Hive 2.0

[Urs]

I think Urs answered part of it regarding the Blend option, but it also seems you want to be able to detune the unison sound more than the default allows, and vary the way they are spread?

I think I answered the "extended spread" question before. The reason we don't do it is because all unison voices share the same band limiting (anti-aliasing). Hive would consume considerably more CPU if each unison voice needed its own spectrum, or if it had a playback engine which inherently band limits. As a result, extended detune beyond a few semitones will result in aliasing on the voices which are pitched up, and dullness on the voices pitched down.

Like I said, different manufacturers choose different compromises.

But there's another point to be made. I don't find excessive detune particularly useful - I guess only a handful of presets need it. It certainly isn't a "sweet spot" requirement. By keeping parameter ranges within usable boundaries one gets a higher resolution and thus more control within the region of interest.

[carrieres]

Like I said, different manufacturers choose different compromises.

most users think that dev use tools like synth edit in their basic usage (no coding) and get upset when dev say it's not possible.

thanks Urs to develop the instruments you dream of

[david.beholder]

Hive has 4 oscillators (2 main, 2 sub). You can easily achieve what blend does by using two oscillators. If you choose the same waveform on Osc1 and its sub, the volume control of Osc1 is essentially the blend control. You just need to crank up Sub volume. There's no necessity IMHO to add a dedicated blend control - it would be borderline redundant (even though it's an understandably welcome feature in a synth which has a more restrictive UI, i.e. which can't show parameters of multiple oscillators at once)

First of all I was wrong about Serum it does allow different types of osc unison detune, so it's actually has exactly the same controls as Dune 3. And looks like they share modes.

Well I was under impression that Hive is U-he's bread and butter WT synth that is easy to use targeted to compete with Sylenth-derived synths like Serum or Dune 3. I also was thinking that it's targeted to different crowd and intended to have fast workflow. Am I correct?

As for CPU usage, all I can say is, we have chosen our compromises, others chose theirs. The design process for the standard unison waveforms was done 5 years ago. At that time, Hive had the best specs among a range of competing products and within our choices of design / catalog of criteria. Surely someone might have come up with something better by now, but I really can't do the same research again - particularly because CPUs have become faster since and this isn't even an issue IMHO. If it wasn't an issue back then, I don't see how it could become an issue today.

Well it is and it's not. On my 4 years old laptop performance still matters and on big projects on desktop performance matters too. And mobile CPUs performance progressing noticeable slower so it would still have use.

As for wavetable playback - our criteria have always been about sweeping wavetables. When I researched this about a year ago, no other synth was doing what Hive does (extra smooth realtime interpolation). That was our angle, and we made it fast enough to compete with synths that used plain crossfading or no interpolation at all. Even when you set Hive to its most lofi setting, there's still some smoothing going on. Please keep that in mind when you compare. And use settings that Hive is made for, i.e. wavetable sweeping and oscillator unison.

I do and as far as I see Serum doesn't do online interpolation it's just jumping between waves - they have offline morph - so one could pre-render it. Yes I hear difference between quality of interpolations altho I find Serum approach good since it doesn't load cpu.
I also did tests on 8x unison 1 osc with wavetable position modified by 2 bar long lfo. Well in both 1 note and 4 note tests Hive is couple percent worse. Once again may be I need to update my tests or may be your performance data is not valid.

Lastly, I try not to comment on competitor's products. Comparison posts invite trouble. Hence, I don't like them.

I totally understand. But I'm talking about Hive features vs competitors and spotlight is on Hive.

[omiroad]

You don't need to use Hive if another synth is a better fit for you.

[PieBerger]

I do and as far as I see Serum doesn't do online interpolation it's just jumping between waves - they have offline morph - so one could pre-render it. Yes I hear difference between quality of interpolations altho I find Serum approach good since it doesn't load cpu.

Trouble is Serum falls flat on it's face when using third party tables with a high number of frames, all of the way up to the maximum of 256, because it needs frames for the interpolation process. This is a big problem when using say the Galbanum Architecture wavetables, which are 256 frames long and sound like poo when scanned in Serum because there's not enough room to create the interpolation frames. Deciding which frames to keep and which to sacrifice is not something I (and most other people I suspect), really want to spend their time doing. Let's not also forget the 2D scanning feature in Hive and how much of a pain it would be to use if every time you changed the number of sub tables, you would have to refresh the offline morph. Not exactly the sort of process you can accept in a synth that's all about smooth scanning wavetable synthesis AND fast workflow.

[Urs]

I totally understand. But I'm talking about Hive features vs competitors and spotlight is on Hive.

Our concept with Hive was based on this train of thought: Some functionality of some competitors was required because they could not visualise multiple layers/oscillators/whatsoever at once. If we can manage to create a concept lean enough to fit the screen in full, we can go an extra mile and remove redundancies. That's what we did.

For me, every knob or switch added to the UI is a struggle, because it slows down the workflow.

Furthermore we observed - in other synths - that some very standard functionality can be omitted without being much of an impediment. So we did that as well and, whenever possible, we made it accessible through modulation or layering for those who would miss it.

Naturally, we've gotten many requests to add these things back in. We can surely add some unison blend mode. We can add a choice of unison detune law beyond the 3 engines. We can add more LFOs, we can add LFO delays, we can add envelope attack spikes, we can add multi band limiting, we can add wavetable end points, we can add oscillator effects, we can add parallel effects processing. We can add all of this, but I highly doubt it would make anyone happy if we did so.

I think the more sophisticated way to go about this is to tell people how they get the same results with the existing functionality, if possible.

[dermage]

Hey Urs,

you said once, maybe in a feature update it would be possible to make custom modes. To make it configurable which Envelope, Filter, etc. is used, in addition to the currently preset modes of Clean, Dirty and Normal.

Is this still planned?

Would very like to have this custom configured version of Hive's engine.

Thanks

[Urs]

Hey Urs,

you said once, maybe in a feature update it would be possible to make custom modes. To make it configurable which Envelope, Filter, etc. is used, in addition to the currently preset modes of Clean, Dirty and Normal.

Is this still planned?

Would very like to have this custom configured version of Hive's engine.

Thanks

It's on my wish list. For Hive 2.0, we wanted to concentrate on UI, visualisation and modulation options before adding sound upgrades. We'll see if the Zebra 3 development will spin off another engine maybe, and then maybe a customisable engine which lets one combine algorithms from all others.

[dermage]

Hey Urs,

you said once, maybe in a feature update it would be possible to make custom modes. To make it configurable which Envelope, Filter, etc. is used, in addition to the currently preset modes of Clean, Dirty and Normal.

Is this still planned?

Would very like to have this custom configured version of Hive's engine.

Thanks

It's on my wish list. For Hive 2.0, we wanted to concentrate on UI, visualisation and modulation options before adding sound upgrades. We'll see if the Zebra 3 development will spin off another engine maybe, and then maybe a customisable engine which lets one combine algorithms from all others.

Great!
So another goodie on the road to Z3

Thanks, very looking forward to that.

[david.beholder]

I totally understand. But I'm talking about Hive features vs competitors and spotlight is on Hive.

Our concept with Hive was based on this train of thought: Some functionality of some competitors was required because they could not visualise multiple layers/oscillators/whatsoever at once. If we can manage to create a concept lean enough to fit the screen in full, we can go an extra mile and remove redundancies. That's what we did.

Furthermore we observed - in other synths - that some very standard functionality can be omitted without being much of an impediment. So we did that as well and, whenever possible, we made it accessible through modulation or layering for those who would miss it.

Well I like one page designs because they are faster and both UI/UX and functionality of modulation system is great. But omitting features in the name of workarounds is creating a lot of idiosyncrasy.

Naturally, we've gotten many requests to add these things back in. We can surely add some unison blend mode. We can add a choice of unison detune law beyond the 3 engines. We can add more LFOs, we can add LFO delays, we can add envelope attack spikes, we can add multi band limiting, we can add wavetable end points, we can add oscillator effects, we can add parallel effects processing. We can add all of this, but I highly doubt it would make anyone happy if we did so.

I think the more sophisticated way to go about this is to tell people how they get the same results with the existing functionality, if possible.

Well let me state it this way: if Hive is intended to compete with "to go" synths like Serum (and Serum is featured in nearly every second youtube video nowdays) and it's targeted against modern dance music producers -- Hive should have lot more features appealing to them (or us, you know). If it's not then comparisons against Serum are not correct but then what/who is it targeted against. And I have such a question since Hive 1 was released.

But I agree with others - I prefer not to derail Z3 with my Hive comments and ideas

[Urs]

if Hive is intended to compete with "to go" synths

I don't even know where to begin. I can probably name 37 or so concepts in Hive that Serum/Sylenth/whichever simply can't compete with. But they don't necessarily manifest as bullet points in feature comparison lists.

Hive will never be enough for people who judge synths by feature count. That's the point of it.

Hive can already do "attack spikes", it can already do "unison blend" - it can do a lot of things as easily as dedicated controls for esoteric functionality. It does so by carefully chosen features which are "not just attack spikes" and "not just unsion blend". Latter are the workarounds, Hive has solutions which are elegant in comparison.

[PieBerger]

if Hive is intended to compete with "to go" synths

I don't even know where to begin. I can probably name 37 or so concepts in Hive that Serum/Sylenth/whichever simply can't compete with. But they don't necessarily manifest as bullet points in feature comparison lists.

Hive will never be enough for people who judge synths by feature count. That's the point of it.

Hive can already do "attack spikes", it can already do "unison blend" - it can do a lot of things as easily as dedicated controls for esoteric functionality. It does so by carefully chosen features which are "not just attack spikes" and "not just unsion blend". Latter are the workarounds, Hive has solutions which are elegant in comparison.

exactly. Hive competes against other go-to synths by having a great sounding wavetable engine, the best sounding and easiest to get good results with least effort imo and by managing to have a streamlined set of powerful features that allow you to cover a broad range of sounds, in fun ways, without getting bogged down by clunky workflow. At this point it's less of a discussion about the strengths/weaknesses of competing synths and more about you complaining about how Hive isn't like other synths. It's not like other synths and it's all the better for it. What we absolutely don't need is cookie cutter products that all look/feel/sound the same, with the same featureset that all they can compete with each other on is price, because we'll end up with a bunch of braindead devs all racing one and other to the bottom. No thanks

[david.beholder]

Hive will never be enough for people who judge synths by feature count. That's the point of it.

You say like features are something bad.

Hive can already do "attack spikes", it can already do "unison blend" - it can do a lot of things as easily as dedicated controls for esoteric functionality. It does so by carefully chosen features which are "not just attack spikes" and "not just unsion blend". Latter are the workarounds, Hive has solutions which are elegant in comparison.

But in case of BnB synth I as customer prefer features over workarounds. That's exacly why people are asking for wavetables or unison type/blend control.

[carrieres]

You say like features are something bad.

too much feature is bad, we have a word for it, it's call bloated

[PieBerger]

Hive will never be enough for people who judge synths by feature count. That's the point of it.

You say like features are something bad.

Too many features in a synth that's all about efficiency are definitely a bad thing. Take a look a Avenger for example. Very comprehensive synth, tonnes of features but the UI is a cluttered mess and it's tab after tab after tab which equals crap workflow.

But in case of BnB synth I as customer prefer features over workarounds.

Talk about entitlement...