Virus recreation: "Overture"

[adamszabo]

I would love to tweak your patch a little further, but since I dont have a virus I would need your help. I would need to know the characteristics of the virus. Can you play a normal single saw and play alow note maybe on C3 or so, and have a 2x unisono on it? Then can you play it and as it plays you slowly change the detune, then back, then full stereo spread, and full detune again.

[Kriminal]

Hi!

Yes, I know, this sound is quite overused, but as I'm thinking of selling my PowerCore and therefore the Virus Plug-In, I just tried recreating some of my favorite Virus sounds with another softsynth.
I'm quite satisfied with the first result, so I thought, I'm going to share the preset.

A little demonstration (first Virus, then Zebra):
Demo

Here's the Preset:
Virus Overture

Greets
Thomas

have you tried sampling the raw osc from virus, converting them and importing them into Z2 for added 'realism' ?

[Rottweiler]

they are both a bit shadowy so it wont make a big difference imo.

btw fookin cool recreation. neva thougth zebra could do sg liek this. i should check this synth seriously at some point.

[Urs]

Yo,

Cool stuff

It sounds like the original Virus patch features a tad more phaser. One could either adjust the Feedback value in ModFX1 or use VCF5 (set to AP Phaser in parallel in the FxGrid.

Urs

[Rod Staples]

Thanks for sharing that.

As an ex (:() TI owner, I appreciate how good it is.
Funny how other Virus users have taken to zebra. This patch just goes to show why.

Can you now do the same for patches in banks ROM A-Q - only jokeing

Rod

[Rottweiler]

Thanks for sharing that.

As an ex (:() TI owner, I appreciate how good it is.
Funny how other Virus users have taken to zebra. This patch just goes to show why.

Can you now do that same for patches in banks ROM A-Q - only jokeing

Rod

yea lol every virus user i knew sold his gear and bougth zebra.

[pdxindy]

lovely patch...

thanks

[pepelogu]

Thanks for sharing that.

As an ex (:() TI owner, I appreciate how good it is.
Funny how other Virus users have taken to zebra. This patch just goes to show why.

Can you now do that same for patches in banks ROM A-Q - only jokeing

Rod

yea lol every virus user i knew sold his gear and bougth zebra.

I didn't.

Zebra is okay. But no Virus, thats for sure.

Edit: Forgot to say well done to Rat 41 for excellent programming.

[djsubject]

Hi!

Yes, I know, this sound is quite overused, but as I'm thinking of selling my PowerCore and therefore the Virus Plug-In, I just tried recreating some of my favorite Virus sounds with another softsynth.
I'm quite satisfied with the first result, so I thought, I'm going to share the preset.

A little demonstration (first Virus, then Zebra):
Demo

Here's the Preset:
Virus Overture

Greets
Thomas

& thanks for the patch!!

Subz

[pdxindy]

Zebra just sounds so good...

[rbet]

No Virus recreation is complete without an awesome arp demo. Therefore, U PHAIL!

Good work.

[michkhol]

Hi michkhol,

you don't spoil the mood, at all. The timing of the envelopes could be fine tuned even more as could the filter cutoff range. E.g. in the Zebra patch the bandpass filter opens up much further than in the Virus version.

The Virus version has also this certain vocal/formant character, which was almost impossible to capture (at least for me).

I was also impressed, when I realized that the Virus using two PWM OSCs with 2x unisono sounded rounder than Zebra with two PWM OSCs with 4x unisono per OSC.
Oh and btw. the unisono spread of the virus sounds wider, too.

On the other hand, I also tried two other "big" softsynths and they failed miserably in recreating this sound (but I'm not a great sounddesigner, too. ).

So far my thoughts.

Thomas

Hi Thomas,

On any account this recreation is impressive. When I had Virus I tried to recreate the ShineOn patch in Zebra and failed miserably. Something was always wrong. There is a similar patch in Zebra Science, but its design is different (FilterFM vs ring modulation). I don't have Virus anymore so I cannot compare it now with the original. But I agree with you that Zebra is the closest thing in recreation that "organic" Virus sound, it just needs more tweaks. Other softsynths I tried did not come close. On the other hand sound design is not my area of expertise too, "big boys" probably know better

Mike

[standalone]

Truly impressive , it's a patch that can sell a synth on it's own . Congratulations to Rat 41 and Urs , in no particular order .

[hakey]

Zebra is okay. But no Virus, thats for sure.

Obviously that's just your opinion.

My opinion - Virus is okay, but it's no Zebra.

I fell for the hype and bought a Virus C when it first came out a few years ago was fairly underwhelmed and sold it after 3 months. I felt it never delivered on the 'ultimate virtual analog synth' promise, it was just a little too precise and 'well behaved' for want of a better expression and somehow always fell short of the kind of sound I wanted (and the Moog filter was a fairly insipid interpretation). The basses were never meaty enough, the top end not quite as sparkling, the overall tone was solid, but at the same time somewhat 'shiny' and had a tendency towards the hard and dark - maybe suited for aggressive techno, trance or acid, but not at all what I was looking for.

I far, far prefer the sound of the Zebra and in terms of synthesis architecture there's little that a Virus TI can do that can't be replicated with Zebra, but the reverse is certainly not true - where's the osc effects, comb filter (how many filter types does a TI have compared with Zebra), and waveform editting in the TI, to name but three? And when was the last time that Access added any major functionality with an update (there hasn't been much since the launch of the TI, just getting the VST bit to work! and a glitch effect)? Do the developers and sound designers actively participate in online forums? How long does it take for Access to answer an email?

And, perhaps more importantly, how much does a TI cost? And how much does Zebra cost (yeah you need a reasonably fast pc to run it, but who makes electronic music these days and doesn't already own one? And guess what, if you've got a computer there's all sorts of interesting softs out there for relatively little money that can sound as good or better than a Virus, that can brought together in a DAW to in all sorts of weid combinations and which will have capabilities way beyond that of a TI. And the choice and quality of software seems to be growing exponentially atm.)

I've gone on a bit, but I really can't see why anyone, aside from a gigging musician needing the reassurance of hardware, would choose to spend all that money on what is a comparitively limitted piece of kit.

p.s. I think the Zebra version of that Overture patch sounds better.

[Sami]

I thought the Virus example sounded slightly fuller but they are very close indeed. Would be interesting to have a blind test/poll with exact same sounds recreated with Zebra and then Virus and see which one peeps would pick