Hive 2 vs Synthmaster One

[Jac459]

U-he synths are for people who are still capable of creating new neural pathways and enjoy it.

Crap !

f**k, I just bought it and you tell me that now...

[GHOST19]

Well, in Hive you can change the slope of various envelopes with an LFO for instance, or per step with the built-in sequencer. That's very useful, but not at all possible in any of those other synths commonly mentioned.

You can very easily do that in various ways in Vital for example.

But yeah, if [...] then sure, Hive may not be for them, no need to argue.

Worded differently but something we can agree on

[Urs]

Well, in Hive you can change the slope of various envelopes with an LFO for instance, or per step with the built-in sequencer. That's very useful, but not at all possible in any of those other synths commonly mentioned.

You can very easily do that in various ways in Vital for example.

Nope, can't figure out a way to do that. Easy to modulate Attack times and such, but the actual curve/slope of Decay... nowhere to be found.

Here's why is it an important example out of many: In Hive you can have tempo synced envelopes by using the Shape Sequencer (or FG or LFO triggered envs...). You want them to stay tempo synced, so you don't want to modulate the rates. Instead you'd want to modulate the slope/curvature to shorten or lengthen decay in a sequence.

[pdxindy]

You can very easily do that in various ways in Vital for example.

The slope controls in Vital envelopes are not modulatable.

[Urs]

In all fairness, Vital at least lets one modulate ModMatrix slots (depth and "morph"), which Serum afaik doesn't offer (and it seems, Synthmaster One neither...?)

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

This whole conversation, which I'm reading as being in part about MSEGs vs. Envelopes or Complex vs Simple, seems a bit odd. Like it's predicated on a "this way is the only way and all other ways are invalid". Honestly, feels a bit like a phallus measuring contest of "I'm the best at synthesizing". Hive just clearly isn't meant to be the "super complex mega synth" in the U-he lineup. That's Zebra. And Zebra better have standard envelopes because I love programming from a hardware synthesizer as a controller and MSEGs don't map well to ADSRs. But it should and will have MSEGs too. Hive gets used way more than Zebra by me. I find it easy to use, fast to program, and deep enough that when I want extra modulation, I can do it in Hive. It's even fun to explore Shape Sequencers through Quantizers for West Coast style stuff. If you look at the various U-he flagships, you've got Repro/Diva at the "easier" side of the spectrum, Hive offers more modulations while still being simple, Bazille is more complex but limited in some ways, and then you've got Zebra which, if good enough for Hans Zimmer to make a clock sound, is certainly more synth than I'll ever need. Seems like a lot of diversity to me with a range from simple to highly complex and configurable. Hive doesn't need MSEGs and Zebra wouldn't need to exist if all one wanted was Diva-level complexity. But we've got options.

[Big Mouth Strikes Again]

I'll be honest, I think the problem is that we do not have any great pressure to improve things. Business is doing well. So when we do things, they're things that we actually love or things that we want to stop hurting. And unfortunately we have developed some pains over the years, like making some of the highest regarded filter algorithms, but not having any of these in our dedicated filter plug-ins. So we're working on that, even if it doesn't address some of these frequently asked things that might promote growth.

As a Product Manager who has worked on a number of web apps, I can say with confidence that it almost always takes one person with a singular vision to drive the development of great products. "Product development by committee," on the other hand, leads to bloated, unwieldy crap that annoys and confuses prospective users.

I think Urs is absolutely right to stick to his guns and to develop Hive in a way that conforms to his original design goals. Listening to a bunch of KVR users' complaints about Hive's feature set is a surefire way to ruin the product.

[pdxindy]

Well, in Hive you can change the slope of various envelopes with an LFO for instance, or per step with the built-in sequencer. That's very useful, but not at all possible in any of those other synths commonly mentioned.

You can very easily do that in various ways in Vital for example.

Nope, can't figure out a way to do that. Easy to modulate Attack times and such, but the actual curve/slope of Decay... nowhere to be found.

Here's why is it an important example out of many: In Hive you can have tempo synced envelopes by using the Shape Sequencer (or FG or LFO triggered envs...). You want them to stay tempo synced, so you don't want to modulate the rates. Instead you'd want to modulate the slope/curvature to shorten or lengthen decay in a sequence.

I really like Vitals modulation system... but it doesn't do everything. Each LFO is an MSEG. But the points and curves are not modulatable. You can change timing and strength, but they cannot do the type of evolving/modulating shapes that Hive's Function Generators can do.

I also really like that Vital has an MSEG for every destination curve. Very powerful for some use cases. But Hive's Quantize Matrix Modifier is much faster to use for various cases.

I'm glad to have both synths.

[pdxindy]

This whole conversation, which I'm reading as being in part about MSEGs vs. Envelopes or Complex vs Simple, seems a bit odd. Like it's predicated on a "this way is the only way and all other ways are invalid".

Corporate think has infected the whole society... such that we have musicians arguing for homogenization and conformity

Variety is good. Having lots of different tools is good. There is no one right way in any area of life.

[Trancit]

I really like Vitals modulation system... but it doesn't do everything. Each LFO is an MSEG. But the points and curves are not modulatable. You can change timing and strength, but they cannot do the type of evolving/modulating shapes that Hive's Function Generators can do.

I also really like that Vital has an MSEG for every destination curve. Very powerful for some use cases. But Hive's Quantize Matrix Modifier is much faster to use for various cases.

I'm glad to have both synths.

In Serum you can just rightclick not just LFO (which can be used as envelopes too) breakpoints but the Curve bending points too and assign any kind of modulator or do manual automation...
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Serum.jpg

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I am sorry but that´s just 10.000 times easier, much more powerful and with visual feedback that you see what you are doing...

[GHOST19]

Well, in Hive you can change the slope of various envelopes with an LFO for instance, or per step with the built-in sequencer. That's very useful, but not at all possible in any of those other synths commonly mentioned.

You can very easily do that in various ways in Vital for example.

Nope, can't figure out a way to do that. Easy to modulate Attack times and such, but the actual curve/slope of Decay... nowhere to be found.

Here's why is it an important example out of many: In Hive you can have tempo synced envelopes by using the Shape Sequencer (or FG or LFO triggered envs...). You want them to stay tempo synced, so you don't want to modulate the rates. Instead you'd want to modulate the slope/curvature to shorten or lengthen decay in a sequence.

I struggle to see what isn't possible in Vital with a couple LFOs and some Morph mapping but the good thing about 6 envs + 8 LFOs + 2 random is that you can just be lazy and for example use 2 of them with different depths without looking for a 200 IQ solution and still have huge modulation power to go crazy in the rest of your patch.

[liquidsound]

Well, in Hive you can change the slope of various envelopes with an LFO for instance, or per step with the built-in sequencer. That's very useful, but not at all possible in any of those other synths commonly mentioned.

You can very easily do that in various ways in Vital for example.

Nope, can't figure out a way to do that. Easy to modulate Attack times and such, but the actual curve/slope of Decay... nowhere to be found.

Here's why is it an important example out of many: In Hive you can have tempo synced envelopes by using the Shape Sequencer (or FG or LFO triggered envs...). You want them to stay tempo synced, so you don't want to modulate the rates. Instead you'd want to modulate the slope/curvature to shorten or lengthen decay in a sequence.

I really like Vitals modulation system... but it doesn't do everything. Each LFO is an MSEG. But the points and curves are not modulatable. You can change timing and strength, but they cannot do the type of evolving/modulating shapes that Hive's Function Generators can do.

I also really like that Vital has an MSEG for every destination curve. Very powerful for some use cases. But Hive's Quantize Matrix Modifier is much faster to use for various cases.

I'm glad to have both synths.

Serum Envelope slope points are available for modulation and in previous versions, IIRC, even those ones in the LFO (now only available within Serum exclusively, but accessible via Macro if needed and consequently limited to 4 controls).
With BWS you can actually abuse those features

[pdxindy]

I am sorry but that´s just 10.000 times easier

You misquoted. That was me, not Urs

Yes, it is easier if you want to edit one point... but how about a bunch of them at once? You have to modulate each of them individually. There's stuff I can do with Hive's Function generators that is harder, even much harder to do with MSEG's.

Again, there is no one right way or one best tool. If you favor one way, use it, but that does not mean someone else doesn't favor another way. Diversity is good.

[SamDi]

Traditional ADSRs don't map very well to the multi-segment curve editors. With ADSRs, you have the ability to dial in both precise short times for each segment, as well as long times, because the scale is typically logarithmic. However with a curve editor the x-axis is typically linear, so for example it would be very difficult to set the attack time to 50 ms but the release to 5 seconds -- that's a difference of 100x!

Normally I don't face such problems, because often with e.g. scroll-wheel you can zoom quickly in and out and mostly curves with >5 sec parts don't need msec parts on the other side, but yes if this is your use-case, there start to occur problems then.

Furthermore, most curve editors don't allow you to automate/modulate the position of the points (usually for good technical reasons), but you can easily automate/modulate the timings for an ADSR.

Well, freely drawable shapes are usually not automatable or modulatable. Or of they are, then they are maybe not automatable or modulatable in a predictable way. But classic modules that are based on a standard set of parameters are usually very predictable.

I thought, one can modulate points in Phase Plant, but indeed, this isn't possible, which I didn't take in consideration. In Serum, you can modulate points, but latest when you start to think about questions like "how can you modulate either a single point or otherwise a point with all (or even just some) successor points" it starts to get tricky and my postulated easy MSEGs get inconvenient in comparison with classical ENVs then.

Perhaps the best thing to do is something where you can add modulators by type as you need them. I think this is how Phase Plant works?

Yes exactly.

Especially Zebra (3) would benefit from freely drawable shapes and skipping this timebase and quadric, linear, v-slope thing and would reduce some of the hours needing to spend.

I would bet that if we did not offer any form of traditional envelope in Zebra, we'd have a lot more people complaining about it being too complicated than there are people who only want MSEGs for everything.

But yes, of course part of the work on Z3 is making MSEGs available for VCA duties. I think they'll redefine what MSEGs are doing, but I also predict that people will complain that they'd rather have Hive's Shape Sequencer instead. One can't please everyone in every way...

Fairly true.

Nope, can't figure out a way to do that. Easy to modulate Attack times and such, but the actual curve/slope of Decay... nowhere to be found.

Here's why is it an important example out of many: In Hive you can have tempo synced envelopes by using the Shape Sequencer (or FG or LFO triggered envs...). You want them to stay tempo synced, so you don't want to modulate the rates. Instead you'd want to modulate the slope/curvature to shorten or lengthen decay in a sequence.

Don't get it: how can you modulate the slope of amp- or mod-ENVs? Or do you talk about the function-ENVs?

[a9k1tp]

I would bet that if we did not offer any form of traditional envelope in Zebra, we'd have a lot more people complaining about it being too complicated than there are people who only want MSEGs for everything.

Traditional envelopes might be necessary to users who are used to hardware synths and modular systems. But for people whose first introduction to synths is via computer, MSEGs make more sense.

MSEGs are predictable (what you see is what you get). Well designed MSEGs can also be quick and easy to use while retaining the capabilities of traditional envelopes.

Hope I make sense. It's not a complaint, just trying to explain why I love working with MSEGs in plugins.