Diva

This is the only plugin I ever bought JUST from hearing the init patch saw wave. I agree with everyone else, that Diva is the best analog emulation plugin to date. A must-have for electronic producers.

Since this plugin is praised so much, I will mostly be listing the cons. I honestly thought I would consider this plugin to be rated as 4/5 stars, but the sound is just too amazing and fat for such a rating.

Biggest problem with Diva, (not cpu!) is that it isn't really semi-modular. You can slap an LFO/EG to filter/FM/amp/tune/pwm, but most subtractive plugins already do that. You have a lot of ways to manipulating LFO's/Envelopes using the "add/multiply/etc" features, but doing so is FAR more tedious than modulation in most other VSTs such as Serum/Pigments/Massive/etc. The modulation is only really useful for engineering analog chaos. Real analog instruments may have the advantage of having infinite sample rate, but the real analog sound comes from the imperfections of circuits and how heat effects transistors. Diva has already engineered almost all of these analog features to the point that you don't need to reinvent the wheel. If you want to add some more analog chaos, then perhaps you can make use of some of the semi-modular features.

Additionally, you will find some knobs that you want to modulate, but you can't. The modulation is messy and very limited. U-he even made a separate tab for working with the modulators, but since modulation is so limited, I feel like it's just a waste of space/a tab.

Last issue is more personal, but I didn't find the effects very useful or good sounding. The only effects I liked were Chorus/Rotary. I'd suggest using external FX for reverb/ phaser/ delay.

CPU isn't much of a problem if you use high hardware buffer and a good soundcard. However, this plugin definitely uses the MOST CPU out of any plugin. If you do not have the hardware, then you must bounce everything to rendered samples, which is reasonably too much work for some people.

Now for why I love this plugin: The generators and filters are beautifully engineered to emulate the REAL analog circuits. There are 5 generators and filters that each sound like their own VST plugin. I'd almost consider Diva to be 5 fat sounding VST plugins in one, but without much useful modulation. I bought this purely for the sound, and many others will too.

A few years ago in my quest for some heavy bassline i bought U-he's Diva after reading all the positive reviews, when i fired it up in my DAW and played some of the presets i thought wow! the sounds are trying to jump out of my speakers, this is one mad moogy! i was well hyped up! so i programmed a sub bass then selected a dream synth patch and a lead for a tune i was working on, my poor pc didn't know what hit it! instant 100% CPU useage and the DAW grinds to a halt, i have upgraded my pc since that time but somehow still struggle to comfortably get more than 3 instances of Diva running in my tunes (Unless the sounds are very simple) i really like Diva, there are plenty of flavours to be tasted with it's module swapping ability (Love that feature!) Diva is definitely a top draw VST no doubt and i fully understand Urs stance on keeping it real with no compromise on sparing the CPU cycles to deliver good quality sonics, i haven't made a tune with Diva since i bought it but i want to now, i think the only way i can wing it is to stream out the tracks as WAV files, the bottom line is Diva is a beefy synth! i give Diva 9 and a half out of 5 stars (With less CPU useage it would be 10 stars).

Diva's virtual analog synthesizer is the best in the business.

I absolutely love the 5 different oscillator models, the 5 filter models, and the 3 ADS(S)R envelope models. They all help this monster to create amazingly beautiful sounds applicable across all genres. And if you're not feeling like designing your own sounds, their 1200+ factory presets will get your creative juices flowing.

I have Diva preloaded on tracks for everything from bass, pads, leads, keys and fx on my templates, and I can't imagine my life without it.

Diva is an analogue modelling synth that really captures the vibe of old analogue gear with some extra additions. It offers a flexible take when it comes to mixing and matching oscillators, envelopes and filters from a variety of classic machines. I personally found mixing FM into a Moog bass gives me some amazing EBM bass tones I can't get with anything else. It's sharp, snappy and full sounding. The sound quality is nigh on perfect...I'm not sure how you could really improve on this. We've reached the point where analog modelling is good enough to make it virtually indistinguishable from the real instruments. The UI is fabulous, it has a great preset system, it's possibly one of a very few synths that I think is in almost all senses, perfect. My only criticism would be that it's quite heavy on the CPU, so on an older system it struggled a bit running multiple instances but I've just upgraded to a Ryzen 3950X and it runs like a dream. I think it's just how things are going, you can have 'ok' and low CPU or you can have fantastic and higher CPU usage. This definitely goes down the later path, though you can enable eco CPU options (though you probably won't want to once you hear how it sounds). Sure, it's slightly pricey but you get a lot of swappable modules in terms of oscillators and filters so it carries a lot of flexibility with Moog, Juno and MS20 style options so sound wise you get a pretty broad palette. You can also dig under the hood on a per voice level and tweak the individual osc tuning which again, gives you a lot of scope to tune this to how perfect/wonky you want it to be. I like my synths a little wonky and characterful and it can absolutely do that.

All in, one of the best vst's you can buy, if not the best. It's been my go to bass synth since I got it. Absolutely great for anything needing a stand out bass sound, so great for techno or dance music or anything with classic analog character. The pads and leads are also great. Big selection of quality presets but being of the classic era, it's super easy to program your own from scratch, not to mention, actually a lot of fun. I think this will be right up there for most people as a 'go to' synth.

Really love this thing.

Fantastic analog emulations. Mixing and matching oscillators, filters and envelopes from several classic analog synths opens a tremendous sound design palette. Sounds fantastic in the mix. Can use a lot of CPU but if you work in draft mode and then freeze or final record in the high quality mode it's very workable. Great synth.