KVR Audio

stillshaded · Post by **stillshaded** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 6:52 am

I've been using my virus to for... Damn 6 years now? Let me say, in my humble opinion, it is ,as you said, the holy grail of digital synths. Really I was surprised how much I liked it. I used to have a nord lead 2 and a blofeld, but I settled on the virus. Mainly because of ti and the voice count. I would also have to echo the whole thing about getting a more knobby one. For one thing, they have more processing power. If you use the granular and formant oscillator modes (which are f**king awesom) they eat up a lot more voices. With the TI first gen, it basically ends up being one poly synth and either 1-3 monos or another poly. It's dead easy to set up different tracks for the different voices. If you are doing simple patches (which still sound great) you can get way more voices. Plus, automation is really freaking easy when you have all those knobs. It's so easy to do that it encourages you to do it, and the more automation, the better a track usually ends up IMO.

Also, for the record, studio one will automatically bounce and render in realtime when you have the ti plugin in there. If you want it to render offline just hit the power button on the plugin editor. For me the reliability of the plugin has always been very good. I would say that maybe.. 10% of the time, when you hit play, the virus will start playing just a tiny bit out of sync. These is easily remedied by hitting space bar a couple of times. The only thing that actually bothers me is when I use fl studio, because you have to mess around with routing a lot more to ensure proper pdc. Others hosts I've used don't bother me, and I'm usually pretty intolerant of workflow hinderences.

As far as why I like the virus.. Well i know that it's totally possible for a plugin to be just as good, I guess it's just a strange coincidence that the virus is my favorite synth. The reason I think it's so, is that they obviously put so much care in developing every single element of this synth. The oscillators, filters, the effects are really amazing etc. Also, this synth is my favorite combination of simplicity vs complexity.

Usually when I see people saying that a synth like spire is just as good their point is something like "can you tell the difference in the supesaws!? No? Ok I proved that they're equal." First of all, I rarely use super saws, second of all.. The virus has the most beautiful wavetables I've ever heard but I neeevvvvveerrr see anybody talking about.

Well you might say that serum has better wavetables (I swear they don't sound as good for some reason?? I feel like they should but they just don't to me), but the filters in serum are joke compared to the virus. As are the effects.

The virus has loads of subtlety to it.. And that's something that all the demos I hear lack. They're usually like trance stabs or something smdh.

Anyway, I love my virus. Every year I'm like "surely vsts are good enough to sell this thing now." So I sit down and put it though it's paces and I'm amazed every time.

recursive one · Post by **recursive one** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 8:14 am

stillshaded wrote: Also, for the record, studio one will automatically bounce and render in realtime when you have the ti plugin in there.

That's good to know, they are clever guys at Presnous

But these clever guys forgot to make a bit bridge. Is Virus Contol native 64 bit for Windows?

stillshaded wrote: As far as why I like the virus.. Well i know that it's totally possible for a plugin to be just as good, I guess it's just a strange coincidence that the virus is my favorite synth. The reason I think it's so, is that they obviously put so much care in developing every single element of this synth. The oscillators, filters, the effects are really amazing etc. Also, this synth is my favorite combination of simplicity vs complexity.

Usually when I see people saying that a synth like spire is just as good their point is something like "can you tell the difference in the supesaws!? No? Ok I proved that they're equal." First of all, I rarely use super saws, second of all.. The virus has the most beautiful wavetables I've ever heard but I neeevvvvveerrr see anybody talking about.

I do use supersaws, but I'm fine with Spire/Sylenth in this area. I more interested in some esoteric sides of VIrus like graintable/formant oscillators. And I also love wavetable synths, if Virus is that good in this area that's another big plus for it.

Thanks for the replies, you and Naenyn confrim my mind picture of Virus as something being technically equal to the latest plugins in terms of "objective sound quality" but having loads of "soul" and "character" in its sound.

Another, maybe wrong, picture that I have is that Virus has pretty complex sound engine but sounds good at most meaningful combinations of settings - it is really the case? The really complex softsynths are mostly not like that, something like Zebra may sound amazing but you may tweak it for hours to find the sweet spots among the settings which are not sounding pleasant at all.

stillshaded · Post by **stillshaded** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 2:11 pm

It is indeed x64 on Windows and Mac.

I own zebra 2. It's a great synth, but as you said, it takes considerable tweaking to get it to a sweet spot. I honestly don't use it a ton. To me, the basic character of its oscillators is very harsh, and I always feel like I'm working against it. The virus is very different. It has massive sweet spots. They programmed the fake analog drift extremely well. I'm not sure if it was because I requested it (four years ago?), but they also added four analog drift mod sources, these can really liven up a patch and I always use my remaining mod sources on them.

It just sounds good. That's tricky to pull off in digital. Like I said, I think it's down to the care they took in crafting each component.

And your welcome btw. I understand how it is dropping a wad of dough on a digital synth nowadays. I wonder what access will do next? I think they should come out with a TI that has usb 3, much lower latency, and like 3xs the voice count. That would be awesssoooome

stillshaded · Post by **stillshaded** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 2:15 pm

I did enjoy demoing spire btw. It sounds good (still not as good as virus IMO) but it's a real drag that it has no wavetables (as some say, 'wavescnning')

recursive one · Post by **recursive one** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 3:00 pm

stillshaded wrote:I did enjoy demoing spire btw. It sounds good (still not as good as virus IMO) but it's a real drag that it has no wavetables (as some say, 'wavescnning')

Yes, it doesn't have real wavetables. You can only mix some complex waveforms to basic saw. They call it "wavetables" in the manual but, to my understanding, it doesn't do real wavescanning, just mixes two waveforms in different proportions.

Many thanks for your input about the Virus, hope to get a first-hand experience soon.

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 3:09 pm

stillshaded wrote:It is indeed x64 on Windows and Mac.

I own zebra 2. It's a great synth, but as you said, it takes considerable tweaking to get it to a sweet spot. I honestly don't use it a ton. To me, the basic character of its oscillators is very harsh, and I always feel like I'm working against it. The virus is very different. It has massive sweet spots. They programmed the fake analog drift extremely well. I'm not sure if it was because I requested it (four years ago?), but they also added four analog drift mod sources, these can really liven up a patch and I always use my remaining mod sources on them.

It just sounds good. That's tricky to pull off in digital. Like I said, I think it's down to the care they took in crafting each component.

That's always something which strikes me when listening to sound demos of the Virus, that it sounds very "organic". As you said, not many digital/VA synths which manage to do so. Also the distortion sounds very good. I'm not sure, but there always seems to be some sort of filter leakage too, like, you can route the oscillators in different filters, let them run parallel, and don't apply the whole amount to one filter, so that there's always a part of the signal left unfiltered. Something which i figured out recently can add "organicness" to the sound.

Gribs · Post by **Gribs** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 4:23 pm

We had a local synth group that was meeting for a while to share songs / ideas around themes and restrictions on what we were allowed to use for the tracks.

The first one was that that required one synth and my assigned restriction was that every track had to be monophonic. I used my TI2 and created a very Tangerine Dream-like track, and when a younger guy who fancies himself to be knowledgeable heard it he exclaimed "is that really all a Virus?!" He was apparently surprised at how organic it sounded.

Anyway, it is a fine synth all right. I wish the LFOs would go slower is all... not perfect but really good.

For computer integration, I suggest using a USB port that is hard wired to your motherboard. Some included Mobo USB ports (in the back) are hubs that do not function so well with the TI integration. I use Antec cases that have some ports in front and I wire those to USB pinouts on my MOBOs using the provided connectors. I have never had a problem with incorporating the Virus DSP. I think it is pretty cool tech, even though it is now a few years old

recursive one · Post by **recursive one** » Sat Jan 23, 2016 11:23 am

I'll have my Ti 2 Snow today evening

What is important at the first launch? I've read that Viruses are paranoid about USB ports. My PC Tower looks like this

It has two USB ports on its front and six ones on its rear, unfortunately I don't know which of them are USB 2.0 and which are USB 3.0, but it should have four of each kind. Is it improtrant which one to use? Is it also important how many other things are connected via USB? I have MIDI keys, M-Audio interface, external harddrive, and ofc mouse and keyboard contstantly connected, should I remove anything of it when installing the Virus software?

Maybe I'm overparanoid but I want my life with the TI software to be as easy as possible.

Mushy Mushy · Post by **Mushy Mushy** » Sat Jan 23, 2016 11:28 am

The blue ones will be 3.0

recursive one · Post by **recursive one** » Sat Jan 23, 2016 11:47 am

Thanks. Btw I've just googled that Virus has USB 1.0

I guess the most important thing should be not to connect the Virus and the USB soundcard to the same USB hub, correct?

stillshaded · Post by **stillshaded** » Sat Jan 23, 2016 3:03 pm

Err.. I dunno about that. I think what they said when I was reading about it back in the day, was don't connect it to a usb hub.. Which people were actually trying to do lol. Also, you want to keep it on the same port you had it plugged into when you installed it. Honestly I stopped paying attention to all that a few years ago and I haven't had any trouble

Scotty · Post by **Scotty** » Sat Jan 23, 2016 3:26 pm

A huge benefit of working the Virus is the tactile panel. I have Virus C (desktop) and use the excellent albeit expensive Mystery Island Virus HC editor. Calling up presets and editing and animating the synth with real hands on control is very pleasing to the creative process and of course you are rewarded with great sound. It is the only synth that sits directly in front of me on the desk. The others are racked.

recursive one · Post by **recursive one** » Sun Jan 24, 2016 7:36 am

For the record, the rear USB 3.0 seems to work. Sometimes it says "sync error" or something like that during playback but stopping and restarting playback in the sequencer cures it.

db3 · Post by **db3** » Sun Jan 24, 2016 1:01 pm

Rear USB ports will definitely be better as they are soldered to the motherboard. I have heard of some issues (not music related) with USB2 devices running off USB3 ports. Any issues with latency?

recursive one · Post by **recursive one** » Sun Jan 24, 2016 1:27 pm

db3 wrote: Any issues with latency?

None so far.

Sorry for yet another Virus thread, but ...