Virus - what's missing?

[DrGonzo]

I've been owning every Virus since the B-model and I am still amazed on how insanely deep and up to date the TI can sound even today.

Let's imagine that Access would start working on a new Virus model - what are the features that would be on the top of your list?

That the bloody mess with the plugin integration (the TI part) needs to be redone from the ground up goes without saying. What I'm after is what would you like a new generation of Virus synths to contain? What's missing from the current Virus?

/Carl

[bronxsound]

i enjoy virus as is but many users have been asking for wavetables import for ages. the only thing i am unhappy about is ti. however i got 3rd party software to work around it and this seems to work well.

however, if someone in access music would take a challenge of making a new synth i would think of something like refx avenger in a hardware format. sort of a workstation taking an advantage of virus heritage coupled with sample playback etc.

[tehlord]

There will be no new Virus

[gjvti]

Regarding OP I would only need more processing power and more multi-storage (currently only 16 multis can be stored without involving PC and sysex transfers), MPE support and more advanced arpeggiator would be also great, but I'm pretty sure too that Virus will be discontinued as soon sales drop below certain reasonable amount and there will be no new Virus :/

[xalama qo]

Native plug-out version!

[PurpleSunray]

I also don't think that there will be a new Virus (or new OS).. but if they do it:
- USB3.0 support
- Linux (ideally open-source) drivers.
- Wavetable import + wavetable morphing (like on Xfre Serum)
- Compressor on the FX

[chk071]

There will be no new Virus

I'm afraid that is true. Seems like the guitar amp thing, or whatever it is, is rather their business now. It's ridiculous, isn't it? One of the most popular and sought after hardware synth, and they discontinue it, because they make the money with other products. That really tells much about the business. No wonder soft synths are a much bigger thing now than hardware VA's.

[bronxsound]

^ software is a serious competition for hardware these days. it wasn't a case 10 years ago. but today software delivers more, au par or better than hardware and most importantly cheaper. so not much of a surprise.

[tehlord]

The problem is the 'analogue' buzzword. Lots of people assume that analogue=better.

What the Virus needs is a massive injection of R&D and to reinvent itself technically. Upping all the spec by 50% won't be enough, but it still needs to be backwards compatible.

8 stereo channels with perfect sync over USB @ 96k
True 128 voices
Separate DSP for FX
Montage style touch display (although not at the cost of the current level of hands on control)
Wavetable/sample import (Serum style editing on the screen)
Step sequencer/arpeggiator that isn't rubbish, a couple of lanes of modstep would be good.


As it stands now, I suspect they have inventory to make a certain amount of current models, and once that's been exhausted the Virus will die for good.

[chk071]

^ software is a serious competition for hardware these days. it wasn't a case 10 years ago. but today software delivers more, au par or better than hardware and most importantly cheaper. so not much of a surprise.

TBH though, i must say that, even though software COULD be better than hardware VA's in most cases, software developers fail to hit the nail quite often. And while software synths might sound more detailled and all that, it took a very long time, until devs really nailed the sound people are after. At least for me, there's very few soft synths which i would really consider as sounding excellent. It is only since 5 years now or so, that soft synths really nail it more and more, and it also makes me wonder why obviously noone ever bothered to research why people like the Virus, or Waldorf's harware synth sound so much. Of course, i don't expect a blatant copy from an original product, but a little research, and trying to figure out what people want, and how to achieve it, or, even have an ear to figure it out, is the least i would expect when developing a synth. Even nowadays, some soft synths simply sound uninspiring and boring. And yes, it also has to do with personal preferrence, yet it's pretty obvious what is popular, and what is not.

[PurpleSunray]

^ software is a serious competition for hardware these days. it wasn't a case 10 years ago. but today software delivers more, au par or better than hardware and most importantly cheaper. so not much of a surprise.

TBH though, i must say that, even though software COULD be better than hardware VA's in most cases, software developers fail to hit the nail quite often. And while software synths might sound more detailled and all that, it took a very long time, until devs really nailed the sound people are after. At least for me, there's very few soft synths which i would really consider as sounding excellent. It is only since 5 years now or so, that soft synths really nail it more and more, and it also makes me wonder why obviously noone ever bothered to research why people like the Virus, or Waldorf's harware synth sound so much. Of course, i don't expect a blatant copy from an original product, but a little research, and trying to figure out what people want, and how to achieve it, or, even have an ear to figure it out, is the least i would expect when developing a synth. Even nowadays, some soft synths simply sound uninspiring and boring. And yes, it also has to do with personal preferrence, yet it's pretty obvious what is popular, and what is not.

I have never understood this kind of dicussion.. the Virus Engine is powerd by a couple of Motoroal DSP chips, that execute software instructions. It's not driven by resistors/condensators/transistors (analog). IMHO the virus is a "soft-synth", it just doesn't run on x86 CPUs but on Freescale 56362PV120 DSP.
.. and the computing power of that DSP chip is a joke, compared to an i5/i7 as of today.
I think that might be one of the reasons why there is no more R&D on the Virus.
The Virus is no analog synth, but a digtial one. 10 years ago, using DSP chips was a good idea to maintain realtime charaterstics and have enough computing power. Today this is no more issue.. you can get tons of computing power from your PC dealer for very low price.

btw. on the Virus Forums there was a thread open source drivers.
My fear is that after they stop selling the Virus, they will also stop updating the drivers.
So if MS/Apple decides to change the driver model once again, you will be forced to stay on old windows/Mac, or don't use the Ti anymore.

We as virus lovers should be prepare for that and have open source drivers ready

http://www.virus.info/forum/index.php/T ... a3f260b9d1

Feel free to add your comment if you want to join / support this. It's just an idea, no real project yet.

[chk071]

AFAIK, you can't really compare DSP chip processing power to a PC processor, because you don't have all the additional stuff to compute you would have to, when you were running a sophisticated OS, with gazillions of background task etc., so, for a DSP chip, relatively low processing power is sufficient.

But that was not my point. I wrote that soft synths ARE able to run much more detailled sound modelling. The thing is, so far, only few developer have made excellent sounding soft synths, while hardware VA synths often sound very nice. Otherwise noone would even talk about the Virus anymore, or Waldorf's VA's, even "ancient" ones like the Q. Of course, also the hands on appeal is a important point, but, many soft synths simply fail to have as much character as hardware, and, especially, as much pleasing character.

Which soft synth only half as old as the Roland JP-8000 is even talked about anymore? I couldn't think of one. Why, when that sound already was possible on hardware?

[zvenx]

Then why not just make a software version? Surely they could afford to do this.
I hope they don't wait to late to go this route if they are going this route (like my ever loving blackberry which took way too long to release a bbm version for ios and android and the world had moved on)

rsp

[PurpleSunray]

AFAIK, you can't really compare DSP chip processing power to a PC processor, because you don't have all the additional stuff to compute you would have to, when you were running a sophisticated OS, with gazillions of background task etc., so, for a DSP chip, relatively low processing power is sufficient.

That is exactly my point. 10 years ago my CPU was really busy, running my DAW with 50++ lanes. Good idea to move real-time stuff to a dedicated chip. Today my CPU is prety much idle when running my DAW with 50++ lanes, no problem to run yet one more plugin.

IMHO many soft-synths fail on sound quality, because it is sooo easy to make one. All you need is something like JUCE and a bit of c++ knowlege, no DSP knowlege requried. But this also means that all synths that are made like that, use same FIR, IIR, FFT, ... codes / algorithms of the underlying framework and they all sound same somehow. If you implement that synth on a DSP chip, you need to have DSP experts that do know what they are doing - there is no way arround it and having expert-knowlege on your project might lead to better results overall, than if you only have noob-knowlege.

Now - why they cannot just port it to x86? Well... the point is that this DSP chip is much more specialized than a generic x86. Like, it has instructions to run a filter. A x86 CPU does not have that, but you need to implement the filter on your own. You will not able to do this same way like the DSP chip does it, unless you have access to the silicon schematics.

[barryfell]

AFAIK, you can't really compare DSP chip processing power to a PC processor, because you don't have all the additional stuff to compute you would have to, when you were running a sophisticated OS, with gazillions of background task etc., so, for a DSP chip, relatively low processing power is sufficient.

That is exactly my point. 10 years ago my CPU was really busy, running my DAW with 50++ lanes. Good idea to move real-time stuff to a dedicated chip. Today my CPU is prety much idle when running my DAW with 50++ lanes, no problem to run yet one more plugin.

Really? I've always hit the limits of my CPU as the CPU requirements of plugins have increased. I'm running an i7 4790k @ 4.6Ghz and often end up having to bounce at least a couple of tracks, typically the ones running Omnisphere 2, which is the only soft synth I use, the rest are live hardware, so the CPU usage is almost all coming from the inserts/sends.