Now Hive is here, is it RIP Sylenth?

[Aryaroman]

I still believe that Hive 2 can be an immediate hit if u-he ignore the success of Sylenth1 (or any other soft synth!) and start doing their vision for easy to use/ light on cpu / can be easily adopted by the Dance producers with something original.

Hive 2? Hold your horses now.

[chk071]

RIP Hive? Nope, just did a quick look at our sales:

Bestsellers this year so far in numbers currently are Diva, followed by Zebra, Hive, ACE, Satin, Bazille, Presswerk, others in that order, where Hive sells about almost as often as Zebra and a bit more than half of Diva. Hive also sells about twice as often as ACE, so we can safely say it has become our third flagship product.

Hive and Bazille don't appear in those "Top 10" lists simply because they haven't (yet) reached the market share. While it's unlikely with Bazille, I think it's inevitable for Hive to get there. I think Hive has already drawn even with ACE, and ACE regularly makes it into "Top 40". Give it a year or two, Hive might just arrive in a really good spot.

OTOH the reason why NI and u-he often miss out on the absolute top spots is because we have multiple products. If you take votes for Musicradar's "Top Synth" lists for instance, someone who's into NI our u-he as a brand can always only vote for one product even though they might vote for two or three. So they have to decide, which splits votes. If such elections were open for multiple votes, NI and u-he products would rank much higher. And so would Arturia ones I guess, which might have an even much larger dispersion. What I'm saying however is that "product rankings" often distort the notion of actual market share in favour of brands with single products.

- U

Do you think that the plugin rankings at Splice reflect the market better than Musicradar's list?
It surely isn't perfect either, but NI has 7 products in the top 15 there (including #1). It seems to be more based on what people actually use, but I'm not sure if I can conclude something about sales, as there might be crack-users among them, too.

Wasn't the KVR Top 10 meant in this case? Not that that would prove anything.

[Urs]

Do you think that the plugin rankings at Splice reflect the market better than Musicradar's list?
It surely isn't perfect either, but NI has 7 products in the top 15 there (including #1). It seems to be more based on what people actually use, but I'm not sure if I can conclude something about sales, as there might be crack-users among them, too.

I don't know. It's be nice to know how these lists refer to actual sales and stuff. NI would of course always win in any case, but that's fine.

[Urs]

Wasn't the KVR Top 10 meant in this case? Not that that would prove anything.

There's a couple of factors that influence the product ranks. Sponsored links for instance, reviews and news. And of course maybe running a script for a day if nothing else helps. OTOH I think I've seen companies have their Google Adwords link to the KVR product pages.

[chk071]

Yeah. There was a company, can't remember the name, which sent out newsletters with a prize to win or anything, when customers visit the KVR product site, making it top of the ranking for a month or so. Basically, the KVR ranks only reflect the amount of visits of the product page, AFAIK. So, nothing which could really be used as any kind of popularity meter.

[Urs]

Yep, it does generate sales though. A company that has like, hmm, 100 sales a month might get bumped up to 110 or so. So there's a good incentive for some to stay up there. Not sure if it's worth the money for the sponsored link, but trying to sell a few more licenses would IMHO explain some oddly high rankings.

[Urs]

(man, the past few days have turned me into a cynic)

[Cyoon]

breeth in breeth out wuzaaa

[mcnoone]

Not sure whether one can load patches into the demo version, will try it in the evening or on Tuesday.

You can load sounds into the Hive demo.
Do you have any of your music on the internet I can listen too.
I'm interested in hearing it.

[Dasheesh]

Wasn't the KVR Top 10 meant in this case? Not that that would prove anything.

There's a couple of factors that influence the product ranks. Sponsored links for instance, reviews and news. And of course maybe running a script for a day if nothing else helps. OTOH I think I've seen companies have their Google Adwords link to the KVR product pages.

My wife does this kind of stuff. You buy your way onto lists. You buy your way onto dj top tens, you buy your way into fame now. The majority will follow at that point.

[aumordia]

a degree of cynicism in business is always warranted. fwiw, when you sign up for splice, you get a little program running in your system tray that provides access to its services, does project syncing, etc. this program gathers various usage statistics and reports them back to splice. so when splice reports the popularity of a plugin, it's reporting it based on actual usage in projects.

in a sense this a more robust metric than other lists, for reasons Urs and others have pointed out. however i think there's a bit of a selection bias, since splice seems to be mostly used by edm producers.

this is why i think it's most informative to look at trends across various ranking systems. considering kvr, music radar, gearslutz, and vi control, some pretty clear patterns emerge. near the top, there's always omnisphere, zebra, diva, serum, massive, and sylenth1. the one exception is vi control, which doesnt have lists, but you can tell by google search results that omnisphere is for sure the most popular, followed by zebra.

in terms of commercial success, my gut tells me the top tier is probably omnisphere and zebra, with diva, sylenth, and massive in the next tier. im not sure what to make of serum since it's so new, but it's certainly on track for top tier status, if its not there already.

so in a sense sylenth1 has already been "bested," its just that diva was the one to beat it, not hive. i also expect that most people who own hive already own other u-he products and just wanted the u-he version of a quick and easy synth -- but i suspect that hive creates relatively few first time u-he customers (for all the reasons i've elaborated ad nauseam).

this is, of course, a very respectable niche for Hive to occupy, and it makes plenty of business sense, so calling hive a failure is patently ridiculous. i'm honestly not certain it even makes sense for hive to try to beat sylenth1 at it's own game, it would seem to not depend on those unique traits that have made u-he so successful, i.e. it's a very un-u-he sort of endeavor, but what do i know.

at this point i'm personally probably just going to get serum, it seems to "get it" the way sylenth1 does from an ergonomics perspective, and it would broaden my sonic palette immensely. on further experimentation it only really seems to kill the cpu when unison gets involved, and for that, hey, there's sylenth1 after all. my wife wants me to get omnisphere though, she thinks "that spectrum-sounds man seems so nice, I'm sure you won't regret doing business with him."

[pdxindy]

And you know what? This thread made me dust off my Hive demo and it sounds MUCH better that I remember it to do. E.g., I loaded Big Unison Lead 7 from factory folder and it played some chords along with some loop I've made of several Virus TI sounds and drums and it gels very nicely as if it were another Virus isntance. I guess, when I was trying it for the first time my impressions were like "doesn't sound like Sylenth or Spire = fail", now that I know what Virus sounds like I think Hive sounds closer to it than these two, not in the timbral characteristics (here Spire is the clear winner) but in overall thickness and lushness.

I will spend more time with the demo, maybe when Zebra 3 hits I'll get them two to have an ultimate ITB Virus replacement.

Hive is really fun... The drag-n-drop modulation for basically everything plus the clever arp/seq makes for a playful sandbox. I just made this 1 Osc preset in like 4 minutes to show the flexibility of the arp. Also, the metallic sound is the Corrode FX modulated by the arp step.

http://draigathar.org/sounds/Hive1.mp3

Modulating stuff like distortion, reverb mix, compressor etc creates nice pulsing or waves like qualities. And it is so easy to try some combination that it feels quite creative. I find having to go in and set up DAW automation to try something a bit tedious.

[recursive one]

Hive is really fun... The drag-n-drop modulation for basically everything plus the clever arp/seq makes for a playful sandbox. I just made this 1 Osc preset in like 4 minutes to show the flexibility of the arp. Also, the metallic sound is the Corrode FX modulated by the arp step.

http://draigathar.org/sounds/Hive1.mp3

Interesting sound, not what one would expect from a basic subtractive synth. Did you use Corrode distortion?

I'm now listening to demos for various Hive and Sylenth preset packs in random order, seems that Hive's sound overall is thicker and better balanced, indeed kinda in Virusy direction. Does Urs have a Virus?

Modulating stuff like distortion, reverb mix, compressor etc creates nice pulsing or waves like qualities. And it is so easy to try some combination that it feels quite creative. I find having to go in and set up DAW automation to try something a bit tedious.

That's very true, I also like synth with comrehensive mod matrixes.

I remember I demoed old Albino, I was not very impressed by the sound but I quite liked the GUI and the feature set, basically all what I may need from a synth in one package. I wish Hive (or Sylenth but this is unlikely to happen) were evolving in this direction (more waveforms with smooth transition between them, some FM capabilities, various filters)

[pdxindy]

Hive is really fun... The drag-n-drop modulation for basically everything plus the clever arp/seq makes for a playful sandbox. I just made this 1 Osc preset in like 4 minutes to show the flexibility of the arp. Also, the metallic sound is the Corrode FX modulated by the arp step.

http://draigathar.org/sounds/Hive1.mp3

Interesting sound, not what one would expect from a basic subtractive synth. Did you use Corrode distortion?

Yeah, the Corrode Distortion Rate is modulated per step of the Arp. I think I added a touch of BitCrush also on a couple steps.

It is so easy since all the FX parameters are available at once and pretty much anything can be modulated.

[aumordia]

I think I'm giving up on the idea of One Synth to Rule Them all, and instead looking to get a few complementary synths that reward me the most for my general knowledge of timeless synthesis principles, while demanding the least mastery of the ephemeral trivia of their inner workings. So far that's looking like Sylenth1, Serum, and Padshop Pro, but ask me again in a week and see if I sing the same tune.