u-he Diva Review: Why Does It Sound So Good?

July 30, 2020

Diva is the closest thing to analogue I've heard come out of a computer. That's a big claim in a market stuffed with virtual analogue synths, so here's what's going on under the hood, what it costs you, and who should actually buy it.

What is u-he Diva?

Diva (Dinosaur Impersonating Virtual Analogue) is a software synth from Berlin developer u-he, first released in 2011 and still updated today. On the surface it looks like any other knobs-and-sliders analogue clone. The difference is that it isn't a clone of one synth at all.

The top panel is mix and match. The oscillator, filter and envelope sections are each modules you swap out, with models inspired by the Minimoog, the Jupiter-8, the Juno-60 and the MS-20 among others, plus a digital oscillator and u-he's own filter added along the way. Put a Moog-style oscillator through a Roland-style filter and you've built a hybrid nobody ever soldered.

u-he Diva synth plugin interface showing the mix-and-match oscillator, filter and envelope modules

Why does Diva sound so good?

Most soft synths approximate an analogue circuit. Diva simulates one, processing every note in real time the way the circuit itself would, with a zero delay feedback filter design that gets resonance behaving like hardware. That's where the "oddities" come from, the little instabilities hardware fans say software never has.

The filters are the star. Transistor ladder, screaming Sallen-Key, OTA ladder and OTA state-variable designs each have their own character, and sweeping any of them sounds like moving a real cutoff knob rather than stepping through a lookup table.

Then there are the Trimmers: per-voice detune, voice-to-voice variance and drift. These are the small tolerances that make a real analogue poly feel alive, and turning them up a notch is often the difference between "nice preset" and "is that hardware?"

In a blind A/B against hardware on the higher quality settings, you'd be hard pressed to pick it. There's a touch of aliasing at the very top of the keyboard on the lower settings, but it's well controlled and sits outside anything you'd play in a real track.

Get the sound: our u-he Diva bundle costs the same as Diva on its own and includes two free SOUND7 Diva packs.

The catch: CPU

All that real-time circuit simulation has a cost. u-he has trimmed the load a lot over the years, but certain module combinations on the top "Divine" quality setting will still make a busy session sweat.

The fix is simple: write on a lower quality setting, then switch up for the bounce or freeze the track. Once you've heard what Diva does, you'll be more worried about how many instances you can load than whether it was worth it.

Modulation, effects and the arpeggiator

Modulation covers the usual LFOs, velocity and aftertouch, and the Modifications panel adds processors such as invert, add, quantize and lag, so you can combine an envelope and an LFO into a new source. It's flexible without turning into a modulation matrix.

Two stereo effects slots take chorus, phaser, plate reverb, delay and rotary speaker. They're voiced like vintage studio gear, and the chorus does a lot of heavy lifting on 80s pads. There's also a host-syncable arpeggiator with swing, and a scope so you can see what you're doing to the waveform.

u-he Diva oscillator and filter modules

Presets and the browser

Diva ships with more than 1,200 factory presets, and unlike some synths I could name, scrolling through them is inspiring rather than a slog. The browser lets you comment on a patch or hide the ones you'll never use, which keeps a big library manageable.

Get the sound: for genre-ready patches, our Diva presets cover synthwave, trance and techno.

Who is Diva for?

Anyone who wants analogue character without the hardware bill. It's at home on deep basses for techno and house, warm plucks and leads for melodic trance, and wide, drifting pads for synthwave and film work. If your tracks lean on one big synth sitting centre stage, Diva can carry it.

If you live in wavetables and modulation matrices, look elsewhere: Diva is about the character of the circuits, not endless routing. And if Diva grabs you, its sibling Repro-5 does the same trick for the Prophet-5. Full disclosure, I designed factory sounds for that one.

The verdict

Synths are ten a penny and only a handful earn a permanent place in the template. Diva is one of them. It's a superbly rounded instrument that does bread-and-butter and the esoteric equally well, and with u-he still updating it more than a decade on, it's a safe long-term buy. Just keep an eye on the CPU meter.

u-he Diva at a glance

Mix-and-match oscillator, filter and envelope modules modelled on classic hardware
Real-time circuit simulation with zero delay feedback filters
Trimmers for per-voice detune, variance and drift
2 LFOs, Modifications panel, host-syncable arpeggiator, scope
2 stereo effects slots: chorus, phaser, plate reverb, delay, rotary speaker
Over 1,200 factory presets, NKS-ready, MPE and MTS-ESP microtuning
macOS, Windows and Linux: CLAP, AU, VST3 and AAX