Is it Honestly True That Access Virus = VSTI's

[recursive one]

Rapid is great, sure. Actually i was exploring it's formant shift abilities the other day and was able to approximate that sound from the above video closer than I used to manage in Serum (I do have the actual Virus TI to compare)

As regards the authencity, I mean the sound character I'm used to and love because Virus appeared on numerous tracks I love. I never said Virus was sine qua non for any genre, but it does have it's own very lovely sound, which is indeed very suitable to anything trance/ambient/psy/industrial etc. Also it may not have 100 LFOs and 500 MSEGs but it has a lot of features anyway and is capaple of very different and fairly compelx sounds. Its' a perfect combination of very charactefrul sound with a complex and versatile sound engine. Most softsynths are either this or that.

Rapid is now what I use have I would have gone Virus, and its about to get granular oscillators and MSEGs (as well as having 8 layers!) this is what I want from a synth in 2020!!!

Interesting, I don't follow your (or anybody else's) posts here but I was reading an old thread right before and noticed this

Interestingly Rapid was one of the very few VST's I demoed that I realy didn't like!...

What changed?

[pdxindy]

I eventually also sold my rack TI as it wasnt a case of if other VST could sound the same, it was a case of they sounded 'better' to me in just about every way I could perceive and were more flexible/better features.

Because some people highly praise the Virus, I have multiple times listened to audio examples, demoed it in music stores and every time I conclude that I like the sound of my favorite softsynths distinctly better than anything I hear from the Virus.

It's an iconic synth... but it has been lapped by the field at this point... maybe twice

[recursive one]

I eventually also sold my rack TI as it wasnt a case of if other VST could sound the same, it was a case of they sounded 'better' to me in just about every way I could perceive and were more flexible/better features.

Because some people highly praise the Virus, I have multiple times listened to audio examples, demoed it in music stores and every time I conclude that I like the sound of my favorite softsynths distinctly better than anything I hear from the Virus.

It's an iconic synth... but it has been lapped by the field at this point... maybe twice

I never undersood why people liked the Beatles or thought Julia Roberts was beautiful. Or what's so special about Zebra. Attraction to the sound of a specific synth is something highly personal.

There are quite a few people attracted to Virus sound though.

[pdxindy]

I eventually also sold my rack TI as it wasnt a case of if other VST could sound the same, it was a case of they sounded 'better' to me in just about every way I could perceive and were more flexible/better features.

Because some people highly praise the Virus, I have multiple times listened to audio examples, demoed it in music stores and every time I conclude that I like the sound of my favorite softsynths distinctly better than anything I hear from the Virus.

It's an iconic synth... but it has been lapped by the field at this point... maybe twice

I never undersood why people liked the Beatles or thought Julia Roberts was beautiful. Or what's so special about Zebra. Attraction to the sound of a specific synth is something highly personal.

There are quite a few people attracted to Virus sound though.

The first digital camera I had made a lot of money for me and I took lots of excellent photos with it. Those are still good photos today. The cameras I have today are superior in every way and I would never go back.

[chk071]

Well... older digital cameras have no "character", or anything which would still make them appeal even though they're technically inferior. That doesn't hold true for synthesizers.

E.g. I prefer the sound of the older digital Waldorf synths to the new one. The new ones are technically superior in every way. Yet the old ones have a certain character I miss from the new ones.

[recursive one]

I don't get the camera analogy here. The goal of a camera is to capture an image, the less artifacts and distortion it produces, the better. It's something easily measurable I think.

The goal of a synth is to produce a good sound, of which everyone has their own definition. Sure one can measure the alisaing or the accuracy of the basic wave shapes, but the problem is that better accuracy/less aliasing doesn't necessarily translate to subjectively better sound.

Thing is the Virus did sound good from 1997 till 2009 when it was actively developed. Why should it suddenly stop sounding good now? Sure, we have lots of alternatives now, also sounding good and maybe subjectively souding better to someone , but there is no plugin synth souding exactly like Virus. Some do sound close, but everyone seems to have their own defintion of close enough.

[Passing Bye]

People are into all kind of retro things for whatever reasons, the goal of everything is to serve some purpose and than that evolves over time, being that camera, car or whatever, I don't know how that analogy escaped you, people are still into vinyls, there's people living in the 50s today, it's common thing really, nostalgia, ideology and all that.

[anomandaris1]

"Why should it suddenly stop sounding good now? "

It didn't... you are just making stupid purchase in 2020, if you buy this thing, considering what you can get for the money (let's say you want to tour, why get Virus when there are workstations that are way better in this price range? or why even buy hardware synth when you can use cheap vsts and cheap midi keyboard in the studio? Even freeware stuff these days is insanely good.)


I doubt you can't make quality electronic songs with even Synth1, which is ancient by vst plugin standards.

About the sound: Normal listeners don't mind or don't recognize "bad" (think early vsts) analogue emulation from a good one in a song (excluding cases with severe digital aliasing artifacts and very piercing resonance), so I doubt anyone can tell Virus from Dune, Sylenth or whatever. And who cares about minuscule differences between different detuned saw stacks etc?

[recursive one]

In fact I don't use Virus in each my track. Maybe 1 of 5 or so. I do use Viper a lot, also Spire, Sylenth, Serum , Dune, whatever does the job, even some freeware (not Synth1 tho, I hate that UI).

But do I regret my purchase or do I want to sell it? Not even the slightest, it has taught me a lot about synth programming and I love its sound.

Surely, buying a Virus just for the hypersaw is like buying a very expensive top end camera just to make selfies or photos of your cat.

[pdxindy]

I don't get the camera analogy here. The goal of a camera is to capture an image, the less artifacts and distortion it produces, the better. It's something easily measurable I think.

Then you must not have spent any time on photography forums where there are endless discussions of the color palettes of Canon vs Nikon vs Fuji vs Sony and so on. Then there are all the discussions of lenses and how some of them have 'magic' in how they render certain scenes.

There are plenty of people who prefer the 'warmth' of a certain lens, even if it is technically less accurate than a different lens.

Anyway, I find the level of quality of software DSP these days to be very high and I can get a wide range of tones at a very satisfying sound quality that just wasn't possible a decade+ ago.

[SLiC]

Interestingly Rapid was one of the very few VST's I demoed that I realy didn't like!...

What changed?

A lot has changed, I kept trying it after each update as some people raved about it (same with Phase Plant but I don't get that one yet either, but I keep trying it!) but I was big in to Avenger at the time and just didn't get the layers or the workflow and I hated the GUI! ...I then ignored it up until 1.7 when they had the sexy looking modern interface instead of one that looked like a pastel jelly!

It has some terrific updates and I just stuck with it after liking the new interface and buying during a 40% off sale and it grew on me more and more...now its a go to and I am more than happy to say I was wrong, but if they hadn't come up with the new modern scalabe GUI I probably won't have tried it again, I am that shallow

https://parawave-audio.com/rapid_version_history

Granular is being added June/July and MSEG promised 'later this year'

I also think it is worth supporting as it has a great developer. He talks to us on KVR and asks what we want and employs light copy protection...that a big hit for me (and one of the reasons I am not so keen on Avenger anymore, but then you have probably noticed I am quite fickle

[recursive one]

I don't get the camera analogy here. The goal of a camera is to capture an image, the less artifacts and distortion it produces, the better. It's something easily measurable I think.

Then you must not have spent any time on photography forums

Surely I din't. Turning off the auto regime on my phone camera is already too much effort for me when it comes to anything photo

But yes, it seems that photo guys are even more obsessed with insignificant things than synth guys

[recursive one]

Interestingly Rapid was one of the very few VST's I demoed that I realy didn't like!...

What changed?

A lot has changed

Yes, Rapid has grown a lot. That pre-1.7 GUI was indeed fugly.

But overall I'm really glad I bought it and not Avenger, one of my faviurite synths now (among other things, because it can read Virus wavetables and can recreate some Virus sounds better than others . It's great on it's own tho, not only as a Virus "replacement" )

[Distorted Horizon]

The first digital camera I had made a lot of money for me and I took lots of excellent photos with it. Those are still good photos today. The cameras I have today are superior in every way and I would never go back.

Do you have an online gallery and what camera do you have?

endless discussions of the color palettes of Canon vs Nikon vs Fuji vs Sony and so on.

I bought olympus om-d series cam to accompany my nikon.. I prefer olympus The pictures it spits out, just pleases my eyes more than nikon. Even though it's only 16mpix sensor compared to 24mpix of nikon.

like buying a very expensive top end camera just to make photos of your cat.

No camera is too expensive or high end to take pictures only of your cat

[SLiC]

Interestingly Rapid was one of the very few VST's I demoed that I realy didn't like!...

What changed?

A lot has changed

Yes, Rapid has grown a lot. That pre-1.7 GUI was indeed fugly.

But overall I'm really glad I bought it and not Avenger, one of my faviurite synths now (among other things, because it can read Virus wavetables and can recreate some Virus sounds better than others . It's great on it's own tho, not only as a Virus "replacement" )

Agreed, and you made the right decision buying Rapid over Avenger...unfortunately I had bought both before I realised that I only needed Rapid!