If you could only pick one, Spire or Hive?

[havran]

Spire has many filter saturation options that Hive lacks. Spire also uses less CPU than Hive 2 for the most part. Hive has more of a cold and neutral sound that brings it to Novation Peak territory, while Spire sounds brighter, more plastic, and is often in your face. Spire wins for presets and sound design, but Hive is more of a bread and butter synth.

Did you deliberately searched for this 11 year old necro topic to revive?

It seems Korg Supporter has replied to this thread in a more useful way than you have.

[Vortifex]

Neither. Spire has bad workflow and Hive has bad UI. Sold my copy of each for precisely those reasons.

[Korg Supporter]

Spire has many filter saturation options that Hive lacks. Spire also uses less CPU than Hive 2 for the most part. Hive has more of a cold and neutral sound that brings it to Novation Peak territory, while Spire sounds brighter, more plastic, and is often in your face. Spire wins for presets and sound design, but Hive is more of a bread and butter synth.

Did you deliberately searched for this 11 year old necro topic to revive?

Yes. I thought it would be good to compare them since Hive 2 has wavetables, new filter types, and other cool stuff.

[Lbdunequest]

Since then Spire was also re-released with improved and much more efficient DPS engine.

For me Hive 2 wins.

[aMUSEd]

I rarely use Spire, I find it too unstable but tbh haven't updated it for a couple of years, Hive is lovely and capable of a wide range of great sounds, plus has some great preset packs (better than Spire for me, the Spire ones seem more generic and mostly boring, much less diverse)

Hey just updated, nice to have a CLAP version at least

[Korg Supporter]

Neither. Spire has bad workflow and Hive has bad UI. Sold my copy of each for precisely those reasons.

Hive has a bad UI? Have you tried Plugmon's skin?

[Vortifex]

Hive has a bad UI? Have you tried Plugmon's skin?

For me the UI is a bit overwhelming. It has poor at-a-glance recognition of what is happening and the left/right mirroring is inconsistent, adding to the feeling of 'wtf is going on here'. If you mean the Izmo skin, I didn't like it.

[concealed identity]

Overall I like the sound of Hive 2 more, but I'm not a fan of the mirrored controls- it's just annoying enough to make it less enjoyable to use. I think the Plugmon skin is easier to use in some aspects, and more difficult to use in others.

On paper, the Spire setup should be unintuitive compared to some newer synths, but for some reason it all just clicks for me. I usually hate tabbed oscillators and envelopes in synth UIs, but in Spire it just works for me and makes it easy to keep track of all the parameters.

[osiris]

I haven't tried Hive 2, but I have demoed both and I think it comes down to sound. Spire reminds me of an Access Virus and Hive is more buttery, like a JP-8000. (IMO)

[iPlogger]

Haven't tried Hive, but have been using Spire for several years. I like the sound and the workflow makes sense to me. The only things I've wanted would be sample import and/or wavetables.

Most examples seem to mostly show off the more techno/EDM side, but I use it mainly for pads. Listen to libraries from Bellatrix Audio or Howard Smith.