KVR Audio

Uncle E · Post by **Uncle E** » Fri Aug 05, 2016 4:10 pm

Sure, I agree with that. I use a combination of DIVA for my warmer, analog kinds of sounds and Serum for my edgier Virus kinds of sounds.

With that said, as a creative tool, I still don't think a Virus TI can be beat and I never understand why people who want that sound are trying to find alternatives. The price may be high but it gives instant, problem-free access to an insane number of great sounding voices with a brilliant hardware interface. It's only recently that the Komplete Kontrol S, Maschine Studio, Advance, and Push 2 have gotten us into that realm of instant access and even those don't have nearly as much hands-on control as the TI.

recursive one · Post by **recursive one** » Fri Aug 05, 2016 4:20 pm

Uncle E wrote: I never understand why people who want that sound are trying to find alternatives.

I was trying various "alternatives" long enough to realize that I want the real thing. Now we are happy together

Diva is also great synth, I use it here and there alongside with the Virus. It's squelchy liquid filter is incredible. But yet again, it's complementary to Virus, not a replacement

SLiC · Post by **SLiC** » Fri Aug 05, 2016 4:27 pm

When you can run 16 instances of Diva at 96K live with 100% certainty it will all play without a glitch you have a potential Virus replacement. 16 instances/parts with 100's of notes polyphony with high quality effects at 96K = 0% CPU. That has value to me.

NEOREV · Post by **NEOREV** » Fri Aug 05, 2016 5:41 pm

SLiC wrote:When you can run 16 instances of Diva at 96K live with 100% certainty it will all play without a glitch you have a potential Virus replacement. 16 instances/parts with 100's of notes polyphony with high quality effects at 96K = 0% CPU. That has value to me.

Boo-yah!
And that is where the Virus destroys VSTs and other virtual analogs.
It has some amazing effects.
It's a powerful instrument when you know how to use it.

grabme · Post by **grabme** » Fri Aug 05, 2016 5:54 pm

SLiC wrote:When you can run 16 instances of Diva at 96K live with 100% certainty it will all play without a glitch you have a potential Virus replacement. 16 instances/parts with 100's of notes polyphony with high quality effects at 96K = 0% CPU. That has value to me.

Doesn't the same argument apply to pretty much any hardware synth?

bmanic · Post by **bmanic** » Fri Aug 05, 2016 6:00 pm

SLiC wrote:When you can run 16 instances of Diva at 96K live with 100% certainty it will all play without a glitch you have a potential Virus replacement. 16 instances/parts with 100's of notes polyphony with high quality effects at 96K = 0% CPU. That has value to me.

..except last time I fooled around with one, you quite quickly ran out of voices with a bit more complex sound design. So yeah, it's not all powerful with hundreds of notes of polyphony.. lets not kid ourselves.

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Fri Aug 05, 2016 6:00 pm

I don't get the argument at all tbh. Multiple instances on the synth will decrease polyphony, that's not present on software. Also you can run as many instances as your computer can handle, not only 16 instances, and you have to bounce then, or have no multiple instances at all on hardware which isn't multi-timbral.

Uncle E · Post by **Uncle E** » Fri Aug 05, 2016 6:09 pm

grabme wrote:Doesn't the same argument apply to pretty much any hardware synth?

Only Access, Elektron, and Soniccore do the DAW integration. Of those, the TI2 has by far the highest polyphony and multitimbal voices.

SLiC · Post by **SLiC** » Fri Aug 05, 2016 6:18 pm

chk071 wrote:I don't get the argument at all tbh. Multiple instances on the synth will decrease polyphony, that's not present on software. Also you can run as many instances as your computer can handle, not only 16 instances, and you have to bounce then, or have no multiple instances at all on hardware which isn't multi-timbral.

I have a 4Ghz i7 DAW PCU - Multiple instances of Dive at 96K (or even lower) and polyphony isn't the issue as the CPU will overload long before I get even 12 notes polyphony on some patches (and that is one instance).

You cant bounce when you are playing live; you will see a lot of Virus TIs on stage with major artists, not so much Diva on a laptop.

I love Diva & Zebra- big fan of Serum and Falcon; but I wouldn't take them on the road and even owning those synths all I can tell you is that when I start a new song and need a synth sound I go for the Virus or my Prophet 8. No crackles, bouncing, load issues to watch, I just play an instrument. Later in the production/post I go for the VSTs and stuff...

As always, its music- do what ever works for you or whatever makes you happy (hardware, knobs and LED's make me happy....the fact that it sounds good is just a bonus)

AnX · Post by **AnX** » Fri Aug 05, 2016 6:25 pm

SLiC wrote:When you can run 16 instances of Diva at 96K live with 100% certainty it will all play without a glitch you have a potential Virus replacement. 16 instances/parts with 100's of notes polyphony with high quality effects at 96K = 0% CPU. That has value to me.

Diva sounds nothing like a virus... you can easily run 16 instances of something that does tho.

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Fri Aug 05, 2016 6:42 pm

Vectorman · Post by **Vectorman** » Fri Aug 05, 2016 7:02 pm

If it was possible to run Diva on the Virus' DSPs, I don't expect you'd get much polyphony. You're comparing a hardware synth with a large portion of its code written 10-20 years ago with undoubtedly some serious corner-cutting to squeeze it into the available DSP power of the day...to something that's doing realtime circuit simulation and computing its modulations several times faster than the Virus.

But Diva wouldn't be a Virus TI stand-in anyway. Something like Zebra has a more comparably deep feature set (actually deeper overall, although the sound is obviously different).

SLiC · Post by **SLiC** » Fri Aug 05, 2016 7:10 pm

AnX wrote:
SLiC wrote:When you can run 16 instances of Diva at 96K live with 100% certainty it will all play without a glitch you have a potential Virus replacement. 16 instances/parts with 100's of notes polyphony with high quality effects at 96K = 0% CPU. That has value to me.
Diva sounds nothing like a virus... you can easily run 16 instances of something that does tho.

I agree- I was responding to why you would use a Virus rather than Diva (in some cases Diva may actually sound better, depends what sound you are looking for)

I don't think Serum sounds much like the Virus either, probably Dune or even some of the TONE2 stuff is closest. I think I own (or have owned) pretty much all the major VSTs, I personally didn't find anything quite like the Virus, but some may be close enough, if you have a TI and a lot of plugs you can side by side, in many cases the effects and hardware outputs make a lot of the difference (I never record with the USB TI, but good for editing)

cryophonik · Post by **cryophonik** » Fri Aug 05, 2016 7:33 pm

I don't understand why Diva gets mentioned repeatedly in comparison to the Virus. The Virus is a proudly digital hardware synth/performance instrument, while Diva is a soft synth that pretty much nails analog. There are countless other soft synths that are more comparable to the Virus, so why does Diva always come up? Yes, Diva is a great synth, but it's like having a conversation about McClarens where people keep chiming in about how realistic their flight simulator software is.

recursive one · Post by **recursive one** » Fri Aug 05, 2016 7:34 pm

For my purposes spire is the closest. It will never sound exactly the same and requires different approach to programming but it covers the same bases with comparable sound quality and more or less similar character. Icarus probably will do as well, but lm not sure, I have mixed feelings about it, other tone2 stuff is not even close as well as dune2.

But all in all if you want virus buy a virus (am I the first to say this?

)

Wow the virus really isn't that special after all.