Product Reviews by KVR Members

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.

Simple but very effective. This plugin was on my wishlist back in the day, and I'm happy it became free. Has a unique amazing sound. I highly recommend for psytrance music.

Beautiful free VST.

Basically does everything that Serum does but better (minus the filters, Serum filters are the main selling point difference).

My absolute favorite plugin. I really regret putting off buying this while using more recent versatile wavetable plugins such as Serum or Harmless via Image-Line's signature bundle. When I finally got this from the end of year sale, I stopped using most of my other plugins because my ears are too addicted to Harmor. The sound is more than just luscious, it is crisp additive ecstasy.

Speaking of additive, this plugin is advertised (as well as Harmless) as a combined additive-subtractive engine synthesizer. Coming from subtractive and wavetable synthesis, I was skeptical how Harmor could compete with other plugins. Why not just use Sytrus to add edited waveshapes and them FM / filter them through a matrix? Why would I care about a plugin that just "adds" and "subtracts"? I was gravely mistaken.

Combining additive+subtractive engines is actually extremely powerful. You aren't just adding harmonics and passing it into a filter, rather the filter is WITHIN the additive engine. These spectral filters are special as the filter has a custom and crude cut off that directly subtract the "additive" harmonics, which creates a clean, fat, and crisp filter sound. Normal plugin filters and post FX filters have various slopes and are imperfect are filtering the sound perfectly. Harmor on the other hand essentially acts as a pure additive engine, where you create harmonics (starting from the classic all over-tone Saw wave or any other custom variation of sine harmonics) and pass them through two additive spectral filters/two spectral resonators/spectral phaser/blur (additive preverb)/pluck (time-controlled spectral filter) and perhaps add more harmonics through the harmonizer and special distortion effect while controlling the inputs for all additive engines and effects. Not to mention the powerful remappable Unison pitch and Prism harmonic detune. Additionally, Harmor has a unique image synthesis, which basically takes an image or sound and creates a spectral additive wavetable. All engines including the image synthesis engine can by modulated and there are remap features to create custom additive engines. The power and crisp of sending additive wavetable into the other additive-subtractive engines elevates the possibilities beyond infinity. Harmor is it's own unique plugin, you have complete control over the power of sound by adding and subtracting harmonics to shape perfect crisp high quality sounds.

I use to use all kinds of other plugins, but I can't imagine I'll stop using Harmor soon, the possibilities of doing additive subtractive at the same time are limitless. I love this beautiful piece of art instrument.