u-he Hive 1.2 - free update - adds wavetables and more

[Shiek927]

Hive is about 'less is more'. Having 90 different choices would just feel overwhelming to me, especially if you can easily do with just a few. Quality is always more important than quantity.

[THE INTRANCER]

That's exactly what you can do with the LFO waveform Curve Editor in Native Instruments Form Sampler ensemble. The LFO waveforms shown above are just starting points, some are preset to loop from certain positions. You can create LFO types from scratch if you want, without ever drawing them by hand. It's very simple to use but very powerful at the same time.

Yeah... that is not of interest to me. In theory, super powerful... in practice, a headache... and cannot be modulated in what I would consider useful ways.

I lost interest in big complex MSEG's as I became proficient using Bazille. A few simple tools that can be modulated create more organic results with less fuss.

I don't know where you get that idea from... "The SOUND section on the top middle of the interface offers many modulation sources and destinations to further shape your sound. All parameters can be automated by any other parameter and any curve preset you choose."

https://www.idesignsound.com/ni-form-1-1-update-review

I'll edit out this video later as KVR insists on embedding it, even with a text based url.
Native Instruments Form 1.1 Update Video

As for Bazille, how many months or years did it take for you to become proficient with it ? How many times did you try and connect a cable to a hole that simply didn't work as you expected and failed ? Bazille, isn't intuitive..and I can say that as someone who spent 14 years wiring things up behind the rack of Propellerheads Reason. Thus it requires prerequisite understanding of what's going to work and what isn't. That's where sound design tools like these come in and the essence of what Hive is about. Fast workflow, ease of use, and without a degree in audio technology to understand it all in how to make it work... where your main goal is to ultimately make music. You can literally get stuck in the geeky patch wiring world and forget about making music entirely, as it's a very different mind set.

[pdxindy]

That's where sound design tools like these come in and the essence of what Hive is about. Fast workflow, ease of use, and without a degree in audio technology to understand it all in how to make it work... where your main goal is to ultimately make music. You can literally get stuck in the geeky patch wiring world and forget about making music entirely, as it's a very different mind set.

I just checked out Form (I have it installed but never use it)... The shape of the curve generator cannot be modulated. Not at all what I was talking about. It is exactly what I thought it was... a complicated MSEG that isn't actually very flexible. Doesn't interest me at all.

and there is zero chance Urs is gonna put some big complex thing like that in there.

[foosnark]

As for Bazille, how many months or years

hours

Modular isn't hard, it's just different. It's not true that everyone gets inevitably lost in "the geeky patch wiring world" and can't make music. I released five albums this year on modular synths.

Bazille is modular with training wheels

[pdxindy]

As for Bazille, how many months or years

hours

Modular isn't hard, it's just different.

exactly... Took me some learning to get it with Bazille, just as it took me some learning to get the usual synth tools. Now I regularly miss stuff like lag generators and quantizers in regular synths.

Fortunately, Hive has some of that with the midi modifiers!

[Urs]

What we do in Hive is very different.

As you can already see, we're making the ModMatrix itself more powerful. It now has simple quantizers, slew limiting, rectification and transfer curves per each slot. For Hive 2.0 we're going to make this stuff very accessible (with new/improved UI widgets) and we'll add additonal quantizer modes and sample & hold functionality. This gets a whole lot of different modulation signals out of any simple LFO curve, or a simple function generator (loopable AD envelope). Additionally, a little trick will give you extra randomizers and simple extra envelopes with the current set of modulators out of a single ModMatrix section, just like that, and we'll have presets for those. Let's also not forget that ModMatrix slots can cross-modulate other slots, and each target can have multiple slots assigned.

What people often overlook is, all these other synths have just 1 filter per voice/layer. Hive has flexible routing. You can use parallel filtering and serial. You can even use both. With the Engine switch, Hive has 15 different filter algorithms, laid out in a very tidy manner. How many more does one need?

Hive is much more modular and flexible than meets they eye. Granted, it does not do audio rate modulation such as FM, Sync or FilterFM. But: This is easily compensated for by the options in the wavetable department, particularly with the scripts e.g. in the FM Tutrorial thread.

Now, as for MSEGs and stuff. The thing I learned from Eurorack is that one can combine simple sources and extract complex signals and rhythms. "Rhythm extraction" is actually a thing, like, when you observe two out-of-sync sources and create a third signal based on whether which of those sources is higher or lower. That's just one example, there are plenty more. For Hive, I have a novel module in mind which lets people extract multiple complex modulation signals out of just 8 individual steps. It's going to look like a baby version of the stepped modulation sources in Spire and Massive, but IMHO it'll be endlessly more powerful than those. It'll surpass those "90 different shapes" easily without overwhelming people, and with options to bend them in realtime.

[nilhartman]

Reading your posts Urs (and having tested 1.2), I 1) will most likely buy Hive real soon while I used to think I didn’t need it and 2) can’t wait to see how these workflow related / sonic enhancement / overall design decisions will impact your other synths. Aside from the obvious Z3, I’m so curious to see how will Bazille evolve in the years to come (it’s hands down my fav synth).

[keel]

Anyone else have weird left ear click? It's very strong and happens only on left ear, not right at all. It happens begging of the notes. Like now I have pads, which have quite long attack, the left ear click is still very strong. Must be a bug? Quite annoying, can't really use Hive because of this

I have 1.2.0, should be latest version?

[EvilDragon]

Doesn't happen over here.

[Urs]

Anyone else have weird left ear click? It's very strong and happens only on left ear, not right at all. It happens begging of the notes. Like now I have pads, which have quite long attack, the left ear click is still very strong. Must be a bug? Quite annoying, can't really use Hive because of this

I have 1.2.0, should be latest version?

I'm not 100% certain but I'm sure it's an issue with odd buffer sizes. Try 64/256/512 samples fixed buffer size.

[FrettedSynth]

Darn you u-he, told myself no more synths yeah right. Demo of Hive proved me wrong, very happy I purchased. Goodness bazille is now the only one left for me, must resist lol

[rlared]

When does the sale on Hive go until? Also, will I save money buying Hive now and upgrading to Hive 2 later versus just buying Hive 2 later?

[CircuitTree]

When does the sale on Hive go until? Also, will I save money buying Hive now and upgrading to Hive 2 later versus just buying Hive 2 later?

I’m also curious on how much the update would be for Hive 1.x users.

[Urs]

When does the sale on Hive go until?

January 20th - pretty much another two and a half weeks.

I’m also curious on how much the update would be for Hive 1.x users.

We've settled at 20€.

More info here: https://u-he.com/news/#hive-wavetable-update

We're aiming at an update around March/April which will include a revised UI, a few more frequently requested features, a whole lot more presets and NKS support. I can not yet say if we're going to throw in an FX version, new engines, new filter modes or new effects, neither of those seem likely.

[rlared]

Thanks Urs! I'll check it out in that case.