Getting Hive?

[Soarer]

IMHO, Diva has a wider range of basic timbres, but Hive has the wider choice of FX and a more flexible modulation system, which has been put to good use in the presets.

Good to know that

I find Hive a lot of fun to program. The filters and FX have lots of sweet spots. Omnisphere has a lot more control over your sound but it requires patience. There's lots of tab switching and [+] menus. I tend to program in Omni when I'm in the mood for pure sound design. Hive I find works better when I'm in the flow of making music. I can pop in, adjust an envelope and find the change I want within seconds. They're different approaches for different moods and I wouldn't want to let go of either of them.

Yeah it's quite tedious with all the switching and zoom sections.
But I do want to give Omnisphere some in-depth programming sessions and see what I can come up with.

And I should probably check that Hive demo

[pdxindy]

I see that Hive uses the same waveforms as Diva but seems to me to offer a wider range of timbres so how are these done when there's no FM or wavetables?

IMHO, Diva has a wider range of basic timbres, but Hive has the wider choice of FX and a more flexible modulation system, which has been put to good use in the presets.

Diva has a wider range of basic timbres... but it does not have Osc unison... so Hive can do sounds that Diva cannot.

[Soarer]

You can do great unison in Diva with stackIndex as pan mod source and then set the number of stacks and adjust Stack Tune.

I think the reason why I felt Omnisphere got a bit less interesting is because I used Diva so much lately and it just sounds so full and fat right out of the box. Definitely my favorite synth now.

[Fleer]

Got rid of Hive because of its harsh and thin sound. Visited the developer at Musikmesse, loved watching those guys strutting their stuff but couldn't warm up to Hive as much as I hoped for.

[Orbit-50]

Got rid of Hive because of its harsh and thin sound. Visited the developer at Musikmesse, loved watching those guys strutting their stuff but couldn't warm up to Hive as much as I hoped for.

It's funny. I thought it was just me, but I feel that Hive sounds extremely thin also. Not saying that it's a bad synth or anything because I think it's really cool in many ways, but I wasn't in love with it because I have plenty of thin synths already. I would reall like to revisit Hive to see if I still feel the same way now.

[incubus]

I don't know what thin means.

For me it's cool. I like the presets. However, I'm having a more difficult time with "rolling my own" than other synths I've had. Still, it's pretty cool.

[ZaBong69]

Got rid of Hive because of its harsh and thin sound. Visited the developer at Musikmesse, loved watching those guys strutting their stuff but couldn't warm up to Hive as much as I hoped for.

I admit, Hive's sound engine cuts some corners to get the speed - the high end of the saw wave looks chopped in a spectrometer. Maybe that's the reason why some people feel that it lacks something, but on the other hand, it will not swamp the frequency spectrum with stuff that I have to EQ away first, such as the heavyweight analog emulations often do. Also, I owe some synth programming chops to Hive, it is a great educational tool on top of being a competent VA synth. And having a good versatile synth that does not eat your CPU for breakfast is a plus in itself.

I still feel that Zebra is an ideal compromise between digital and analog sound within Urs Heckmanns offerings, so many options in the sound palette and a truly flexible architecture. While I have done a lot more in Avenger in the last few weeks, Zebra will always have a special place in my synth collection as the go-to synth with low system requirements. The rest of my cores can than be torn apart by the likes of Diva, Serum and Avenger...

[Urs]

the high end of the saw wave looks chopped in a spectrometer.

We thought, if others got away with it, we might too. It's a very clever trick to avoid aliasing which I've seen in several synths. Some highly regarded ones exhibit this more so than Hive.

I don't really know what "thin" means in the respect discussed here, so I can't really comment on the issue at hand - to me Hive sounds "in your face" as opposed to "vague, distant, muddy", both of which I suppose are attributes of either "thin" or "thick", or in proper terms "precise, controlled and easy to mix" as opposed to "organic and difficult to tame".

I suspect that Hive is a good choice for people who like to layer sounds in an orchestral way (think trance) while Diva is a good choice for people who do delicate compositions where each voice is added with care. Of course, take with a grain of salt, the music of Kraftwerk and Jean-Michel Jarre are perfect examples of how each synth would suit the opposite style of music.

And also, as was expressed before, we underestimated Hive's playability. As many synths in its target market have no proper use of Velocity and other means of expression, we didn't think it made much of a difference when we added that stuff. But boy were we wrong. Instead of adding something that wasn't important for the target market, we missed that we found a whole different audience.

[Soarer]

Thanks for these insightful posts.
So Urs, can Hive be seen as a less resource demanding version of Diva (since it's a VA with the same waveforms) with a few extra features like the sequencer and the fx? I mean, if I already have Diva which also has "digital oscillators" couldn't I just program pretty much the same in Diva or are they more different than that?

[wagtunes]

Thanks for these insightful posts.
So Urs, can Hive be seen as a less resource demanding version of Diva (since it's a VA with the same waveforms) with a few extra features like the sequencer and the fx? I mean, if I already have Diva which also has "digital oscillators" couldn't I just program pretty much the same in Diva or are they more different than that?

The two synths sound nothing alike.

[EvilDragon]

Nope, it's on the opposite end of the spectrum to Diva. Hive was very much inspired by Sylenth1.

[Soarer]

Alright but it was a nice try, right?

[ZaBong69]

the high end of the saw wave looks chopped in a spectrometer.

We thought, if others got away with it, we might too. It's a very clever trick to avoid aliasing which I've seen in several synths. Some highly regarded ones exhibit this more so than Hive.

Yeah, I saw how the nerd brigade went after Hive, yet strangely nobody seemed to care that other well-known synths do the same and still sound good. To be clear: I was just looking for a reason why some people find the sound of Hive "thin", which I do not, but there may be people with better ears than me that associate this optimization as digital or harsh. Other than that, I really don't know what the reason could be, just add a sub and a touch of distortion, and Hive is up there with the other modern soft synths.

[ghettosynth]

Got rid of Hive because of its harsh and thin sound. Visited the developer at Musikmesse, loved watching those guys strutting their stuff but couldn't warm up to Hive as much as I hoped for.

I don't like Hive much either. I've demo'd it a couple of times when coupons came around but I couldn't bring myself to part with that much cash for it. IMHO, it's overpriced, but that's relative to my own standards for what I'm willing to pay for, which, as I've observed, seems to have very little to do with what the market will bear.

[Dasheesh]

the high end of the saw wave looks chopped in a spectrometer.

We thought, if others got away with it, we might too. It's a very clever trick to avoid aliasing which I've seen in several synths. Some highly regarded ones exhibit this more so than Hive.

Yeah, I saw how the nerd brigade went after Hive, yet strangely nobody seemed to care that other well-known synths do the same and still sound good. To be clear: I was just looking for a reason why some people find the sound of Hive "thin", which I do not, but there may be people with better ears than me that associate this optimization as digital or harsh. Other than that, I really don't know what the reason could be, just add a sub and a touch of distortion, and Hive is up there with the other modern soft synths.

Hive has a beautiful inbuilt distortion. This is simple and you guys are making it too hard. Sylenth is not Hive and Hive is not Sylenth. Think about how these EDM kids are using Sylenth. If you don't know...get yourself a puke bucket, put all your guns in a safebox and throw away the key, and then go on youtube, because that's where they are learning it from. If you tried to do that with Hive the top end would mush out on you pretty quickly and it would become a wash. I've said it every time this subject comes up. I know Urs is making it a goal, I have been listening and watching. I know he wants to do it, but I'm just not sure... I don't think he has it in him. Because, he knows what sounds good and what is quality and because he can't just put out the stripped out standard quo. he can't strip out all the personality and musical nature from his instruments. To do it you are going to have to appeal to the masses and get rid of everything else. Quality WITHOUT character. Give the instrument NO voice.... just the standard quo.... That is incredibly hard to do. It means you have to give up your pride.

Trust me, I've been trying to get there too. To be able to appeal to the masses without caring is how you make cash money. It's all about that 15-25 yr. old crowd. That's who every one wants. That's who is going to spend money. That's where you establish your brand. Some people just don't have that in them. They were raised differently. Personally I hope Urs never succeeds at it. Because I like Hive.