I have had demos of both for long time, so some of my conclusions/notes
Icarus pros:
- Much more features, interesting osc warp modes, FM and Sync, the ability to gererate wavetables within the synth
Icarus cons
- Very restricted unison, it seems to have only few preset unison modes with no adjustable detune or stereo spread [EDIT: all good with the unison, I'm stupid]
- Don't like the FM, there is a very narrow range where it sounds any good and it quickly goes too noisy and dirty. Though I have very frist version, I think they added real cross-osc FM, did they?
Icarus sound:
- Well, this is the most improtant part (I rate synths by their sound, a synth can have all features in the world but if I don't like the sound for whatever reason it's useless for me), and in case of Icarus it's the most tricky one. Whenever I load Icarus and start browsing the presets I feel very impressed but after a while something in the sound starts bothering me, like it's too artifical. It's like cheeseburger or shawarma may be the best food in the world when I'm hungry but half an hour later I'm like "why the f*ck did I eat this
". Sort of the same feeling My own attempts to program it gave me mixed results, it seems to easily go into "too digital/thin/aritficial sounding" territory, though it may occasionally sound very cool.Hive pros:
- The included wavetable content sounds very nice
- Controllable unison
Hive cons
- No FM, no sync, no vowel filters
- No wavetable warp/editing/creation. I know about uhm scripts but the idea of generating/editing wavetables outside of the synth without immediate previewing the results doesn't inspire me much.
Hive's sound
- Compared to Icarus it's more balanced and "warm", it actually reminds me on early digital VA classics like Virus or Sylenth rather than modern bold and shiny sound, which is a good thing for me. Maybe not as immediately impressive as Icarus, but probably putting it into an actual mix would be somehow easier.
Your thoughts?
