Hive 2.0

[Urs]

As for toggles: I have a whole arsenal of toggles available in my head. Toggles to switch key tracking off, toggles to unlink Subs from their masters, toggles to pan after filter instead of oscillator. We need to figure out how to do all of these free of clutter (and accidents). One option is to ban them into the often fabled "User" engine, right next to where you's chose detune law, filter topology and envelope shapes.

[EvilDragon]

One issue though: I want envelopes to always trigger by gate. Otherwise it's way to easy to create sounds which don't do a thing or sound erratic, and it might cause a lot of frustration to people who are new to Hive, or even new to synths.

That sounds fine by me. This is exactly how env triggering by LFO works in ye olde NI Pro-53 (which would be great to have in Repro-5, hint hint)

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Yeah, I didn't dare touching the envelopes in order to not break anything. More triggering options is certainly something I've been thinking of.

One issue though: I want envelopes to always trigger by gate. Otherwise it's way to easy to create sounds which don't do a thing or sound erratic, and it might cause a lot of frustration to people who are new to Hive, or even new to synths.

I've been spending a lot of time learning the ins and outs of [virtual] Eurorack in VCV Rack the last few weeks and honestly might not have even asked for more trigger inputs on envelopes if not for that. VCV Rack is totally expanding my mind in terms of synthesis, so now I'm thinking in terms of, "yeah, why not have gates and retrigs everywhere" and "lets get some probability gates thrown into the mix." Things that wouldn't have really occurred to me before.

I'm also making the connection between some of these modules and Hive's new feature-set. It's like "oh, wow, yeah, those FG's are brilliant kind of like an easy to use version of that Mutable module (or whatever)" and "now let's sample and hold noise and quantize the output..." Anyway, I'm really appreciating the effort that went into making some of these features so easy to use in Hive and finally starting to get more an appreciation about their capabilities.

Now I just need the Bazille Multiplex [along with a ton of other U-he modules] in VCV. Credit card in hand. That's unpaid intern work if I ever of it.

[david.beholder]

Except that's not true. You aren't going beyond surface-level details if you're making that assertion. I have licenses for both Serum and Hive. Hive goes beyond Serum's capabilities in most regards, with both greater elegance and polish. Hive achieves the same (or more) with a different implementation and way of thinking.

I was demoing for last weeks S, D3 and H.

Yes just scratching surface
LFOs and Envs are animated - i don't care but praised in videos.
Multisegment LFOs with variable curves
LFO shape templates
AHDSR Envelopes with variable curves of A, D, R
Subosc direct out (praised by bass ppl)
Noise is sample
Wavetable Unison Blend/Type
Wavetable Warp (praised by both bass and techno ppl)
Wavetable Editor with lot of it's features like direct loading and frame editing
Filter Drive and Bass control
Crazy Filter Modes - altho here S lacks second filter

And I can go on further.
No I don't want Hive to be Serum or give Urs advises on how to do synths

But if one is asking what is BnB features in my opinion Serum has more than Hive.

It may simply be the case that Serum's straightforward 1:1 design philosophy suits you better. That's fine, use Serum. But stating its feature set is better or has more options isn't true. I'd do a Serum/Hive comparison in greater depth for you, but -- being guests in u-he's forum -- this doesn't strike me as a polite place to do so, especially since the thread topic isn't "Hive vs Serum."

May be you're right, but I'm seeing a lot of this features in D3 which is also BnB synth and I've tested it a lot.
Btw filter section in D3 is done best: 2 filters and one effect, I mean it could be down to 1 filter and 1 effect but this approach is well thought.

[david.beholder]

[...] prefer features over workarounds. That's exacly why people are asking for wavetables or unison type/blend control.

My point: The blend control is the workaround. Hive has a universal non-workaround solution: Sub volume vs. main osc volume. Same number of knobs, much more versatile, no extra mousing required.

Afaik one simple can't get certain modes/distributions this way - and that modes are sound distinctive.
Should I get to sound comparison over long weekend ?

Because I don't want you to spend more time on it but prefer Z3 faster instead.

Btw real question why H doesn't have Diva's mix and match: something Dirty filter, Normal Osc and Clean Env? Performance?

[EvilDragon]

Btw real question why H doesn't have Diva's mix and match: something Dirty filter, Normal Osc and Clean Env? Performance?

That's the "custom user engine" feature request Urs mentioned a few posts prior. Yep, would be nice if it happened.

[PieBerger]

This is a misquote, I didn't write those things but I'll respond anyway

Except that's not true. You aren't going beyond surface-level details if you're making that assertion. I have licenses for both Serum and Hive. Hive goes beyond Serum's capabilities in most regards, with both greater elegance and polish. Hive achieves the same (or more) with a different implementation and way of thinking.

I was demoing for last weeks S, D3 and H.

Yes just scratching surface
LFOs and Envs are animated - i don't care but praised in videos.
same, looks flashy but waste of CPU cycles imo

Multisegment LFOs with variable curves
Hive has it's Shape Sequencers which imo are less tedious to work with and can be modulated in real time by other sources or themselves (recursive modulation)

LFO shape templates Handy but only because it's so tedious to make your own

AHDSR Envelopes with variable curves of A, D, R
Hive's envelope sliders can be modulated by themselves or other mod sources to create different curves

Subosc direct out (praised by bass ppl) Handy yes

Noise is sample This is true

Wavetable Unison Blend/Type Urs explained how to achieve this in Hive already

Wavetable Warp (praised by both bass and techno ppl)
No warp modes but with clever scripting that makes use of the 2D scanning feature, it might be possible to create similar results

Wavetable Editor with lot of it's features like direct loading and frame editing
Horrible to use though imo and Hive has .uhm scripting which if you know how to use it is super powerful. It's possible to create a 256 frame table with a few lines of text versus Serum's clunky visual approach. You can more easily combine slices of existing wavetables wav or uhm and even combine them with new sections of scripted frames. Not as immediately user friendly, but as soon as we get some more comprehensive tutorials, I'm sure more people are going to use it and become proficient in it

Filter Drive and Bass control
Hive has filter drive..not sure what you mean by Bass control

Crazy Filter Modes - altho here S lacks second filter
Some more esoteric might be fun in Hive. While there is lots of choice in Serum, that's not always a good thing as it can cause choice overwhelm and slow you down

TLDR you need to spend more time with Hive, I recommend giving the manual a thorough once or twice over too, it's a good read with all of the important stuff explained in a simple way, with tips and tricks too. You have fallen foul to the "Hive looks like less comprehensive synth to compared to synth X", when actually it's quite deep once you dive deeper and get a better understanding of how it works.

Edit: reformatted for easier reading!

[KBSoundSmith]

Except that's not true. You aren't going beyond surface-level details if you're making that assertion. I have licenses for both Serum and Hive. Hive goes beyond Serum's capabilities in most regards, with both greater elegance and polish. Hive achieves the same (or more) with a different implementation and way of thinking.

I was demoing for last weeks S, D3 and H.

Yes just scratching surface
LFOs and Envs are animated - i don't care but praised in videos.
Multisegment LFOs with variable curves
LFO shape templates
AHDSR Envelopes with variable curves of A, D, R
Subosc direct out (praised by bass ppl)
Noise is sample
Wavetable Unison Blend/Type
Wavetable Warp (praised by both bass and techno ppl)
Wavetable Editor with lot of it's features like direct loading and frame editing
Filter Drive and Bass control
Crazy Filter Modes - altho here S lacks second filter

And I can go on further.
No I don't want Hive to be Serum or give Urs advises on how to do synths

But if one is asking what is BnB features in my opinion Serum has more than Hive.

It may simply be the case that Serum's straightforward 1:1 design philosophy suits you better. That's fine, use Serum. But stating its feature set is better or has more options isn't true. I'd do a Serum/Hive comparison in greater depth for you, but -- being guests in u-he's forum -- this doesn't strike me as a polite place to do so, especially since the thread topic isn't "Hive vs Serum."

May be you're right, but I'm seeing a lot of this features in D3 which is also BnB synth and I've tested it a lot.
Btw filter section in D3 is done best: 2 filters and one effect, I mean it could be down to 1 filter and 1 effect but this approach is well thought.

PieBerger already responded to quite a bit of your list, but I thought I'd address one thing with an example to illustrate how Hive accomplishes the same thing by different means.

Serum has AHDSR envelopes and Hive does not. But... Hive does have AHDSR envelopes. You simply have to create them (you can make varying slopes too, but I'm going to focus just on getting the Hold stage, for sake of time).

For Amp 1, set the Attack and Release to the desired values, and set Sustain to 100. In this case, the decay value is irrelevant since we won't be using it. For the Sustain level of our envelope, we will use the Volume knob of Oscillator 1. Let's set that to 25.

Now, go to Shape Sequencer A lane and turn on the first 4 Shapes. For Shapes 1 and 2, set the shape to a maxed out line. This is the Hold. Now, use shapes 3 and 4 to shape the Decay however you want. Apply Shape Seq A to Oscillator 1 Volume and set the modulation range to the desired amount. Make sure Shape Seq A is set to One Shot mode. In the Mod Matrix, Select Amp 1 to scale the Shape Seq A output. For the heck of it, apply the "AHDSR" envelope to Filter 1 as well, just to make the effect of Shape Seq A more obvious.

And there we go ... an AHDSR, which also happens to be tempo-synced via the Shape Sequencer. Obviously, adjust timing to taste. I've attached a patch that implements all of the above (plus the Blend/Detune stuff discussed earlier, minus the Constant offset I talked about previously... here I set the Sub Osc 1 Volume higher than the detuned Osc 1, to achieve a more Serum-like "Blend").

Now I'm sure others could demonstrate a more elegant way of achieving an AHDSR than I have, but the point is, the components of Hive can be combined to achieve pretty much whatever you'd like.

[david.beholder]

[mod edit: Patience exceeded. Please move on]

[Ivan_C]

Hello Urs and u-he team !

I have just tested the last build, it loads a lot faster than before on Windows, thanks for that !

I'm reporting issues related to the modulation wheel. On Reaper Windows 8.1 64 bits, VST2 format, the modulation wheel is doing nothing. I can see it moving in Hive UI, but the signal is not detected in the scopes, and no parameter is being modulated at all whatever the preset or even in a blank preset with something assigned to the modulation wheel. Everything works properly on Ableton Live 10 however.

Thanks in advance !

[Urs]

Hello Urs and u-he team !

I have just tested the last build, it loads a lot faster than before on Windows, thanks for that !

I'm reporting issues related to the modulation wheel. On Reaper Windows 8.1 64 bits, VST2 format, the modulation wheel is doing nothing. I can see it moving in Hive UI, but the signal is not detected in the scopes, and no parameter is being modulated at all whatever the preset or even in a blank preset with something assigned to the modulation wheel. Everything works properly on Ableton Live 10 however.

Thanks in advance !

Make sure you send ModWheel on the same MIDI channel as you play notes. The internal ModWheel on the UI sends on Channel 1 IIRC.

[Ivan_C]

Hello ! Yes you were right, the mod wheel and the midi notes were not on the same channel, and it seems Ableton Live is more permissive on that than Reaper. Thanks !

[Ivan_C]

Hmmm it is possible something is wrong on Reaper. If all the controls from my MIDI controller are properly assigned to channel 2, with Reaper filtering everything which is not from channel 2, I can play the notes, I can move the mod wheel (visible in the keys view), but the mod wheel is still doing nothing on the sound. And if I move the mod wheel from the UI this time, the sound changes, even if the notes are played from channel 2, which shouldn't happen from what you told me (because MW from the UI is on channel 1)... And again, everything works flawlessly in Ableton Live 10, so not sure where is the problem. The only way I've been able to play the notes and modulate things at the same time was having the notes still on say channel 2, and the mod wheel on channel 1 in my controller...

[Urs]

Weird.

[tasmaniandevil]

The Mod Wheel data will show up in the scope only if you play MIDI notes on the same channel at the time you move the Mod Wheel.

The graphical Mod Wheel on the GUI will react to MIDI from all channels, but it will only send (when turning it with the mouse) on channel one.

In which way are you using the Mod Wheel in Hive, through the Mod Matrix, or through Hive's MIDI learn, or through Reaper's MIDI learn function?

I tried it over here in Reaper, and it works fine.

Using Hive's Mod Matrix to control parameters via Mod Wheel, and sending Mod Wheel data from MIDI channel 2, the Mod Wheel will only affect notes which are played on channel 2.

But if you are assigning the Mod Wheel via Hive's or Reaper's MIDI learn functions, then it will affect notes on all MIDI channels.

Since it works fine over here, I can only guess that it's some weird Reaper MIDI track setup issue.