What's the difference between Hive 2 and other such synths?

[ChunkBuster45]

I'm looking at Hive 2, and I wanted to know why someone would want to get that over something similar.

[Passing Bye]

No idea, there was one guy that knew, but he don't respond on his PM's, maybe they got him...

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

The difference is insignificant. I you have to ask, you will eventually buy all. Save some time, rob a bank, go net shopping and knock yourself out.

[AnX]

I'm looking at Hive 2, and I wanted to know why someone would want to get that over something similar.

which someone?
which something similar?

[syntonica]

How are others different? The look, the sound, the workflow, the price. Figure out which criteria a plugin needs to meet and then start demoing!

Personally, I find Hive a bit flat sounding, overall, and it's not as CPU-efficient as its touted to be. I've found patches that make Diva envious of how much CPU they eat.

[pdxindy]

I'm looking at Hive 2, and I wanted to know why someone would want to get that over something similar.

Hive has particularly good interpolation between frames in wavetables.
Hive has the Uhm scripts (nothing else does)
Hive supports MTS-ESP microtonal system
Hive is MPE capable
Hive has a great preset browser
Hive has the gorgeous new filters as of 2.1
Hive has some clever modulation options like the function generators
Hive has one of the fastest to use GUI's available today
Hive comes from u-he so you can be sure it will be effectively developed and supported for years to come.
Hive has some useful (and uncommon) scale based functionality
Hive has lots of additional presets available (commercial and free)

There ya go... 11 reasons why one might get Hive instead of something else. It's a fantastic synth.

[martinjuenke]

Hive comes from U-He, the others... don't know, not relevant.

[MitchK1989]

for me hive's flexibility in the mod matrix (every slot has built in S+H, slew, rectify, etc etc) combined with the function generators make it surprisingly modular (try "in scale transpose" as a mod target)

it also has a really good trade off between sound quality and CPU usage, flexible wavetable sorting and interpolation options, good unison, etc.

[recursive one]

Like pretty much with anything else, the sound and the workflow.

I think the closest are Dune3 and Ana2, Hive has certain workflow advantages over both and sounds different enough. It misses some features like FM but this may be substituted by appropriate wavetables to an extent.

I find Hive very inspiring synth for making the sounds which I actually use in my tracks.

[Greenstorm33]

Every copy of Hive comes with one of these:

URS_BEES.jpg

Just push the button and Urs will mail you some bees. You won't get that with any other synth.

[glokraw]

Hive has Howard Scar, with some of his skills imparted throughout their other sound designers. If NI had Howard all these years, they wouldn't have had to change management teams so often

[Urs]

it's not as CPU-efficient as its touted to be.

Give us a week or two until the next round of betas

Hive's original concept did not require any kind of load balancing or resource management - every oscillator, modulator and filter was processed all the time. That's simply because only a handful of useful presets had any of those on bypass.

With the recent improvements in Hive 2, we've seen that former doesn't hold to be true anymore. Presets have become more "selectional" about what modules they use, and many forgo filters, or they may use only few oscillators.

Hence we added pretty clever resource management that'll be unveiled in a beta soon. Which of course runs automatically in the background and chooses only those algorithms that are needed, or which run best for the current settings.

Then, when you compare, say, one oscillator in Hive to one oscillator in any other synth, you really just get the CPU of one oscillator in Hive. These kinds of "lab results" will look much, much better for Hive in the future, and I'm really quite excited to see those coming up.

[syntonica]

it's not as CPU-efficient as its touted to be.

Give us a week or two until the next round of betas

I probably just hit the patches with the new filters or audio rate modulation on my old, old machine! But a few patches really did eat half my CPU when the original Hive 1 only maxed out at about 15%.

Sounds like some cool improvements coming, though. Do you wake up in the middle of the night, like me, saying: Aha! That's how I can optimize that process!

[Urs]

Do you wake up in the middle of the night, like me, saying: Aha! That's how I can optimize that process!

All the time... I woke up little more than an hour ago (4:30 am) to write down an idea I had about streamlining the user interface of an Eurorack module that's in concept stage.

[zerocrossing]

The difference is insignificant. I you have to ask, you will eventually buy all. Save some time, rob a bank, go net shopping and knock yourself out.

Finally someone willing to speak truth to power.