Looking for Access Virus emulations

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I think the OP needs to clarify what exactly they are wanting to achieve by getting a straight emu compared to a similar sounding synth
Wish I knew, in general I couldn't find detailed article about Virus. It has some cryptic features like FM, morphing between two waves and phase distortion (according to WIki?), a set of waveforms (but which ones?). When combined, they give some impressive possibilities that not any synth I own seems to have.

I would like to try it out and see if these features are actually useful / important for particular sounds. There must be something that makes Virus outstanding, right?
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The oscillator section of Virus is not that special. I even hate the wavetable that they provide. Its best feature are the effects for me.
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For me, nor the effects are saved in the virus. The construction of the product itself and very good, but nothing more.

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There must be something that makes Virus outstanding, right?
Ten years ago Virus was outstanding but nowdays? You can achive the same sound with good old Sylenth and not to speak about Spire, Dune2 or Hive to name a few.

PS. I didn't said it wouldn't be nice to have a TI2 Desktop under the fingers btw.. :hihi:
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DJ Warmonger wrote:
I think the OP needs to clarify what exactly they are wanting to achieve by getting a straight emu compared to a similar sounding synth
Wish I knew, in general I couldn't find detailed article about Virus. It has some cryptic features like FM, morphing between two waves and phase distortion (according to WIki?), a set of waveforms (but which ones?). When combined, they give some impressive possibilities that not any synth I own seems to have.

I would like to try it out and see if these features are actually useful / important for particular sounds. There must be something that makes Virus outstanding, right?
...if you don't know exactly what you are looking for (if I got that right), it would be best to find out what you need and - in fact - if you'd need a Virus for that. Opinions about the Virus vary from "best synth ever and nothing comes close", over to "really good synth (but nothing out of this world) with the benefit of hands-on controls" to "overpriced HW with buggy software integration".

So, either you could try to get your hands on a Virus and test it for yourself or you could find out what sounds you'd like to have and then have a look at what soft synth is capable of doing such sounds (if shelling out 1-2 grand isn't exactly the thing you'd wanted to do).

What you've described above as its characteristics seems to be a recipe for allrounder synths for modern dance music which a lot of soft synths have - Zebra, Spire or Synthmaster come to mind. Z3ta+, Dune, Serum or the synths from NI Komplete are probably also worth looking at. At a certain point it doesn't come down to what a synth can do (if they all have a similar feature-set), but what you can do with it. For instance (and I know that this wasn't particularly your question), asking which synth is the best on the market and then following the answer that this would be an Access Virus doesn't lead everybody where he might wanted to go...

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I've only ever listened to a real Virus once a while back and I remember finding out later that KarmaFX sounded quite like it.

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Spire is the closest thing to Virus Ti sound.

Although you can get good and similar results with Dune 1/2, Sylenth1, Harmor, Serum, Zebra 2, Massive, but the sound they produce can sound similar ONLY at some type of sounds. But if you want to mimic majority of sounds that would have similar character to virus, look no futher then Reveal-Sound Spire.

Futhermore, i suggest you to look too at uhe Diva too, it has diferent sound character, but by the quality, fatness its on par with Virus Ti.

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UltimateOutsider wrote:There were official Access Virus plugins for Pro Tools and the TC PowerCore years ago which were modeled after the earlier Virus models (A, B, Indigo)
They were still in the TC shop a year ago. Now discontinued.
It still works great. Only license transfers are going to end soon. So last chances at buying used plugins without the whole card. Cards that include the plugins can be traded as long as they last.

Btw. The PowerCore Virus is based on the Virus B. Exact same sound as the HW but with perfect digital audio to DAW.
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chaosWyrM wrote:
chk071 wrote:Cell is supposed to sound close to a Virus, not strictly an emulation of the synth though, according to the dev: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... hilit=cell
vaporware. hes been going on about that thing since 2011, and all he has to show for it is one tiny little pic.

meh...ill believe it when its released. by which time well all be on 128 bit systems and his 32 bit win only flowstone synth wont even run on anything.

:P
Indeed, they announced their synth too early. But actually the devs' team suffered a really tragic event recently and then the overall situation in Ukraine became very bad due to the war (Cell is a Ukrainian project). So it's not like they suddenly decided to quit and switch to another things. The development is still active, they posted new demos couple of weeks ago.

Win 32 bit only is indeed a problem.
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themachinelt wrote:
Futhermore, i suggest you to look too at uhe Diva too, it has diferent sound character, but by the quality, fatness its on par with Virus Ti.
Dune2 is a synth which I consider to be on par with Diva in terms of fatness/fullnes/overall sound quality, but with more modern, "trance friendly" sound. I also seems to have the closest feature set to Virus TI (VA, Wavetable, FM, Unison, decent set of effects)

So while Dune2 is not a direct Virus emulation and there may be other synths (Spire) with sonic character closer to Virus, i think Dune2 may be suggested as an ITB Virus replacement (I never owned an actual Virus though).
You may think you can fly ... but you better not try

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I am currently more or less radically cleaning up by synths collection which is mostly about plugins but also some of my hardware that i still got here (alraedy sold and/or are selling some plugins at KVR...).

While "cleaning up" i also started playing with my Virus TI desktop (Mk I) again that i got since around 2006 starting with ione of the first OS versions (OS 1.x) and have not used for a while (and already wanted to sell since a while...). Also installed the atset OS 5.0.8 now which is the same as for the Virus TI2 (the only big difference in the TI2 is bigger DSP power for using more voices while the firmware is the same in all TI versions...).

Around 2004 i also had a Virus C and the TI is NOT really comparable to earlier versions of the Virus as it includes tons of additional fetaures and lots of new features have been added to the TI over the years for FREE which are not just "small" features and almsot every other company would have charged extra money for those...

What i could say is that after playing with my TI again (using the total integration with the VST plugin with both MIDI and audio via USB) is that i am again blown away by the synth and the sheer amount of features that are included with the latest OS versions (currently OS 5.x).

The changes and/or new features over the years and OS versions include e.g.:

- Formant + Granular modes based on the wavetables (not included with OS 1.x)
- more wavetables: 100 wavetables at the moment (REAL wavetables, not just single waveforms...)
- ROM banks increased up to 26 (= ROM banks A - Z) which means 26 x 128 = 3328 patches). It is also possible to overwrite ROM banks (if the protection is disabled in the Config menu)
- a bunch of different new FXs were added over the years
- the FX section also includes a 3rd multimode filter with a bunch of modes includeing e.g. Comb, Vowel, Frequency shifter an vaiable filters with morphable shape. 4 parameters of those filters could be modulated at the mod matrix.
- the Arp pattern could be used as a mod source, also for the wavetables
- two additional envelopes 3 + 4 were added (best access to those is from the VST plugin)


The point is that the Virus TI (or TI2) is insanely powerful and versatile now, especially with the last OS versions. Also the total integration part with audio via USB (you could still use you normal audio interface for the output but could also use the Virus as an audio interface and of course also use the normal audio outputs of the TI connected to your audio interface...) seems to work more stable with the last OS versions.
Currently i could not see any direct and/or full replacement as software while the closest is maybe Tone2 Electra 2.1, at least in terms of features (v2.1 also has different Virus Hypersaw modes at the Ultrasaw Osc mode now...). Based on that it is likely that i keep the TI and do not sell it but this is not 100% sure yet.



Ingo
Ingo Weidner
Win 10 Home 64-bit / mobile i7-7700HQ 2.8 GHz / 16GB RAM //
Live 10 Suite / Cubase Pro 9.5 / Pro Tools Ultimate 2021 // NI Komplete Kontrol S61 Mk1

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I'm jealous now. :? Although i bought Spire to fill exactly that gap the Virus feels like ripping here. :) I don't know how close they really are, but character wise, at least Spire feels like it would be roughly the same direction. Don't want to say that the Virus is the tip of the iceberg, but i always loved its characters on sound demos and Youtube vids, and the popularity surely doesn't come out of nowhere. Certainly impressive also how much sonic ground it covers with all the synthesis forms you listed. Sure would like to have one one day. Unfortunately, they're pretty expensive.

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chk071 wrote:I'm jealous now. :? Although i bought Spire to fill exactly that gap the Virus feels like ripping here. :) I don't know how close they really are, but character wise, at least Spire feels like it would be roughly the same direction. Don't want to say that the Virus is the tip of the iceberg, but i always loved its characters on sound demos and Youtube vids, and the popularity surely doesn't come out of nowhere. Certainly impressive also how much sonic ground it covers with all the synthesis forms you listed. Sure would like to have one one day. Unfortunately, they're pretty expensive.
That list i mentioned actually are only the features that were added over the last 9 years for FREE via OS/firmware updates...
I guess a full list of the added features would look even more impressive. :)

Like alraedy mentioned the newer TI2 has the same OS but more DSP power than the older TI (which results in more voices).
Ingo Weidner
Win 10 Home 64-bit / mobile i7-7700HQ 2.8 GHz / 16GB RAM //
Live 10 Suite / Cubase Pro 9.5 / Pro Tools Ultimate 2021 // NI Komplete Kontrol S61 Mk1

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Ingonator wrote: That list i mentioned actually are only the features that were added over the last 9 years for FREE via OS/firmware updates...
I guess a full list of the added features would look even more impressive. :)
Yeah, my bad. Of course it features more than that.

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personaly, i prefer dune2, i have sold my virus, great sound, fun at programing, but really buggy vst compare to dune or serum,zebra or electra2, ok, the fx section is really great but, i have a lot of great vst fx....i had sold a lot of harware, digital or analog, the futur is in the box, no?
i dream for a big modular system, but it s a dream, i would prefer it in the box...
it s the same with big console,external fx, blablabla
the most important is the room acoustic and the men behind it, i have listen some crazy patchs with synth1 and some horible with the virus, after that, access is a great companie, like clavia, but if you don t play live....buy a new computer a new keyboard and some quality vst and you re ok for the price, invest your time in learning, i don t know any magic tools

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