Here you go. Definitely listen to the previews to see which you might like.

http://www.theunfinished.co.uk

http://swanaudio.co.uk

https://www.luftrum.com

https://thepatchbay.co.uk/uhe-diva/

You should also check out:
http://touch-the-universe.com/diva-s...harmonics.html
These imop sound fabulous

Diva is probably the only soft synth where I can set it up with just basic oscillators and filtering (in this case I'm thinking of the Uhbie filter) and I get the same "wow" factor that I get when I hear an old analog.

That's not to say that every soft synth has to be indistinguishable from analog, but Diva is the only one that as the same Mojo for me personally, and I live in Austin where I have the good fortune to hear well-maintained analog rigs on a regular basis :-)

I agree. I usually start from one of the templates, but the fact that there are trimmers to offset the tuning and filter per voice is pretty awesome and a good way to get that 'vintage vibe'l.

For the first time, i am an old diva user, i tried the obhie lp filter. WOW yeah its something to behold whoa..

DF

Does anybody here know if it would be legal to post a skin that looks like a Roland Juno? I read Roland is on a mission to ban imitations of their classic products (ReBirth is dead) so it might be the case we're not even allowed to publish something looking like one anymore. I made one in that style for DIVA but I don't want to infringe any copyright.

I updated to 1.4.4 of Diva, I get a stuck note when using the arpeggiator, this bug is really annying.

https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewt...?f=31&t=541167

It's amazing how well this synth has held up over the past 8 years (almost 9). It's still my go-to subtractive synth and has even outlived some of my hardware synth purchases.

I own Hive and Diva from U-HE

I absolutely adore Hive, I use it on most of my productions and I'm really feeling such an affinity with it now (like an old friend) I fly around it creating rhythmic arps, bass lines, moog leads and effects

Diva just leaves me flat, every time I open it I do the same thing, a generic ok-ish bass sound. I just can't get any sweet wide pad out of it of a sparkly arp or a nice 70's portamento lead. I'm beginning to wonder why Diva is so loved and respected ???

Hive just pisses all over Diva IMO

What am I doing wrong ? really appreciate an honest answer ?

Nothing. Hive is probably the best of breed for u-he interfaces. It's the easiest to follow what does what. Unless you've used the originals that the different oscillator, fitter, and envelope modules are based on in Diva, what everything does is not necessarily intuitive. When I try and program a specific sound, I get very frustrated with finding the right everything. Setting up modulations makes me want to pistol-whip my computer

I actually prefer working in Repro far more. I vibe well with SCI instruments to begin with and I understand what all the knobs and flippy things do kind of automatically.

If you are familiar with one of the keyboards that Diva models, there should be a blank preset for it you can pull up and have everything at the ready. From there, you can branch out to other modules to mix and match, or other full keyboards.

Nothing wrong, if you just like the more modern sounds in Hive more.

I played with the Diva demo for almost a year before finally buying it, though I bought it mostly to use presets (the GEOSynths pack is phenomenal), and it has a lot of nice cinematic sounds.

When it comes to making my own sounds I’m pretty much using ZebraHZ, as I’m more comfortable with that workflow than any other U-he synth, it’s a beast. I can’t wait for version 3.0.

Diva is fun too but for some reason I don’t enjoy sound design with skeuomorphic knobs. Zebra doesn’t bother me in the same way for some reason.

I’m not exactly sure what you mean, because examples of what you’re talking about come are in the presets. You can get those sort of sounds without even touching the controls.

I do sort of think I might know what you’re talking about. I went from having a hardware wavetable synth for a decade. It had a lot of excellent features that no analog has and a very good built in effects processor. I sort of stayed with that type of synth for 15 years. When I started exploring analog hardware synths, they seemed a bit flat in a way, even though they were significantly more equipped with modulation options than Diva. It took me a while to get used to it, and see what I had been missing. How you could get a big lush sound with only 3 wave shapes. The magic of PWM. How to make analog oscillator sync growl. It didn’t happen all at once. It took a while to re-educate myself.

Diva is a weird one, in a sense, because it’s such a Frankensynth. When Bob Moog designed the model D, he didn’t design it bit by bit. He made it as a full and complete instrument, with each element made specifically for every other element. So, when you put a Moog Model D oscillator section in front of a SEM filter, it may not seem right for the sound that you’re looking for. Keep looking, though. There’s a lot under the hood that’s a bit obscured by what I consider some poor UI design. The modifier mods are amazing, but the way they’re presented and designed is terrible. Once you learn them, they do make sense and are very powerful. Get used to using the Pan/mod controls. They can make things really big and lush. The oscillator voice detune and voice map sections can get you the vibe of how individual voice cards in old synths can differ. Take all that, add a bit of chorus or phaser and some plate reverb, and you’ll get your sweet wide pad. There’s lots of classic sounds there, but they’re surrounded by a lot of other features that you’d never find on the originals.

If you want more straight forward analog synth emulations, I’d suggest RePro, Legend, Oddity 2, XILS Labs PolyKB, OB-Xa V, Synthi V, etc. Diva is awesome though, it’s just a bit more to deal with.

In addition to what zerocrossing said, the parameter ranges are really different from the originals as well. Much wider. For example the env mod. It took me a while to get comfortable with this and make smaller finer adjustments. Small adjustments can actually be pretty drastic even though in the GUI they look small.

I pick this sentence out, mainly to point out that the dynamics of things are/were very different.

Bob Moog did design the Minimoog bit by bit. Its first prototype was built from broken and leftover System 15 modules. Today we are looking at the minimoog filter not as a borked modular module with broken gainstaging (hence landing in the trashbin), we look at it from the marvellous music thats made from it. The sound when synthsizers actually entered stages.

It could have been any sound from any modules. Its the package that made the difference. The fix installation of modules and the easy to grasp user interface.

Urs Heckmann is an industrial designer. This shows in the layout of his synths and therfor they inspire different results as well. Its no miracle and not intended either that they do and are used for the same things. Although they are flexible enough that they could.

When I'm in the box - Diva and repro are my go to's - both are brilliant, I have pleny of hardware, but they both get used a lot. I'm just amazed they hold up so well after all this time. The sequencer in repro is fab as a passing note.

I think it was Bill Hemsath that built the first prototype from modular left overs as a personal project. Bob initially wasn't so keen on the idea and the other engineers developed further prototypes while he was away.

I always fancied building a Model B clone.

You don’t think that he tweaked things as he went to make it all work together in a specific way? To be a coherent instrument? I’m not saying that synth designers don’t look to their back catalog for ideas, but it does seem to me like a good synth seems to have an overall plan.

U-he has gotten a lot better with their UIs over the years, but I’ve heard his “I’m an industrial designer” claim before. That’s like saying, “I’m an eye surgeon, I can help with your cardiac condition.” Of course there’s overlap and all MDs go though some of the same education and training, but the cardiologist is going to know a lot more about their specific specialty than the eye surgeon will. No one will complain about the eye surgeon when they’re the only MD on a plane and you’re having a heart attack, but when you get to a hospital you don’t want one as your primary physician.

I won’t go into it again, but his plugins circa 2005 were pretty poorly designed, UI wise, (Have a look at MFM or Filterscape) and some really bad design decisions still linger in Zebra, Diva and even RePro. Diva’s Modifier section is a confusing mess and the tweaks page on RePro is a textbook example of how to use eye candy to obscure functionality that’s pretty straight forward. Zebra’s way of adding modulation is really awkward when you compare it to Hive.

I own and recommend all U-He software. My complaints haven’t stopped me from getting the benefits of his excellent sounding and feature rich instruments and effects, but let’s not pretend that their UIs are really good. Even Hive, which is a big improvement, isn’t in the same league as something like Serum.

Hive’s interface looks good on the surface but the modules aren’t really laid out logically in terms of signal flow, if you think of the left-to-right layout in many analog synths and even Diva.

Then Diva sounds phenomenal but skeuomorphism gets in the way (there’s that word again). I mean you change a mod source and it puts a little piece of virtual tape over the default - it took me a while to figure out that out, in terms of changing mod assignments. I suppose I could have read the manual but the UI could be a lot more intuitive. It looks pretty though. Not as much fun for pure sound design.

Pigments is better but there are still assignments spread across multiple pages.

Professional UX opinion:

Hive 2 is reasonably easy to use, though "first use" is not as easy because the design non-standard (loses a few points), so it loses a few points there. It's really well-designed, though, in terms of logical flow (just not standard) so gets internal consistency points, and was very easily learned (more points), and is very easy to remember how to use (more points).

However, it does bump into constraints it put on itself with the "screen" in the middle, and flipping through pages (loses a few points).

It's OK to deviate from the norm with a good design, to be original, and Hive 2 is a good design. In my view, it's one of the best designed softsynths on the market.

I am not sure we are on the same page here, mate.

I understood this thread was about why Diva and Hive may inspire different levels of happiness in different users. Thats what i answered, saying the UI has a role in such things. I underlined my argument saying that the formfactor made the Minimoog popular, not its sound.

Urs said he was really going after the Sylenth1 crowd when he made Hive. So basically a simple easy to follow architecture, an inviting mostly one page UI layout and a sound character similar to popular VA synth keyboards that are the mainstay of EDM. Hive is basically the antithesis of the other U-he synths like Zebra and Bazille. Hive like Sylenth1 before it is designed to be inspiring and super easy to quickly dial usable sounds from.

From what I've read and seen in documentaries, Bob said they didn't design the instrument around any specific sort of sound, they just tried to make things as general purpose as possible, as musicians have widely differing tastes and make music in many different genres. The Model D was based on earlier modular designs and they used the parts that were available to them at the time. It wasn't like today where you could just get on Farnell or Mouser.

He also said something like Hive is modular in a candy bar form. Or wrapper. Or something like that. Just because it looks simpler doesn’t mean it can’t get pretty deep. There’s a lot of modulation power lurking in Hive 2.

I think it can be both. The craft he learned from making the modular had to seep into the Model D.

Hive is definitely more modern sounding and has a generally faster workflow and generally more flexible.

Diva is better for more classic analog sounds and generally sounds smoother than Hive.

Hive does analog too and in some cases is probably all you need.

Zebra is nice too. It does things neither Diva or Hive can do like FM and is more flexible, but more difficult workflow.

Anyone heard of pitch bend issue with Diva when it´s written as automation in daw or maybe it´s Cubase specific thing? replacing the same instrument track with another synth will sound right but not with Diva/any preset. Makes this weird pitch stuttering like 2 different command trying to drag the pitch in either direction. Don´t have any other automation in there tho.

Ok, this took some time. But finally had the time to collaborate with composer Minko Kalsbeek (hikimori.com) to create a - cinematic - sound set for Diva!

Here is a demo:


Personally, I have been in love with Diva since I first saw her :-)