Page 94 - DemoZone Magazine Summer Issue 2020

SOFTWARE REVIEWS
So where do I begin with U-He Hive 2?
The synth has two oscillators accompanied by two sub oscillators, with a Random & Reset function that can be set to keep the phase from being free or syncing.
These offer the standard waveforms such as Saw, Square, Sine, Triangle, Half Pulse and a Narrow Pulse and an array of other wavetables.
Pulse Witdh Modulation is available on Hive but without its own knob it's only accessible through the Mod Matrix.
A really nice feature of this synth is the ability to import Wavetables it can go up to sixteen voice unison with octave, semitone, panning, phase and
volume controls. You have two filters in Hive with six types consisting of Lowpass 12DB & 24DB, Bandpass, Highpass,
Band Reject & Peaking, which can all self oscillate. The standard cutoff and resonance settings are available alongside input gain, Volume, Key Follow,
Mod Envelope and LFO amount controls.
The Mod and Amp envelopes are ADSR and you are able to modulate different sources by drag & drop such as Cutoff or a LFO and tweak in the Mod Matrix.
There are some really cool effects in Hive 2 include a compressor, distortion, chorus, phaser, eq, delay and reverb, which give great results.
You can also save the settings you configure can be saved for use in future presets. You are also treated to some nice presets.
Next up is the arpeggiator with a 16 step sequencer with transpose and 6 controls which are Played, Up, Down, Up+dn 1, Up+dn 2 and Random. You're also
treated to some extras such as Swing and more.
You have the option of two LFOs which are locoted each side of the hexagon panel. These have several shapes to choose from and settings for Phase, Rate, Time Base
and Polarity and four additional settings for resetting which include Sync, Gate, Single & Random.
The Mod Matrix has a handy little feature here with some nice presets to save for future patches or they can be copied to other slots in the matrix.
You can easily assign different controls such as LFOs, Filters and more to your Mod wheels and Pitch.
A really cool little gadget on Hive is the scope tool which allows you to visualise what you are doing in real-time with a drag and drop function to allow up to four sources
and a nice little bonus is the zoom tool to allow you to see in more detail.
All in all a really smart versitile synth that will be in my projects for a long time.
Words Nutty T
https://u-he.com/products/hive/
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