Product Reviews by KVR Members

I had it, then I cancelled the subscription. I don't think they are as good an emulation as they could be...they certainly don't stand out and make me think WOW over and above any other emulations of their classic stuff. The SH101 and XV emulations were good, not sure why anybody would want a Sound Canvas emulation...some of the older ROMpler style synths really show the age of the original units. Sampling has come on a long way since then. I think the Model 84 takes the crown of best Juno 106 emulator over Rolands own offering. The 303 was ok but I ended up buying the Behringer TD3 which I love. The 808 and 909 were ok but I think I ended up preferring the D16 emulations.

The UI's are pretty horrible, finding presets and the way they use banks is awful. It just wasn't a pleasant experience. All in, they are years behind the latest developers which leads me to believe they are trading on name and reputation and just aren't putting the effort in for a premium product.

Diva is an analogue modelling synth that really captures the vibe of old analogue gear with some extra additions. It offers a flexible take when it comes to mixing and matching oscillators, envelopes and filters from a variety of classic machines. I personally found mixing FM into a Moog bass gives me some amazing EBM bass tones I can't get with anything else. It's sharp, snappy and full sounding. The sound quality is nigh on perfect...I'm not sure how you could really improve on this. We've reached the point where analog modelling is good enough to make it virtually indistinguishable from the real instruments. The UI is fabulous, it has a great preset system, it's possibly one of a very few synths that I think is in almost all senses, perfect. My only criticism would be that it's quite heavy on the CPU, so on an older system it struggled a bit running multiple instances but I've just upgraded to a Ryzen 3950X and it runs like a dream. I think it's just how things are going, you can have 'ok' and low CPU or you can have fantastic and higher CPU usage. This definitely goes down the later path, though you can enable eco CPU options (though you probably won't want to once you hear how it sounds). Sure, it's slightly pricey but you get a lot of swappable modules in terms of oscillators and filters so it carries a lot of flexibility with Moog, Juno and MS20 style options so sound wise you get a pretty broad palette. You can also dig under the hood on a per voice level and tweak the individual osc tuning which again, gives you a lot of scope to tune this to how perfect/wonky you want it to be. I like my synths a little wonky and characterful and it can absolutely do that.

All in, one of the best vst's you can buy, if not the best. It's been my go to bass synth since I got it. Absolutely great for anything needing a stand out bass sound, so great for techno or dance music or anything with classic analog character. The pads and leads are also great. Big selection of quality presets but being of the classic era, it's super easy to program your own from scratch, not to mention, actually a lot of fun. I think this will be right up there for most people as a 'go to' synth.

Really love this thing.