Review: U-He Diva

Since 2001, U-he has been developing their own digital music production tools, tutorials, events, and a forum. Their fully-loaded range of synthesizers, sound sets, effects, bundles, euroracks, and freeware has been growing over the past 20 years. Mostly, their plugins have made a statement within the music scene through unrivaled processing power and quality. Today we want to give you a full-on review of the U-He Diva synthesizer.

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U-He Diva, the red-colored synthesizer, has the appropriate nickname of f‘The Spirit of Analogue’. With 5 decades worth of knowledge having been incorporated into the development of this flagship instrument, It’s safe to say that its unmatched sound can be placed in the elite list of plugins.

Let me break it down for you.

Diva’s layout is divided into 2 sections: grey and red section. The grey section holds onto the VCO, mixer, VCF, and 2 envelopes. Choose between 5 different controlled oscillators: Triple VCO, Dual VCO, DCO, Dual VCO eco, and Digital. Each type comes with its own layout and features, including FM, PWM, detune, envelope, LFO, transpose, sub-oscillator, and of course a range of multiple waveforms. Next to that, you’ll find the mixer, only available when using the Triple VCO; otherwise, you will be presented with feedback, HPF Post, HPF Pre, or an HPF Bite. The VCF section holds onto 5 different types: Ladder, Cascade, Multimode, BITE, and Uhbie. Each type holds on to different features, including cutoff, resonance, keyboard, lag, FM, and much more. Last but not least, you can shape the sound while using the 2 envelopes. Choose between ADS, analogue, or digital. The ADS envelope lets you control the Attack, Decay, and Sustain through sliders and the release with an on/off switch. The analogue envelope offers you a full ADSR feature including volume and keyboard features, whereas the digital envelope includes additional quantize, and curve features.

The red section includes 2 LFOs, tuning, AMP, Pan, and 2 effects slots. Pick your favorite waveform out of 8 different ones, select the right point at which you want to restart, choose the right sync time, and control the phase, delay, rate, rate modulation, and depth modulation. Set the right vibrato, glide, range, fine, transpose, voice circuit tuning, micro tuning, and glide mode in the Tuning section. You’ll find a volume knob for the VCA, a volume knob for any feature you want to modulate, a pan knob, and a modulation pan knob right at the AMP/Pan section. Included within the effects slots are 5 different effects: chorus, delay, phaser, plate, and rotary. Next to that, you can find the rate, depth, and wet knobs.

The main tab includes different modes (poly, mono, legato, etc.), a clock, and an arpeggiator. The modifications tab lets you quantize, rectify, invert, multiply, and add multiple features to achieve a surprising outcome. Trimmers include an oscillator voice detune, voice map modulator, variance, reset phase, and stack tune sections. The Scope tab will open a large visualizer, and the Preset tab gives you access to 1200+ factory presets.

U-He Diva is available for macOS in AUv2, VST2, and VST3 and for Windows in VST2, VST3, and AAX (requires Pro Tools 10.3.7 or later). Diva is available for a price of €179,-.

Have a look at the plugin itself down below:

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