Diva vs. Repro-5

[Ploki]

i need to spend more time with it then, i guess

[EvilDragon]

Repro can go way harsher than Diva (because that's how the original hardware is).

[bmanic]

Repro can go way harsher than Diva (because that's how the original hardware is).

No way.. Diva can go really friggin harsh and nasty but in a pleasant way (I lack the English words to describe what I mean). You can get Repro to be really "shrill" but not 'destroyed-huge-harsh-yet-still-musical and warm' which Diva can do effortlessly. As I can't explain what I mean I'll show you instead.

Threw this quick example together:

Example (MP3), Google Drive link.

This is 4 instances of Diva (2 of them used for hard panned "soft" melody about halfway through just to juxtapose the smooth vs the harsh). There are no other effects used except compression and a bit of overall mastering EQ. All except one Diva instance are without internal effects as well.. so this is all completely dry without any distortion devices or other trickery.

EDIT: actually I forgot to remove the 2C Audio Precedence plugin from the master.. so yeah that's there as well but it's quite subtle tonally (makes things a bit wider in the stereo field). And I of course have Pro-L2 catching peaks too.. but my point is, this is all Diva being aggressive in a very pleasant manner.

This is a pretty good example I feel of showing how wide the underlying sound palette of Diva is.

[EvilDragon]

Diva is always going to sound "warmer" because it's just made to sound like that no matter how hard you push it (especially evident when you try to do any filter FM... Repro is a LOT better at filter FM than Diva). Repros have a lot wider modulation ranges (true of the hardware units, as well), so they needed much more oversampling to get right (Repro-1 up to 768kHz actually - but also because of JAWS wavefolder).

Your example is not what I would call "friggin harsh" at all. It's way too plushy and velvety sounding to be considered harsh


Also, from Urs himself:

"Repro is very different from Diva. Diva is very smooth and mellow and it does what I call the precision of analog sound. It’s made to play nice, it’s a sweet-spot synth. Repro is quite the opposite. Sequential, who made the Prophet 5 and the Pro 1, didn’t give a flying f**k about parameter ranges. The Prophet 5 has this humongous modulation range – you can do audio-rate modulation over 12 octaves. In the Minimoog, it’s only two. Maybe four if you have a bipolar signal, you know? It’s crazy.

And it’s also got some great chipset faults. The Prophet 5 we modeled Repro on has faults in the filter. Once the cutoff is constant, it’s perfect. It’s a perfect filter. But as soon as you modulate the cutoff, the modulation signal is imprinted on the audio. It probably wasn’t deliberate, but it was at least partly responsible for the characteristic sound.

As for the oscillators, Prophets were renowned for their sync sound. We figured out that it doesn’t really work as it’s supposed to. Because what happens is that the sync on the first sawtooth, for example, seriously overshoots, giving it more bite than other implementations. So you get these really raw sounds that Prophet 5 and Prophet 1 are famous for. This is not a sweet-spot synth. It can get dirty!"

[bmanic]

Ok yeah maybe harsh is the wrong word. Basically what I'm trying to say is Diva makes excellent "non-soft" sounds as well. Heavily modulated to get that buzzing at audio rate.. and pushing hard into the filter sections.

So many preset libraries for Diva seem to be quite soft and "simple" but my point was that Diva can do very unique types of sounds that are very difficult to do with other methods (except modular synths like ACE and Bazille etc).

[EvilDragon]

True, you can push Diva... a bit. It cannot get truly harsh, though, because that's not what they set out to do with it. Maybe Diva 2 gives more options there (brighter sound with more bandwidth, much improved filter FM by removing the restriction of osc 1 tune, etc.)

And FWIW, I don't find Repros shrill, at least not in an unpleasant way. But we're all different

[bmanic]

I think "phat buzzing" are actually the words I was looking for. It's very easy to get pleasant chaotic movement in diva so that everything is slightly unstable and always buzzing.

Example: DIVA good at buzzing! (mp3), Google Drive link.

I just messed around with a few of my presets. None of them have any noise source at all. It's all the "buzzing" from modulations instead and none of it ever gets into "ouch it hurts my ears" territory (tonally that is.. my playing is another thing entirely! ).

I also really like the 'stackindex' thing which allows for some excellent stacked modulations and weirdness so that each voice is unique (that's how the major 3rd is done in one of those sounds).

[EvilDragon]

Stack index is indeed very useful and you can do all sorts of things with it!

[surreal]

True, you can push Diva... a bit. It cannot get truly harsh, though, because that's not what they set out to do with it. Maybe Diva 2 gives more options there (brighter sound with more bandwidth, much improved filter FM by removing the restriction of osc 1 tune, etc.)

And FWIW, I don't find Repros shrill, at least not in an unpleasant way. But we're all different

Is there a Diva2

[EvilDragon]

Of course not. Zebra 3 comes first.

[Urs]

Is there a Diva2

No.

People have started threads about with feature wishes for it though. We might take a look at those in 18-24 months, earliest.

[bmanic]

Diva 1 is already ridiculously capable and sounds wicked so personally I don't see any real need for Diva 2 at the moment.. but Zebra 3 should be pretty popular and thus maybe quite high on the to-do list?

[Hexfix93]

Diva 2, polivoks filter, sh5 filter, additive osc, repro 1 envs so we can make it snap. This alone i would shell out $200 in a heartbeat.

[poetd]

Results so far:
Diva: 9
Repro: 6
Don't know/won't say/waffle: 6

[Howard]

I vote Repro