

Serum is an example of the opposite, not much presence there. Very "digital" (go ahead and throw stones at me for using that term, people who know synths know what the hell I'm talking about when I say "digital"). The Tone 2 synths are often that way too, Waldorf... still terrific synths, of course.

Again, really sorry since I probably didn't convey what I meant to, at least coherently.

[nilhartman]

Disclaimer:

re: "presence". Don't you guys think it especially depends on how any synth is patched, played and mixed? And on the melody being played?
TBH, I'm more and more puzzled by all those kinds of words when it comes to describing something so subjective. We just click with a synth, or we don't. It either inspires us, or it doesn't.

Our perception is so biased (mine included), by all the infos we have, and all the (classic) sounds we might want to recreate / make our own and incorporate to our tunes: "musician *X* used synth *Y* to make that lush sound in his tune *Z*: I need *Y*!"

Once again, what's the point in pretending to sound analogue if using a sound created digitally? It's a bit of a rhetorical question, but still I'm asking it genuinely. I sincerely love how lines are getting blurred between all those different technologies: softwares sounding as good as some analogue synths, analogue synths going hybrid. Lets embrace the future! Isn't what electronic music is about?

[Apostate]

Disclaimer:

re: "presence". Don't you guys think it especially depends on how any synth is patched, played and mixed? And on the melody being played?
TBH, I'm more and more puzzled by all those kinds of words when it comes to describing something so subjective. We just click with a synth, or we don't. It either inspires us, or it doesn't.

Our perception is so biased (mine included), by all the infos we have, and all the (classic) sounds we might want to recreate / make our own and incorporate to our tunes: "musician *X* used synth *Y* to make that lush sound in his tune *Z*: I need *Y*!"

Once again, what's the point in pretending to sound analogue if using a sound created digitally? It's a bit of a rhetorical question, but still I'm asking it genuinely. I sincerely love how lines are getting blurred between all those different technologies: softwares sounding as good as some analogue synths, analogue synths going hybrid. Lets embrace the future! Isn't what electronic music is about?

One could just say: Diva sounds terrific.

[nilhartman]

Ah! Yup

[goldenanalog]

The strength of any analog synth comes from the individual characteristics of each of its oscillators, voltage controlled amplifiers, & filters -

Same as a tonewheel and the associated magnetic pickup in a Hammond organ, strip of tape and tapehead for each note in a Melotron, string and pickup on a guitar, singer in a choir -

That's what gives these sounds presence - they're a composite of individual sonic and electrical elements summed to an output (perhaps a 5532 op-amp? Lol! - old skool -)

However: thanks to decades of incessant pursuit by several music manufacturers, modelling 'simpler' elements like CEM3340's and tape/tapehead combos and tonewheels has gotten so precise, that except under very rigid conditions, it can be difficult if not impossible to distinguish the real McCoy from the facsimile -

[goldenanalog]

Can an analog polyphonic synth be so precisely built, that it's sound emulates a digital synth?

[V0RT3X]

Video of me messing about with Diva. I didn't play through the wonderful presets, i just kind of did sound design on the fly. All tweaks were done with the mouse which is limiting but still fun.

I ran Diva (In Divine mode) into Bitwigs Peak limiter to prevent clipping, and then i used a real-time 16bit Ozone Dither on the output.



It is definitely capable of some amazing analog timbres, and I haven't found something quite like it elsewhere. The whole point of having this kind of emulation is to clearly emulate analog tones, and Diva does this very very well.

Also what other minimoog emulation lets you play it duo-phonically?

Apologies for the shit keyboard playing, I'm due for some more keyboard lessons..
I also only have a broken Akai LPK25 to use right now too.