Now Hive is here, is it RIP Sylenth?

[Urs]

Was just comparing init patches and noticed that when playing the same note, Hive's pitch is slightly higher than that of Sylenth1 and Hybrid 3, which seem to have exactly the same pitch. I don't have analyzers, so I can only rely on my ears.

Dramatic!

[vonRed]

the font in Diva is about 50% larger than the font in Sylenth1. You're grasping at straws here.

I don't know about this specific comparison, but he's not wrong in general. On Windows at least, the fonts in u-he plugins are not anti-aliased particularly well. They don't seem to use hinting or sub-pixel rendering. It makes a huge difference, at least at the default UI size. (I own ACE and Bazille, and I simply set the default size to 150% to make it a non-issue.)

Ironically, my impression is the people who are hard on Hive don't really know it. I think they are notoriously nerved/annoyed by u-he as a brand, maybe because they think my presence in this forum is a weakness or something. I suppose they are happier with brands that have CEOs who couldn't be bothered talking to them.

People are strange. I'm among those who think it's a Good Thing. But then I tend not to do business with companies whose leadership engages in various forms of asshattery myself, so maybe it's other people are strange.

[fluffy_little_something]

Was just comparing init patches and noticed that when playing the same note, Hive's pitch is slightly higher than that of Sylenth1 and Hybrid 3, which seem to have exactly the same pitch. I don't have analyzers, so I can only rely on my ears.

Dramatic!

No I hardly noticed it. And who knows, maybe my ears are playing a trick on me...

[Kumi_27]

I don't have analyzers, so I can only rely on my ears.

https://www.meldaproduction.com/MAnalyzer is free, among others.

[pdxindy]

So I fired up Zebra to program an FM or AM bell sound. It must have taken me half a dozen tries over several hours before I finally got something I liked. Here's the thing though: once I finished it up and setup the X-Y controllers, I realized I could, with this one single patch in Zebra, cover about 80% of my existing Sylenth1 pluck sounds, as well as create a whole host of new ones that Sylenth1 can't do.

This might be a useful way to look at what differentiates the use cases for these types of synths. You could look at Zebra as the thing that makes big, flexible sounds, but takes longer to program, whereas Sylenth1 is faster to program for any one given sound, but each sound is less flexible.

Now, what if you looked at Hive in this paradigm, and then said "what can I do to keep it fast to program, but bring it closer to the range of sonic possibilities Zebra has?" Not sure if you're already thinking along these lines, but it might be compelling.

My perspective is that Zebra takes more learning up front. Once learned well though, I do not agree that it is taking longer to program sounds.

Of course that statement also reflects my way of programming sounds and my own sensibilities, but I have often found Zebra faster for programming sounds because it is so flexible and powerful that I can get to where I want to go faster with less roadblocks. One obvious example, with other less capable synths I am finding myself adding a second instance to be able to do what I want whereas in Zebra I can do it right in the one instance. At that point Zebra is distinctly faster.

Likewise, I notice newcomers to Zebra tend to get caught in the flexible semi-modular possibilities and use too many modules and wander aimlessly. So using Zebra does require some knowledge of the tools and some self discipline, but then it is exceptionally rewarding and yes, fast to use. When I have a clear specific idea of a sound I want to design... say something plucked, kalimba like but that has a secondary sympathetic swell... I have found no synth that is as consistently good at getting to the sound I envisioned as Zebra is.

Another example where I find Zebra really good... taking an existing preset, and tweaking it for a different use. With plenty of synths that are not as versatile, trying to adjust the sound in one way to get a result, takes away something else I liked about the sound. Then there is quite a bit of time futzing around trying to find a happy balance. I do not find that problem with Zebra. It is so flexible that it is not a problem to directly make it do what I want. So for example, I have a sound in a simpler synth, and it is just a bit too bright, I can turn the filter cutoff, but maybe that affects the blending of the resonance pitch and osc pitch which loses some lovely quality that drew me to the preset in the first place... so then I am adding a separate eq on the track... but then I do not want to have that eq all the time, so there is daw automation... also that eq is not per voice... hmmm

In Zebra, I can simply do some eq'ing of the osc before it even goes to the filter, or add an extra filter to subtly take down the high end... and that is per voice and can be easily modulated. That flexibility provides an ease and speed of function. So in the broader context, I find Zebra fast and empowering to work with. I feel like it does what I want without getting in my way.

[Urs]

On Windows at least, the fonts in u-he plugins are not anti-aliased particularly well. They don't seem to use hinting or sub-pixel rendering. It makes a huge difference, at least at the default UI size. (I own ACE and Bazille, and I simply set the default size to 150% to make it a non-issue.)

I think it was much worse before we did last year's update... but now it should be pretty okay...? Especially with the better fonts we're distributing with our stuff...?

Thing is, there's a bit of an either-or scenario here. Text labels baked into the background graphics look bad when scaled, so when using scalable UIs it's better to use font rendering. Font rendering in the vector framework we use however isn't on par with font rendering built into MacOS X. So we could do really cool and sharp text baked into the UIs - with full control by the graphics designer - if we sacrificed UI scaling. Or, we finally move to a different render engine. Which might take a couple of months that we never had. It's moving up on our priority list though.

[vonRed]

I think it was much worse before we did last year's update... but now it should be pretty okay...? Especially with the better fonts we're distributing with our stuff...?

I honestly don't quite recall how much font rendering improved (though I know it did). It does still takes much more effort to read the text at the default 100% UI size (at that size clarity is improved by disabling anti-aliasing). At 150% it's much better. I do remember the UI update ACE got was a big improvement overall, though (thanks for that).

And FWIW, I think baking text into bitmaps is something best completely avoided if at all possible. I'll take the hopefully temporary fuzziness as the tradeoff.

[aumordia]

The scaling insanity introduced in win 8 can't help either

[bmanic]

Why is this thread even alive any more? Can't you all see it's completely pointless.. Vengeance Producer Suit, Avenger is soon here. You may as well sell both Hive and Sylenth right now and be done with it.

[___loser]

It was RIP Sylenth with the birth of Spire

[ATS]

It was RIP Sylenth with the birth of Spire

I disagree, still a lot of demand for Sylenth; going from all the WTB threads here. Spire is great though of course.

[fluffy_little_something]

Was just playing some of my old Sylenth1 pads (cool, one can load them in the demo version) and wow, there is that magic again, maybe I should have kept it after all

[e@rs]

^Well, they still sell it...

[fluffy_little_something]

I don't agree at all. I think GUI's are the weakness of U-he synths. They may look nice at first, but they are poor in terms of ergonomics, which however is much more important than looks.
At normal size I can't read Diva's labels, and when I increase the GUI so that I can read them, the GUI is bigger than my monitor, which causes all kinds of problems.

LOL, the font in Diva is about 50% larger than the font in Sylenth1. You're grasping at straws here.

Since it is the end of the month and I have some traffic left, I downloaded Diva and put it next to Sylenth1, both GUI's set to 100%.
I made a screenshot and then increased it a lot so that the size becomes more obvious. I also copied and pasted a few letters of a Sylenth1 label right before a Diva label and as you can see the size difference is only one pixel, if at all, hard to say because of those shadowy pixels around letters. Where you get the 1.5 factor from is beyond me.
Two main differences: contrast in Sylenth1 is much better than in Diva's lower panel and Sylenth1 uses capital letters only.

[Urs]

Hahaha, LOL, my bad, I had Diva on 120%.