Comparing Dune 3.5 With Hive 2

[GHOST19]

These demos made by the same talented sound designer speak for themselves.

https://soundcloud.com/synapseaudio/dun ... ykevinschr

Hive has other things going for it but it's clearly not those kind of sounds, which is pretty ironic considering it was inspired by sylenth1.

[DNnX]

DUNE3 (and 1, 2) owner.
Hive2 is having 50% off sale and I'm pretty interested.

What is interesting to me is that Ad in NI mentions about its performance.

A workhorse synth that’s light on CPU but heavy on sound. A sleek interface, intuitive feedback, and simple modulation routing make Hive 2 perfect for advanced modern sound design.

I'm currently running projects under 192kHz with out oversampling.
Diva and Pro-1/5 were too heavy for my setup when I demoed before.
I should check Hive2 whether it has better performance than other u-he synths

[tony10000]

I use both and they are both great synths and perfectly complimentary. And the sounds are very different in many ways.

[DJDJ]

This is a good question and an interesting comparison. I have both, here's my take:

For context, the sounds I'm after (nobody ever says this, why?) are lush digital pads, reasonably good wobble and DnB basses, and then interesting FX patches. These are kind of the main things I'm after in a wavetable synth. I've been on the hunt for a few years now for my ideal "all rounder" wavetable synth that can do all these types of patches well. What I've been finding is that typically, the wavetable synths that are good at DnB basses tend to have a more 'up front' sound, and are often 'stiffer' or more aggressive sounding. When it comes to the kinds of lush pads that I like (think an updated take on 90s atmospheric DnB rompler sounds, JV-1080, etc), these synths that excel at basses often don't quite hit the mark for me. The pads tend to be too up front, the envleopes aren't quite right, etc. It just doesn't 'feel' right on something like Vital or Serum to me.

On the other hand, the wavetable synths that do beautifully lush pads to my liking tend to not do DnB basses as well, often lacking in some of the features that make these modern sounds like FMing one osc with the other, mod routing options, etc. They can make basic basses just fine, but don't usually have the "it" factor for really interesting, aggressive, filthy, twisted bass noises.

But in a perfect world, I'd have that all in one synth.

So, I recently got to playing with Hive 2, and fell in love with it. It does all the things I want it to do. It makes the noises I most want to make, and the presets reflect that, which is nice.

But the Dune vs. Hive thing is interesting.

One one hand, I prefer the sound of Dune. It has a quality to it that I absolutely love. And for me, it's one of those synths that I can really gorgeous pads out of, but I have a hard time getting any gnarly basses out of it that I like. I'm also not a bit fan of all the tabs, the way the menu is handled, and mod routing. It doesn't 'spark Joy' in terms of wanting to make patches on it, but it does sound really, really good.

On the other hand, while I like Hive's sound less but enough to use it, I prefer everything else about it enough that it's my preferred choice between the two. The presets, the interface (coloration & hexagon less so, but all the knobs are great), the modulation, the resonance on the filters, etc. It all just kind of works for me and my use case. I have moments of being blown away with certain patches and what it's capable of. But, it does tend to have (depending on the patch) a 'further back in the mix', sometimes more phasey (?!) softer sound to it. Sometimes that's ideal, but other times it's not. It's less aggressive / up front character is really helpful for certain pads or more cinematic patches, but it can take a little more work to get it to sit in the mix in a more forward way. It could also use some of those more modern features too, but overall I find it highly enjoyable to interact with.

Ultimately, Hive inspires me and feels like 85% of that 'all rounder' to me, while Dune doesn't, even though it's sound is undeniably fantastic.

But again, this is all in the context of a specific set of sounds I'm after. If I were making trance, or using more bread and butter synth sounds, I might favor Dune more.

[BONES]

I use both and they are both great synths and perfectly complimentary. And the sounds are very different in many ways.

I bet I could play you 100 patches from each and you wouldn't know which was which. I'm damned sure I wouldn't because my experience with Hive was that I loved its sound until I tried to put it into a mix.

When it comes to the kinds of lush pads that I like (think an updated take on 90s atmospheric DnB rompler sounds, JV-1080, etc), these synths that excel at basses often don't quite hit the mark for me. The pads tend to be too up front, the envleopes aren't quite right, etc. It just doesn't 'feel' right on something like Vital or Serum to me.

I can't see how this can possibly be true. The envelopes hardly matter in a pad and if the sound is "too up front", it's easy enough to close the filter a bit more to smooth things out.

On the other hand, the wavetable synths that do beautifully lush pads to my liking tend to not do DnB basses as well, often lacking in some of the features that make these modern sounds like FMing one osc with the other, mod routing options, etc.

Which synths are you talking about? It seems to me your preferences are being guided by presets rather than the instrument itself. Hive has got a lot of great, usable presets, where DUNE's presets tend to be more about showing off the synth's capabilities.

[vitocorleone123]

I liked the sound of the oscillators in Hive better than Dune, but it was close. I also liked the UI better in Hive2, even before the skinning.

I never bought Dune because I have Hive2.

[Lbdunequest]

Dune 3 has much lower CPU footprint. Both sound different. I personaly dont like that Dune 3 doesnt have quality wavetables. Im not a fan of creating my own. Its good to have both.

[Urs]

Dune 3 has much lower CPU footprint.

Not in my experience. It's biased though.

(I used Dune 3 as reference for our 2.1 performance update because it was the most CPU friendly synth out of the popular competiton, and I have not stopped optimising Hive until it beat Dune 3 on my computer in almost every setting)

[Lbdunequest]

Dune 3 has much lower CPU footprint.

Not in my experience. It's biased though.

(I used Dune 3 as reference for our 2.1 performance update because it was the most CPU friendly synth out of the popular competiton, and I have not stopped optimising Hive until it beat Dune 3 on my computer in almost every setting)

This is strange, i tried same unison settings and Dune 3 beats Hive 2.1 by a mile.

[tony10000]

A different skin only matters if it improves the workflow and none of them do. They just rearrange the controls that are already there, rather than allowing you to take things that are hidden and expose them on the front panel, etc.

What other aspects do find when comparing these two synths ?

There is really only one thing that matters and that is that DUNE sounds a lot better than Hive. When I decided to stop using Hive, it took me no time at al lot replace it in the half-a-dozen or so songs we were using it in. Mostly I could do it with freeware or sub-$30 VSTi. OTOH, trying to replace DUNE is a lot harder because only one or two very expensive synths in our arsenal come close to the same sound quality.

DUNE also has proper 3 op FM with multiple algorithms and a lot more choice when it comes to filter types. These are things that matter far more than the GUI when it comes to actually making music. Plus, of course, DUNE has layers and a sample oscillator, Hive does not. DUNE also has two separate effects chains, Hive has only one.

At the end of the day, Hive is a very poor option when compared to DUNE.

Hive has good wavetables with the Uhm scripts. The comb filters are excellent. The matrix modifiers give some extra capabilities that are useful. The wavetable interpolation is the best of any wavetable synth I've tried. It's fast and efficient to use.

That's not been my experience. I find Hive every bit as annoying to use as DUNE. e.g. Both put the sequencer in the tiny central window, when it makes way more sense to have it down the bottom, where the keyboard is. To me they are both best suited to people who use presets, in which case Hive definitely wins, having the best preset browser I have ever used. It's just a shame it doesn't sound as good. But for people trying to finish songs, neither are really all that helpful most of the time.

You can hear harsh noise like tones coming from Dune within certain sounds where resonance is at a high setting. At least on certain filters.

Yes, that's what gives a specific filter character, it is a desirable trait.

Hive can sound amazing and it has amazing real-time modulation capabilities. You are obviously not a synth programmer. It's function generators and shapers give it a lot of additional capabilities. You can also create uhm scripts and easily load wavetables from other synths. As I said previously, Hive complements Dune quite well.

Take a listen:

[Vortifex]

..

[DNnX]

Dune 3 has much lower CPU footprint.

Not in my experience. It's biased though.

(I used Dune 3 as reference for our 2.1 performance update because it was the most CPU friendly synth out of the popular competiton, and I have not stopped optimising Hive until it beat Dune 3 on my computer in almost every setting)

This story really attracts me Is Hive 2.1 AVX ready like DUNE3?
I love to spend my money to developer who cares performance / resource optimization

I also want to know if I can enjoy the benefit by running Hive at 192kHz than 96kHz.
I asked because some synths run at fixed sample rate internally.

[Urs]

Dune 3 has much lower CPU footprint.

Not in my experience. It's biased though.

(I used Dune 3 as reference for our 2.1 performance update because it was the most CPU friendly synth out of the popular competiton, and I have not stopped optimising Hive until it beat Dune 3 on my computer in almost every setting)

This is strange, i tried same unison settings and Dune 3 beats Hive 2.1 by a mile.

That only happened to me when Dune had multithreading switched on, which it has by default (this hides actual CPU usage from the host). Also possibly when its modulation system is in draft mode. Other than that, they're pretty much on par, with a little advantage of Dune with low osc unison and single filters used, maybe a few effects (which I have not benchmarked at all). But similar settings with high osc unison, high voice count, decent modulation (aka "real world examples") might change the picture.

In any case "much lower" or "by a mile" feels exaggerated when the difference is between 0.4% CPU for a sawtooth on one and 0.5% on the other. If it's vastly different, I'd love to know which CPU/OS you have and if you have a preset that actually shows such a vast difference.

[Urs]

Dune 3 has much lower CPU footprint.

Not in my experience. It's biased though.

(I used Dune 3 as reference for our 2.1 performance update because it was the most CPU friendly synth out of the popular competiton, and I have not stopped optimising Hive until it beat Dune 3 on my computer in almost every setting)

This story really attracts me Is Hive 2.1 AVX ready like DUNE3?
I love to spend my money to developer who cares performance / resource optimization

I also want to know if I can enjoy the benefit by running Hive at 192kHz than 96kHz.
I asked because some synths run at fixed sample rate internally.

AVX isn't such a great thing - it has a lot of performance penalties when using SIMD like we do. Real benefits happen from AVX2, which at the moment isn't really common enough. However, Hive is aggressively optimised using SSE (4.2 is minimum) and Neon.

Like Diva, at 192 kHz Hive will run at 192 kHz. From our synths only Repro runs at 352/384kHz fixed sample rate internally (the Jaws effect runs at 1MHz+), regardless of host sample rate.

[DNnX]

Dune 3 has much lower CPU footprint.

Not in my experience. It's biased though.

(I used Dune 3 as reference for our 2.1 performance update because it was the most CPU friendly synth out of the popular competiton, and I have not stopped optimising Hive until it beat Dune 3 on my computer in almost every setting)

This is strange, i tried same unison settings and Dune 3 beats Hive 2.1 by a mile.

What CPU / OS are you using?
Optimization is very difficult task. Different generations or vendors of CPUs can easily make different results.

Ahhh, I don't want to remember that my 'best optimization' didn't work well on AMD CPU