Now Hive is here, is it RIP Sylenth?

[pdxindy]

It's Saturday morning here, and what's better than a license of Hive waiting in the email box to spend the weekend with?

I haven't delve into the sound yet so I won't comment yet, but I liked the GUI design a lot, except the colours and contrast in the main cell. I believe just a smart skin of a better contrast can do it.

Enjoy your weekend...

my ideal Hive gui would be simple and plain like RePro-1...

[aumordia]

Yes, popular stuff isn't always the best, yet there's gotta be something to it, when a soft synth, which is almost 10 years old, has still such a popularity.

Marketing hype aside, I think a lot of it has to do with ergonomics, and rightly so. Synths tend to win based on how well they let the user do whatever it is they're trying to do. Different users are trying to do different things, and the principle of "you can't be all things to all people" is, I think, the reason why "one synth to rule them all" has yet to emerge. Still, you keep seeing certain synths on top, year over year, and I think that sound quality is only part of that.

U-he stuff is actually generally very ergonomic for the problems it's trying to solve (Urs design background clearly shows through), they just aren't problems that I care about myself. On the flipside, I think Hive represents Urs trying to solve a problem that he hasn't traditionally been as engrossed with. Not to say that he can't do it -- I imagine he eventually will if he wants to -- just that you usually best understand the thorn that is in your own side.

I think this basic idea applies to a lot of KVRians in general, and especially to some people ITT. They don't really get why Sylenth1 seems so popular, and are practically offended by the perceived injustice of it. Well, it's solving a problem they don't care about.

What surprises me the most about Sylenth1 is its versatility. I'm sure plenty of people will guffaw at that, but you're talking about a synth that was clearly designed to let you crank out huge trance saws quickly and easily, yet the formula wound up being exceptionally good for rapidly accessing a broad range of great sounds.

This is also why I think Serum has wound up gathering so many accolades so quickly. I know Steve obsessed over aliasing and whatnot, but the real killer is the UI. It's unbelievably intuitive, I'm literally shocked at how easy it is to use, and how it manages to put so much functionality in your hands without overwhelming. It's one synth that manages to give both Massive and Sylenth1 a run for their money, which is a very impressive design accomplishment.

[pdxindy]

This is also why I think Serum has wound up gathering so many accolades so quickly. I know Steve obsessed over aliasing and whatnot, but the real killer is the UI. It's unbelievably intuitive, I'm literally shocked at how easy it is to use, and how it manages to put so much functionality in your hands without overwhelming. It's one synth that manages to give both Massive and Sylenth1 a run for their money, which is a very impressive design accomplishment.

Serum is very easy to understand... but not so fun to work with. Too much tabbing. If I want to edit 2 Envelopes in relation to each other (which I do all the time), gotta switch back and forth over and over...

I prefer GUI's that are fast to use, more than immediately intuitive. The later is more the modern way though...

[EnGee]

It's Saturday morning here, and what's better than a license of Hive waiting in the email box to spend the weekend with?

Happy music'ing. I wished i had a demo version of The Legend to spend the weekend with.

Thank you
Oh, the Legend is also a possible buy together with Predator 2 upgrade It seems I will never be able to buy those monitors!

Don't you people have girlfriends or wives to spend the weekend with?

Nah! I'm happy that I'm a divorced man and being free to do whatever I want. On the other hand, sex or romance is not everything, I can easily sacrifice it for my wonderful time with Computers, Synths, games But I do spend enough time with my mother (caring for her, she is old now). It is a small repayment for all her sacrifices for me I'm happy without love

It's Saturday morning here, and what's better than a license of Hive waiting in the email box to spend the weekend with?

I haven't delve into the sound yet so I won't comment yet, but I liked the GUI design a lot, except the colours and contrast in the main cell. I believe just a smart skin of a better contrast can do it.

Enjoy your weekend...

my ideal Hive gui would be simple and plain like RePro-1...

Thank you
Oops I forgot also RePro-1! Too many great synths and too little time! gotta run for my Piano lesson now!

[Lotuzia]

58 pages to oppose synths that have a few common points, but sound vastly different. Wow.
What's the point ? Oh yes, some musical instruments can kill some other musical instruments. Really ?

[aumordia]

One more thing: this being the internet, and me just firing these posts off with little thought, I decided to re-read a few to make sure I was at all coherent. In doing so, I realized I have perhaps not made it clear how much respect I have for Urs and co. He strikes me as a truly stand up guy just in general, his products are universally excellent, several of them are best-in-class, and his company deserves every bit of success it has and then some. A lot of my time spent ITT is really me trying to justify buying a U-he synth, but coming up just a little short given what he has to offer, what I already have, and what I do musically.

Just wanted to clear the air, not only because I know U-he is an institution around here, but also because I just don't want people to get the wrong idea and think I have anything less than the utmost respect for Urs et al.

[mcnoone]

Oh yes, some musical instruments can kill some other musical instruments. Really ?

Yes.
It was Professor Plum with the candlestick in the library.

[aumordia]

So I was working on a track where I wanted to add a bit of classic FM slap bass. I've got a serviceable imitation in Sylenth1, but I thought I'd try building it in Hive, in light of this thread. Didn't really get me any closer, but I noticed I had the Zebra2 demo still installed, so I figured I might give that another crack.

I fired it up and it was the same behemoth wall of undifferentiated knobs as ever, making me feel like I was bringing at atom bomb to a knife fight. But this time I decided that, even though I don't have time for a hundred page manual, maybe some guy put together a quickie video on youtube that can get me going.

Well 30 seconds of google later and I get this video from Urs himself:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fAUdm-kO1Tk

"The first thing to do is to go to the look control and choose 'Unempty Dark Horse' because it looks much better and is better suited to this purpose."

I never knew what that was, I thought it was some weird command that had to do with the dark zebra or something. As soon as I flicked it on, things IMMEDIATELY fell into place! I'm not about to go hang this up on my wall, but like the original Sylenth1 skin, it might not be the slickest, but it is very, very functional. Suddenly the ratio between sound and difficulty improved immensely, I was able to crank out my patch in like 90 seconds.

If I had to guess why it's because of the variations in colors for knobs based on type, along with the different shapes and colors for the various modules. Getting rid of those klingon symbols for the oscillators is also nice.

Anyway, I'm positively flying through Zebra2 now. Not just with FM type patches, I'm recreating my old Sylenth1 patches in seconds (the supersaw sounds great, I don't care what anyone says), plus it has the additive/spectral abilities which lets me generate some timbres I previously had unhappily used Harmor for, and you can combine these with the wavetables to get into massive/serum territory (feature request: add "bend" mode). And it all just flows smoothly. I'm sure I'll have to dip into the manual to clear things up at some point (a la cubase), but I now don't feel like I'm going to have to commit one of my rare free weekends to intense study in order to do anything useful at all (a la reaper).

I don't know why this isn't the default skin, it's a radical improvement. I came into this thread to explain why ergonomics means Sylenth1 arguably still had an edge over Hive, I might just leave it with a license for Zebra2.

[fluffy_little_something]

FM basses are not easy to make on Sylenth1. Apart from the missing FM functionality, the sound character is rather different. I used to try to make such sounds and found an old one (you probably have to turn up the volume as I try to avoid clipping in my patches):

[lolilol1975]

Stupid question time.

Is Hive a popular synth? More specifically, is it as popular as Sylenth1?

If I refer to what I've seen on Twitch, and I've followed the music section of Twitch almost daily for many months, Sylenth1 is still a popular choice among EDM'ers (which form 90% of amateur music producers on Twitch). But not really more popular than Nexus. The most popular nowadays seems to be Massive, then Serum, Omnisphere and Sylenth1. I've seen Cytrus as well from the users of FL Studio, and from time to time, other NI synths like Razor.

The other synths appear on very rare occasions.
It pains me to say this, - especially since Urs reads this topic -, but I've hardly ever seen anyone use a u-he synth on Twitch.
But I have the idea that this popularity is very linked with the availability in pirated form.
Nevertheless, it's a pity so few legit musicians and music companies have channels on Twitch. It's a good way to advertise your products and talent, like Adobe has been doing very successfully there. But it's a commitment, you can't do that once every two moons. If you stream on Twitch, you have to do it at least on a weekly basis, else you are non existent.

The most popular DAWs by far are FL Studio and Ableton. Then far behind ProTools and Reaper, almost always as recording tools among instrumentists.

[chk071]

The other synths appear on very rare occasions.
It pains me to say this, - especially since Urs reads this topic -, but I've hardly ever seen anyone use a u-he synth on Twitch.
But I have the idea that this popularity is very linked with the availability in pirated form.

Serum is hardly existant on pirate site. Mainly because Steve Duda is quick to let them delete, and, because of his policy, seems to have quite a credibility among crackers, hence Serum won't be warezed much. I doubt that it really has to do with availability in general, rather with the target audience. U-he's target audience is simply too geeky for their synths to become any popular in such genres.

[mcnoone]

U-he's target audience is simply too geeky for their synths to become any popular in such genres.

What genres are those?
People That Can't Make Music genre?
Those That Only Use Warez genre?
DAW Jockey Tin Ear genre?
Ping Ding No Thing genre?
Btw...thanks for your pathetic and uniformed personal bias and misguided generalizations.
I'm surprized someone as annoying as you is still here, though my guess is it has something to do with socks and sesame street.

[chk071]

Lol. Thanks for your fanboi comment too, buddy.

[EnGee]

The other synths appear on very rare occasions.
It pains me to say this, - especially since Urs reads this topic -, but I've hardly ever seen anyone use a u-he synth on Twitch.
But I have the idea that this popularity is very linked with the availability in pirated form.

Serum is hardly existant on pirate site. Mainly because Steve Duda is quick to let them delete, and, because of his policy, seems to have quite a credibility among crackers, hence Serum won't be warezed much. I doubt that it really has to do with availability in general, rather with the target audience. U-he's target audience is simply too geeky for their synths to become any popular in such genres.

I don't know what's your source is, but just quick search (on my iPad cause I don't dare go there with my computers), gives huge download for Serum and the other ones mentioned but zero for Hive!

[chk071]

Well, the amount of Google search results doesn't say much, if the links all lead to a deleted page on filehosting sites. Apart from that i would figure that Serum is a bit more popular, hence you get more warez links too. But that's an assumption now, sorry to mcnoone, and other guys who know it so much better because they like much.

Just googled for "u-he hive crack" and it shows a lot of sites too btw.