Wow!! This is an AMAZING DEAL!
I already have everything offered here except Presswork,anyone who doesn't have these true gems should grab this without hesitation.
U-he makes truly some of the best soft synth and effects in the marketplace.
I assume they will release Zebra3 with NKS support so they, didn't bother w/ Z2 and HZ.
I'm a bit surprised they didn't include Bazille another awesome beast.
The only U-he synth I don't have Hive will be updated, the Hive2 release is expected in about 2 months so I assume Hive2 will include NKS support when released.
I'll say it again WOW!
2012 Mac Pro 3.3GHz, 12core, 96gig, Mojave,DP10.13,Logic 10.51, RME UCX,Great River ME-1NV,
a few microphones,UAD2, Komplete 10U,U-he,Omni & way too many VI's & plugins, Mimic Pro/SD3,Focal Twin 6 monitors, Shunyata Power Snakes and Conditioners,numerous hard drives.………
2012 Mac Pro 3.3GHz, 12core, 96gig, Mojave,DP10.13,Logic 10.51, RME UCX,Great River ME-1NV,
a few microphones,UAD2, Komplete 10U,U-he,Omni & way too many VI's & plugins, Mimic Pro/SD3,Focal Twin 6 monitors, Shunyata Power Snakes and Conditioners,numerous hard drives.………
Kuusniemi wrote: ↑Feb 04, 2019 6:23 pm
My pondering is, if one has The Legend, is Diva still needed...?
They’re totally different Diva and Repro are my 2 favorite soft synths.
I have the the Legend (it’s awesome!)but I’ll go for the other 2 way more often.
2012 Mac Pro 3.3GHz, 12core, 96gig, Mojave,DP10.13,Logic 10.51, RME UCX,Great River ME-1NV,
a few microphones,UAD2, Komplete 10U,U-he,Omni & way too many VI's & plugins, Mimic Pro/SD3,Focal Twin 6 monitors, Shunyata Power Snakes and Conditioners,numerous hard drives.………
You know, I'm thinking that there really is no such thing as a universal no-brainer. I really REALLY don't think I need this. I adore Repro1/5, but I've demoed Diva many times and it just doesn't have that extra ooomph that Repro has. Don't get me wrong it sounds fabulous, but I have an awful lot of synths that sound analogue fabulous. As for the effects, again I am stupidly over-stocked.
tack wrote: ↑Feb 06, 2019 7:05 pm
Guy, conversely, if you just had Diva, would you spring for Repro?
Maybe so. Repro to me has some kind of voodoo magic that just sounds incredible, probably better than any other VA synth I own. Diva sounds great and is much more versatile, but lots of stuff sounds great.
Damn, now you had me going through the Repro demos, and they do sound awesome...I wonder if one can demo Diva again, since I gave it a try a while back and liked what I heard, but Repro sounds also astounding.
tack wrote: ↑Feb 06, 2019 7:05 pm
Guy, conversely, if you just had Diva, would you spring for Repro?
Maybe so. Repro to me has some kind of voodoo magic that just sounds incredible, probably better than any other VA synth I own. Diva sounds great and is much more versatile, but lots of stuff sounds great.
If you haven't already, try the Repro demo.
Repro is my favorite synth by a wide margin.
Charlie Clouser: " I have no interest in, and no need to create, "realistic orchestral mockups". That way lies madness."
Well I'm full of it - just bought Diva. I went through it again and didn't find any great surprises, sounds are absolutely lovely but I don't detect any extra loveliness over what I already have. But what swung it is when I realised it can sort of emulate an MS-20, and can midi learn my MS-20iC. And at £75, that tipped me over the edge.
I think I had Diva from public beta or something. It is very, very good for detuney phasey brassy sound of 80's. Plus GUI is easy enough to mindlessly meddle with stuff, adding random modulation etc. You'll need external saturation/EQ/delay effects, however, if one wants to use it in a modern punchy EDM track rather than a reproduction of mellow 80's stuff.
Diva can do moogy bass sounds too, but I prefer Monark for that.
They are both really nice soft-synths. I fell for Repro 1, and when Repro 5 was released it got even better. I gave Diva a spin during the public beta, and again later, and neither time sold me. Then a year or so again I bought Zebra, and begged for a second trial for Diva. Not sure if Diva got better ,or my tastes changed, but three was a charm. I think I plunked down my credit card within a day or two of starting that trial.
I do think of the Repro pair as really good emulations of the Pro 1 and Prophet 5, but I do not approach Diva as an emulation of anything specific, I just think of it as a really cool synth. I suppose I really should give the emulation angle a shot.
In addition to the u-He synths I have a number of software synths that I depend on - TimewARP 2600, the Korg MS-20, just about the entire gForce line, a couple of the Arturia synths, Alchemy (no longer supported for Windows, I need to find a replacement), and Tassman all get a lot of use. There are others that survived the latest purge that I still like, but just don't seem to use as often.
While I dearly love emulations I find I prefer plugins that are not hampered by trying to be true to their analog inspirations. I think that is one of the things I like most about u-He. And of course that is what draws me to Alchemy, Tassman, and Zebra.
One of the bigger challenges for me now is what to do with orphans - the previously mentioned Alchemy will one day stop working, as will Cakewalk Dimension and Rapture, rgc Pentagon and Zeta, etc. I have stopped using the Cakewalk and rgc plugins in new projects, can't quite seem to get rid of Alchemy though. I did run across a new synth from Plugin Alliance that does additive synthesis. That is a candidate, although I don't have time to give it a try right now.
probably more than two cents worth, but I don't think any synthesizer fan can go wrong with Repro or Diva.
A bit off topic but a question for Bill - as a veteran hardware guy, interested to see you use the MS-20. I've compared with Diva now using my MS-20iC controller and have to say... the software MS-20 sounds better if anything, and of course the hardware integration is seamless. The filter behaviour seems weird in Diva, but perhaps that's more accurate to the original hardware, I don't know. But the software MS-20 has loads of balls... you look at the useless UI and psychologically expect it to be weedy, but it really sounds the business to me. On some lazy days will really explore the patching more.
I bought an MS-20 at a going-out-of-business sale back in around 1980. Still have it. I've since owned two others, both of which I modified and sold. Added hard sync between the two oscillators and the ability to send more than one waveform at a time. Probably a couple other things I can't remember.
It remains one of my favorite hardware synths, along with the Arp 2600.
I think Korg did a pretty good job with the emulation. It is not spot on, nor would I expect it to be, but it is close, and it absolutely has the vibe or feel of the hardware. The only other hardware emulation that I've used that I consider that accurate is the TimewARP 2600 from Wayoutware. Now these are emulations of hardware that I've owned for a very long time, so it is probably easier for me to make the comparison.
I've long considered trying to find the USB MS-20 to use as a controller for the software. Perhaps I will.
And I really do need to take a swing at treating Diva as an emulation. I've not done that, and perhaps I am missing out on something? I need to find out.
Guy Rowland wrote: ↑Feb 05, 2019 9:02 am
You know, I'm thinking that there really is no such thing as a universal no-brainer. I really REALLY don't think I need this. I adore Repro1/5, but I've demoed Diva many times and it just doesn't have that extra ooomph that Repro has. Don't get me wrong it sounds fabulous, but I have an awful lot of synths that sound analogue fabulous. As for the effects, again I am stupidly over-stocked.
NI has a good interview with Urs where he explains the difference between Repro and Diva, and why you might like Repro more. In his words::
“Repro is very different from Diva. Diva is very smooth and mellow and it does what I call the precision of analog sound. It’s made to play nice, it’s a sweet-spot synth. Repro is quite the opposite. Sequential, who made the Prophet 5 and the Pro 1, didn’t give a flying fuck about parameter ranges. The Prophet 5 has this humongous modulation range – you can do audio-rate modulation over 12 octaves. In the Minimoog, it’s only two. Maybe four if you have a bipolar signal, you know? It’s crazy.”
Really like Repro myself, but just picked up Diva to access all the unfinished presets and there is some great sounding orginal stuff in there, all smoother and more solid than anything else I’ve heard outside of hardware.
Here is the Full article (it’s a quick read): https://blog.native-instruments.com/u-h ... f-awesome/
Bill - great post. My brother had an MS-20 in the early 80s as best-he-could-affford, but I remember we both felt at the time it sounded weak compared to some of the sounds we heard on the records we loved. In our possibly shared ignorance I think we rounded on 2 oscs vs 3 of the minimoog, and also that the filters were 12db compared to 24db. In the end he got a Pro One and an Oscar, and those seemed to do the trick. I can't truthfully remember what the MS-20 sounded like it was so long ago, but when I play the emulation it is fatter than I originally remember, for whatever reason. I don't know what we were complaining about. Well, it doesn't have PWM for one thing, which is a shame. But in terms of versatlitiy it was just great. I remember my brother wired some 3 way patch cords just to see what they did, and the answer was "incredible things" - I remember one constantly evolving bonkers patch he stumbled across that was just insane. Bet THAT wouldn't work with the emulation.
My early tests with DIVA being controlled by the MS-20 aren't all that interesting in truth. I hear differences compared to the Korg plugin, but as I say it doesn't as pleasing to my ears for whatever reason. I then tried to swap some modules out, but then there's always a problem with the midi-learn side of it. I tried using the alternate 2 osc section which has PWM (not sure which synth this is modelled after), but the problem there is that the waveform selector is push-button and my MS-20iC can't meaningfully control it. You start to appreciate Omnisphere's much more sophisticated hardware integration too, which allows control of multiple parameters and allows for sweeping tweaks in a way that u-He's doesn't, but I'll have to wait for next month to see what can be accomplished there. I'd like to experiment with building an MS-20 on steroids with Omnisphere, custom mapping a few things like PWM if I am able. And again unlike the u-He, because its possible to do pretty much anything in Omni, if I built a regular MS-20 patch but wanted some extra element, I can just do it. The architecture in Diva is all about fixed modules with fixed limitations, and when pared with hardware that becomes even more limiting. Those patch cords are the other thing, no possibility of them working with Diva and they work seamlessly in the Korg vst. Hoping they work with Omni, will wait to see... it should be possible in theory as they are NRPN codes when plugged.
X - I did read that, and always I bow to Urs' knowledge (I REALLY like Urs, his enthusiasm and indomitable spirit is genuinely inspirational). From my perspective, its the feeling that in terms of other soft synths they do much the same things with similar-sounding results than Diva. I often read people say they prefer Monark for a purity of minimoog experience, for example, and to me I hear loads of the hardware-integrated Omni stuff that sounds much the same as Diva. I'm not totally down on it, it sounds terrific and I just love subtractive synthesis of that era, but its just slightly different shades.
I get what he's saying about how the Sequential stuff was originally engineered to be the wild child, but more pertinent is that here I really DO hear the difference with other synths I have. I can't make Omni sound quite like the Repros. I think also there is a trick they've played with the effects, they're just orgasmically good when paired with the Repro sound. It's a snap to get things sounding out of this world, like ordinary subtractive but like a Mario dream version of it with sparkles and rainbows.
I still like my MS-20, at least in part because it does not sound like every other subtractive synth of that era. Call me odd.
I mentioned that I made modifications - the highest priority was hard sync, next on the list was PWM, and I never found a way to add that without really trashing the poor thing, so I abandoned that idea. And I agree, it would make for a whole new palette of sounds.
Hardware integration... I think a large part of my fascination with both the MS-20 and the Arp 2600 is that I can twist knobs and plug in cables and just have a blast. Sometimes you find things you never imagined! So from that perspective I am fascinated with Omni's approach.
I never really thought about trying to emulate something with Omni - now I've not owned it for all that long, so I am still way down at the bottom of the learning curve. Your posts always inspire me to spend a little more time with it! Thanks for that!
