As soft synths have become increasingly more powerful over the last decade, they have quickly caught up with the warmth, power, and punch of their often more expensive hardware alternatives. And while right out of the box, many new VSTs and plugins can emulate the imperfections and anomalies usually caused by using hardware synths, few can match u-He’s Diva sound when it comes to faithfully emulating the sounds and tones of hardware gear.
Even though Diva comes stock with an extensive collection of ready-to-use presets and even more free Diva presets can be found online, there are a handful of third-party creators and producers out there who push teh boundaries of what this synth can do. Better yet, they offer these presets and sounds to you for a fraction of what we think they are worth.
Below is our list of the best premium Diva presets by the most talented sound designers today, along with some extra detail about why this bank, company, or creator made this list. So let’s dive in.
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Basic Wavez
Basic Wavez is the sound design company founded by the popular YouTube content creator Bound To Divide. BtD’s channel is an absolute gold mine for producers looking to make soft, melodic, and heartfelt music typically released on labels like Anjunadeep and Silk Music. As of writing this article, he has released two different Diva packs, which feature a wide range of sounds from soft plucks to grizzled and ear-catchy FX patches to level up your transition sections and make your productions pop.
The real X-factor with Bound To Divide’s plugins can be tapped into when you use them in tandem with his high-value YouTube tutorials. As his channel is packed with long-form track breakdowns, recreations, and reconstructions that often use the exact presets from the banks he sells in his shop, it allows you to use these precise sounds without spending most of your time and energy recreating the presets yourself.
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Resonance Sounds
While the stock library of presets with Diva is more than enough to get you started, you will likely outgrow their basic and seemingly one-dimensional presets. But at this stage, knowing exactly where to go next can often be hard. Because with so many genre-specific preset banks out there, the last thing you want to do is pigeonhole yourself into a specific sound or bank of stylized presets.
This is where Resonance Sounds shine, as many of their preset packs cover a wide range of genres, sounds, and styles while all still sitting comfortably in modern, underground dance music. Banks like their Aiyn Zehev Transcend pack are loaded with over 350 patches ranging from leads to complex sequences and everything in between. Other packs, like their CFA Apex series of sounds, hone in on a bit more specific sound while having all the modulation mapped out and categorized so you can start molding and shaping the sounds you need to fit your track.
The X-factor in our eyes is how affordable Resonance Sound’s packs are, often costing less than $30 a piece, arguably one of the more approachable price points of any soundbank on this list. Better yet, they even offer our readers a 20% discount. So use code “Magnetic-20” at checkout through the link below and get 20% off until May 31st, 2023.
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Mercurial Tones
Much like the aforementioned Bound To Divide packs, Mercurial Tones is a sample pack and preset company created by one of the most informative and high-value production channels on YouTube. Alice Yalcin Efe’s is the channel founder and the content creator responsible for countless bite-size, short-form production tutorials and lessons that unpack the harder-to-digest music production topics like bass mixing, sound selection, and why your arrangments never sound as good as the pros.
Much of the channel focuses on staples of underground dance music like melodic Techno, and the handful of preset banks offered on the site cater to these exact forms of production. And while this is an incredible feat in and of itself, the real X-fact that makes these presets stand out is how much description and information is often given to every preset.
We’re talking specifically about the Premium Artist Diva Preset Pack, an obvious favorite of ours from their entire collection. Not only do you know exactly which artist the preset is inspired by, but the description and notes for each sound are used to its full potential to communicate precisely how to get the patch to sound as close to your favorite artists as possible.
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Luftrum
Diva’s magic comes from its faithful emulation of some of the most classic hardware synths of the past decades. Mixing and matching the filters, envelopes, and oscillators from some of the most iconic synths of the past generations allows you to put your spin on the sounds and songs that define electronic music. Luftrum’s banks testify to Diva’s ability to accomplish this seemingly impossible feat. Many of their preset banks are heavily inspired by synth-heavy genres from the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
Our favorite bank is the Kraftwerk-inspired bank called Luftkraft which uses Diva’s potential to create retro-sounding patches and tones to the extreme. Using just one or two of these patches in an otherwise wholly modern-sounding production can add a touch of retro flair to set your track apart from the competition. Listen to a few audio examples from the bank in the example below!
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Polarity Studio
Melodic Techno has taken the world by storm over the past few years, and the rising demand for unique and driving music has never been higher. As such, it seems like more and more preset packs are pushing the sounds of this genre. However, as with any oversaturation of a sound, most of the preset groups being released are all almost identically uninspiring.
But Polarity Studios is redefining what it takes to create a comprehensive melodic techno sound pack, and their multiple banks, batched together into an incredibly affordable bundle of sound banks, should be considered the go-to library for anyone wanting to make music in the style of Stephan Bodzin, Tale of Us, and Mathame. And while the bundle of sound banks costs just over $60, know that it could easily be the only sound you need to make a great, pro-quality melodic house, progressive, and melodic Techno.
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