MONA skin for U-He Diva

[CyberGene]

Might’ve been discussed already in another thread. Anyway, just discovered it. Basically a skin that improves some stuff on the U-He Diva I don’t like, e.g. removing the tabbed interface, representing mods like colored rings around a destination knob, etc. 

 

Seems a no-brainer for the current price and I purchased it. But I’m not sure if I will have time to test it in the next days. 
 

https://plugmon.jp/product/mona

[David Emm]

I favor this over the base skin. Its a bit too dark for my tastes, but overall, it has a nice Moog-y esthetic that would help my (so-called) work flow. Nice work.

[nursers]

4 hours ago, CyberGene said:

Might’ve been discussed already in another thread. Anyway, just discovered it. Basically a skin that improves some stuff on the U-He Diva I don’t like, e.g. removing the tabbed interface, representing mods like colored rings around a destination knob, etc. 

 

Seems a no-brainer for the current price and I purchased it. But I’m not sure if I will have time to test it in the next days. 
 

https://plugmon.jp/product/mona

Wow that's certainly an interface improvement on the red tabbed nightmare that is the current one. Thanks for the heads-up  

[Stokely]

Just curious, is installing these skins pretty painless?  And going back to default if say an update "broke" the skin (not likely I wouldn't think considering Diva's age).

I'm pretty used to the normal one, it doesn't bother me (I'm mostly a preset tweaker) but that does look good.

I'd love a "skin" for NI's FM8, I'd use it a lot more if wasn't tiny with artsy hard-to-read buttons and text.

[CyberGene]

1 hour ago, Stokely said:

Just curious, is installing these skins pretty painless?  And going back to default if say an update "broke" the skin (not likely I wouldn't think considering Diva's age).

I just installed it. Seems like U-He provided a native support for skins, so there's a folder named "Themes" (by default empty) where you drop the new files and then you choose which skin to use from the Diva settings. With that in mind it's pretty painless and you can always switch between the default one and the new one.

 

I'm a die-hard Diva fan and although I hate the tabbed interface I'm very used to the stock one and after switching to the new one I feel like I don't know where is what at first 🤣 I may have to give it some time though. Other than that it looks pretty nice and I'm sure I will get used to it quickly.

 

BTW, the new skin is too large at 100% to fit on my MacBook Air M2 screen and I had to set it at 80% but then it becomes a bit tiny to read. I use Logic with an external display usually but sometimes I also use the MacBook on the sofa or when on the road. Not an ideal solution but still the size can be changed each time, not the end of the world. I also noticed some issues with the embedded keyboard with the new skin, it won't react to quick trackpad touches and would hang. Also, playing on the white keys between the black keys would actually trigger the nearest black key but it may be some setting which I couldn't find. Not that I use on-screen keyboards but since it's an advertised new feature with the skin, I had to test it... 😉

[Motif88]

Thanks for the link...downloading it now. 

[Motif88]

Will take a a while to get used to but I prefer the look and layout.

[bill5]

aw. I was with you until you said "purchased." I'm a cheap SOB; not paying for a skin. It does look nice, although I don't mind the tabs so it's no big deal for me. I could live without the red color though   

[Irena]

A real improvement.  And the presets he's bundled with it are a nice surprise; upon first audition it seems like there may be a few keepers. Thanks very much for the link.

[o0Ampy0o]

You may or may not know, u-he has a page of links to various alternative skins for their synths which includes this Mona skin. Many are just skins retaining the original functionality of controls and screens unlike this Mona skin which looks like it offers alternatives. With the exception of a pink and another red version they all are more appealing than the stock red interface IMO.

 

https://u-he.com/PatchLib/skins.html

[CyberGene]

2 hours ago, o0Ampy0o said:

You may or may not know, u-he has a page of links to various alternative skins for their synths which includes this Mona skin.

Thanks, I didn’t know that. They’ve listed MONA on top and from the description of one of the skins for Hive by the same developer “Plugmon” it seems they used his skin as the official alternative for Hive, so apparently his skins are well received by U-He themselves due to offering not just a different color scheme but also a different layout/workflow.