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u-he's Diva


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Do you have this? Let's talk.

 

I downloaded it about a week ago, and I have to say that I really like it. It's probably the first softie that hasn't made my eyes glaze over in confusion. It sounds sounds really good to my ears, and there's very definitely a difference in quality when you crank it up to "Devine" mode.

 

Or, let's put this another way: Somebody tell me why I *shouldn't* shell out $179 for this and would be better served spending that on something else. (what?)

 

DISCUSS!

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Or, let's put this another way: Somebody tell me why I *shouldn't* shell out $179 for this and would be better served spending that on something else. (what?)


DISCUSS!

 

 

If you like the sound of Diva, go for it. It's certainly more versatile than most soft-Minimoogs, what with the different oscillator and filter configurations.

 

Personally, though, I didn't find enough of a difference (or improvement) over Minimoog-V to justify the price.

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covers a lot of ground from moog to MS20 and Jupiters plus it comes with a ton of great patches by the like of Howard Scarr who is easily one of the best sound designers on this planet.

 

 

It is a great soft synth. It does not however SCREAM like an MS20. People all the time say it has those characteristics, but I have yet to find them even if some of the MS20 elements are modeled. Well worth the buy though. If I had one complaint it would be that it lacks a lot of experimental characteristics. But being what it is, it is fantastic. If you want something more weird, there's always Aalto. Beyond those two synths, I'd also recommend looking into the XILS synths and Arturia's SEM V. Those are all top notch in my book to where I don't miss hardware. As far as Diva's extreme CPU hit, I just record it with midi in the lowest quality, change the setting to divine afterwards, then freeze the track and render it like that.

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I gotta say i too downloaded the demo. I have to say I like it but I found most of the presets to be very bass heavy and over resonant in some places and I was frustrated because I couldn't hear anything other than "whhhhhhhhhhoooooooooooOOOOOOOOONNhhhhhh" half the time.

 

is it just me? or is there something you can dial to turn that down a bit?

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Just must be my ears then.. I like a bit more of a tighter sound. Adding the bass compressor and adjusting the volume a bit made it sound real nice.. Now if only we could get something as powerful as diva in an cem ssm style. Sigh.. Why can't we all have our flying cars right now.......

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Zebra is splendid really, a whole different ballgame than Diva of course, but it is incredibly flexible. Hans Zimmer swears by it :thu:

 

I'd like to hear a nice soundset that was aimed at creating emulating vintage tones and stuff..

 

Check out Michael Kastrup's Oldschool and Afterschool banks. :) Link to official patch banks here: http://www.u-he.com/cms/zebra2-patch-banks

 

Examples of sounds from Oldschool and Afterschool banks:

 

http://www.xsynth.com/examples.html

 

 

Also, Xenos has some 80s soundsets as well:

 

 

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$179 is a medium-good night out on the town

 

u can make it rain in the strip club but it would have to be $1 & $5 dollar bills

 

I still have a beta version that works pretty good

 

there's no presets and I'm ok with that

 

it sounds amazing, I'm gonna get the full version soon

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I agree that it is a very stunning synth. But the following make me a bit hesitate :

 

DIVA is *extremely* demanding on CPU

Despite exploiting all conceivable opportunities to make Diva run as fast as possible, the level of analogue simulation we put into her simply requires extraordinary CPU power. Even if the multicore/multi-threaded option works fine on your system, please consider "freezing" tracks to lower the burden she puts on your CPU. After all she's a Diva, and Divas have DEMANDS!

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I'm able to play one instance of Diva live at Devine quality for nearly every patch except maybe two that I've found out of the hundreds. My machine's not new, it's a Core2 Quad @ 3GHz running Windows Vista and Sonar X1. I know I'll have to freeze any multitracking I do with it, but I'm OK with that.

 

Me still likey.

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U-he was updated a few months back to v1.1 and is a bit more cpu efficient. I'm running on a pretty dated dual core 2.13 ghz system and I can run about 4 instances in draft mode, so its not terribly bad. Some patches do tax resources a bit more than others but if youre ok with running under anything less than devine mode, you should be fine. I can only run one instance in devine mode, with some patches struggling to work.

 

To my ears, there is a difference in sound quality between modes but its not so huge that I would consider it unusable. Even in draft mode it sounds better than 90% of most soft synths. And once its in a mix, you'd be hard pressed to really tell the difference.

 

Diva is definitely one of my favorites and a keeper for me. Extremely versatile and sounds great. But if youre someone who is even in the least bit concerned about "analog" sound quality, youre probably better off just buying yourself an analog synth. If not, then its well worth the money.

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The only reason I'm not downloading the demo is because I fear my dual core 2.3GHz Macbook Pro won't be able to handle it and I'll just be frustrated. If Puppy's 3GHz quad chokes... what hope do I have.


And my MB Pro is a 2011 model...

 

 

Try it. There are 4 levels of "quality" settings, with just slight differences to them. Just start on DRAFT or FAST whatever it was called. My 6 year old dual threading 2gig ram machine can run it - not 20 instances of it, of course - but it is worth trying. Just don't run in "DIVINE" mode much

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