DIVA were there any behaviour/sound changes since release?

[Caine123]

i got worried after the release of gladiator 2.6 and urs you told that this is a concern!

got many old projects i wanna finalize and i have from each always mp3s to compare, where there any changes?
if so i need to know which version and rename the newer DIVA version which sucks but has to be and i hope this willnot affect the authorization. thx

[Urs]

I posted in that thread because I found it odd that a company would claim 100% backwards compatibility while at the same time announcing major sound improvements. We don't do that. However, with the current beta of Diva we fixed a bug that came in with the previous release. This improves the behaviour as a mono synth, and we let you know about it. The orignal version of Diva worked like that, but it got broken during the maintenance update 18 months ago.

We since have built a software that compares hundreds of presets of each plug-in with the current release version. It's a major asset in making sure that sound stays the same - between revisions, between platforms and between samplerates. Sometimes there are minor differences from one version to another, e.g. when a change of environment whatsoever leads to different rounding errors. This software and the forensics we deploy are part of why we don't just throw betas out like we used to. It's amazing tech and it keeps Q/A and devs busy before we put anything out, to make sure that there is no change in sound between updates (unless bugs are fixed, of course).

[pdxindy]

I posted in that thread because I found it odd that a company would claim 100% backwards compatibility while at the same time announcing major sound improvements. We don't do that. However, with the current beta of Diva we fixed a bug that came in with the previous release. This improves the behaviour as a mono synth, and we let you know about it. The orignal version of Diva worked like that, but it got broken during the maintenance update 18 months ago.

We since have built a software that compares hundreds of presets of each plug-in with the current release version. It's a major asset in making sure that sound stays the same - between revisions, between platforms and between samplerates. Sometimes there are minor differences from one version to another, e.g. when a change of environment whatsoever leads to different rounding errors. This software and the forensics we deploy are part of why we don't just throw betas out like we used to. It's amazing tech and it keeps Q/A and devs busy before we put anything out, to make sure that there is no change in sound between updates (unless bugs are fixed, of course).

I imagine it will be especially useful with Bazille... (assuming it gets a significant update at some point) the complex types of feedback loops possible sometimes make the slightest knob change result in drastic sound changes.

[Urs]

To clarify, we spent a lot of time, money and resources in ensuring that stuff stays compatible.

I recently saw several incidents where companies claimed improvements in sound while at the same time paradoxically saying the software was still backwards compatible. In some cases the whole engine was changed (completely new filter and stuff), in some cases bugs were fixed that seemingly had a drastic impact, then there were at least two updates with major improvements, and then there was even a very popular synth that had to be completely rewritten with "improved sound quality". Each time it's kind of vague to me what is actually meant by this, but it seems odd to just do that.

I have no idea what exactly it is that was changed and if it was a problem for anyone at all, but yeah... we do whatever we can to *prevent* those issues, so it struck me as odd that companies whould just push this out without further ado.

[Urs]

I imagine it will be especially useful with Bazille... (assuming it gets a significant update at some point) the complex types of feedback loops possible sometimes make the slightest knob change result in drastic sound changes.

Yes. If we change the order of processing, say, for optimization reasons, some presets might sound different.

We had cases where presets sound different because a random number generator was called one more time during processing, changing the randomness of the modulation. The software we have helps us detect those issues and we decide whether or not it's okay.

[Caine123]

thanks a lot Urs, if i will find some differences in sound i will definitely post examples.

of course software gets developed but i normally expect no sound changes or drastic changes when something doesnt hit the next number like Zebra -> Zebra 2 -> Zebra 3
that's why i still have e.g. Absynh 3, 4 & 5 installed. but NI is logic and makes different dll names, Spire for example seems cumbersome, afaik when 1.1 was released you had suddenly Spire.dll and Spire 1-1.dll and i was like WTF is this shit?!

companies have to plan this better and totally think about affecting projects with this.

[chk071]

thanks a lot Urs, if i will find some differences in sound i will definitely post examples.

of course software gets developed but i normally expect no sound changes or drastic changes when something doesnt hit the next number like Zebra -> Zebra 2 -> Zebra 3
that's why i still have e.g. Absynh 3, 4 & 5 installed. but NI is logic and makes different dll names, Spire for example seems cumbersome, afaik when 1.1 was released you had suddenly Spire.dll and Spire 1-1.dll and i was like WTF is this shit?!

companies have to plan this better and totally think about affecting projects with this.

The reason why Spire has separate DLL's for pre- and post- 1.1 versions is intended, and has been described a lot of times: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 7#p6406377

Basically, sound engine was rewritten from scratch, new sound engine may sound a little bit different here and there, that's why they chose to make it different plugin DLL's.