Review: Patchpool Diversity for Diversion

I am always excited to see what Simon Stockhausen of Patchpool can do when he gets his fingers on a new synthesizer plug-in. After hearing some of the teaser sound clips, I knew the Diversion soundset for the Diversion synthesizer plug-in by Dmitry Sches was going to be good.

Diversity includes a total of 101 patches and 6 variations. Simon aimed to create a wide range of diverse sounds…

… reaching from mellow and beautiful bells, pads, textural instruments and expressive lead sounds to edgy and soaring sequences and synths to dark and mysterious drones and soundscapes to otherworldly and abstract textures.

The patches use many custom waveforms made with Diversion and other sources. The sounds of this set were designed to be expressive, featuring complex modulations and x/y morph parameter assignments & aftertouch for more dynamic and expressive playing.

A breakdown of the patch categories:

• 9 Bell & Plucks + 1 variation
• 21 Keys & Synths
• 19 Pads + 2 variations
• 29 Scapes & Drones + 2 variations
• 23 Sequencers + 1 variation

For each of the patches there is a description and/or insights into how the x/y, aftertouch, velocity etc. can be used to control the sounds.

Some of the patches use quite a lot of CPU. Simon recommends reducing polyphony or switching off the unison mode while tracking (and turn it back on for the render). Diversion does some high quality sounds, and I’m more than happy to work around some of the CPU issues until I get a better CPU.

While checking out the sounds I got inspired to do a little piece of music. The sound clip below is made with 5 instances of Diversion, only using patches from the Diversity soundset.

I only spent about 15 minutes from start to render so I didn’t spend much time on the mix and just slapped on a gentle compression on the master. No other processing was done.

For more elaborate examples of the sounds of Diversity, make sure to check Simon’s demos.

So what do I think?

For a synthesizer as good as Diversion, it’s a bit of a shame there are only so few soundsets available for it. I guess there is a smaller market than for Massive, Sylenth1 and the likes, but luckily Patchpool supports the lesser known plug-in developers.

Diversity offers a most wonderful collection of sounds, beautifully designed by seasoned composer and sound designer Simon Stockhausen. With his signature cinematic style, Simon’s sounds are great for soundtracks and ambient music. They are ready to use out of the box, all you need to do is be inspired by them.

If you had a listen to the demos you undoubtedly heard that these sounds are designed in a way that when played alongside one or two other patches, or even individually, they are completely musical, expressive and generally totally mesmerizing. You just get completely immersed in the sounds, what inspiration!

More information: Patchpool / Diversity

Hey there, I'm Ronnie and I run Rekkerd.org. I'm a bedroom music producer and guitar player, and I love chicken vindaloo & all things glitch.