Waldorf Micro Q Emulator (Vavra)

[beely]

Microwave XT is in the works.

That one would be cool!

[hlmst]

This sounds so close to the gritty/lofi Virus, was Cristoph Kemper secretly involved behind the scenes?

[aMUSEd]

I made a NKS version of this so it can be controlled with NI hardware. Also converted the first 100 or so presets to NKS patches but they take too long to load compared to just loading from the interface at the moment and as this is still a beta there's probably no point trying to convert them all till bugs are ironed out

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2yxexc5vy074v ... S.zip?dl=0

[frag]

Sadly, most of these VA synths from "56300" era are blown away by contemporary, native VSTs. All that is good about them are big collections of professionally crafted presets.
After spending a day with Virus C emulator, I can say that the sound is sort of "muddy" compared to Spire, Diva etc. And not in a good way. Of course, there are many useful patches!
True analogs such as MiniMoog, Prophet 5, will always be competitive, because of their unique character. But everything that Viruses & Nords do, can be done better by native VST synths.
When I was young, I wanted Virus, JP, AN1X, but didn't have the money. When I got the money, I've decided to invest in a powerful i7 machine and completely skip hardware synths. Several times I questioned this decision, but today's experience proves I was right.
In practical use, even Sylenth1 would do the job and no one could tell the difference. And now we have the original Virus C in VST! No cables, no need to record synth audio output, no crowded rooms, complete portability on laptop + option to use advanced virtualization techniques to port your existing virtual studio to a newer, more powerful computer.
With proper maintenance, virtual studio may last you longer than hardware one. It didn't seem that way in the beginning, not at all, with crappy PC components, buggy OS, an so on.
So yeah, I'm gonna keep Virus C for all the nostalgic retro trance sounds... It's great fun. Really, the nostalgia keeps the Virus going. You recognize a patch from your favorite track from 20 years ago and you're like WOOOOOOOOW

[gentleclockdivider]

Osirus, Vavra, and any future plugins are based on the same emulator plugin (that’s why they need to be in separate subfolders) so it’s safe to assume that as long as the developers keep working, all of the plugins will be supported.

Having been a donator and alpha tester myself, I can tell you that the development of Vavra was amazingly quick. It went from being unusable for production work to the current state (which I consider to be near completion) in 1 week.

Multi-core support is in the works, 75 voice polyphony is in the works, and Microwave XT is in the works. Donate if you want to see these things come to fruition.

I remember the thread on gearslutz 2 years ago , within 5 months there was a workable beta .
Just shows the power of community effort
For anyone interested
https://gearspace.com/board/electronic- ... rf-mw.html

[gentleclockdivider]

This sounds so close to the gritty/lofi Virus, was Cristoph Kemper secretly involved behind the scenes?

No , why would he be involved in coding for waldorf when he had acces to run ?
They were competitors .
The q ( and to some extend the micro Q ) are imho far superior to the virus , filter FM and a really fast modulation ( update rate ) matrix !!

[0degree]

Sadly, most of these VA synths from "56300" era are blown away by contemporary, native VSTs. All that is good about them are big collections of professionally crafted presets.
After spending a day with Virus C emulator, I can say that the sound is sort of "muddy" compared to Spire, Diva etc. And not in a good way. Of course, there are many useful patches!
True analogs such as MiniMoog, Prophet 5, will always be competitive, because of their unique character. But everything that Viruses & Nords do, can be done better by native VST synths.
When I was young, I wanted Virus, JP, AN1X, but didn't have the money. When I got the money, I've decided to invest in a powerful i7 machine and completely skip hardware synths. Several times I questioned this decision, but today's experience proves I was right.
In practical use, even Sylenth1 would do the job and no one could tell the difference. And now we have the original Virus C in VST! No cables, no need to record synth audio output, no crowded rooms, complete portability on laptop + option to use advanced virtualization techniques to port your existing virtual studio to a newer, more powerful computer.
With proper maintenance, virtual studio may last you longer than hardware one. It didn't seem that way in the beginning, not at all, with crappy PC components, buggy OS, an so on.
So yeah, I'm gonna keep Virus C for all the nostalgic retro trance sounds... It's great fun. Really, the nostalgia keeps the Virus going. You recognize a patch from your favorite track from 20 years ago and you're like WOOOOOOOOW

I agree, 20 year of development and astronomically increased native processing power did their thing. I'd say a lot of today's plugins sound better but as you said it's all about nostalgia and the soul (for the lack of better word) of those synths. I could never afford Virus C when it was produced so now at least I can try it on my PC. Kudos for the project and devs - sending them donations from time to time

[felis]

Sadly, most of these VA synths from "56300" era are blown away by contemporary, native VSTs....

I agree too. But these were early VA's. You can really hear the 'virtual' aspect of them now.
Some recent softies are pretty much indistinguishable from real analog.

Early VA's have their own charm though.
I see things like Osirus and Varva as good for nostalgia, or for someone who has never had anything from those manufacturers and wants to get a feel for if they'd like to purchase something current from them.
They're still very usable as they stand though, and could be great fun for someone who had one or the other, or both, a long time ago.

[OrionAlpha101]

the crash happens when you change the bank.
No factory ones.Can Micro Q load the Q Factory 98/99?

[Uncle E]

Changing banks never caused crashes for me. Organizing patches by category is what causes crashes for me.

I can load other Q banks but not Factory 98/99. Someone on the Discord mentioned changing the Device ID to get some banks to work.

[izonin]

Sadly, most of these VA synths from "56300" era are blown away by contemporary, native VSTs. All that is good about them are big collections of professionally crafted presets.
After spending a day with Virus C emulator, I can say that the sound is sort of "muddy" compared to Spire, Diva etc. And not in a good way. Of course, there are many useful patches!
True analogs such as MiniMoog, Prophet 5, will always be competitive, because of their unique character. But everything that Viruses & Nords do, can be done better by native VST synths.
When I was young, I wanted Virus, JP, AN1X, but didn't have the money. When I got the money, I've decided to invest in a powerful i7 machine and completely skip hardware synths. Several times I questioned this decision, but today's experience proves I was right.
In practical use, even Sylenth1 would do the job and no one could tell the difference. And now we have the original Virus C in VST! No cables, no need to record synth audio output, no crowded rooms, complete portability on laptop + option to use advanced virtualization techniques to port your existing virtual studio to a newer, more powerful computer.
With proper maintenance, virtual studio may last you longer than hardware one. It didn't seem that way in the beginning, not at all, with crappy PC components, buggy OS, an so on.
So yeah, I'm gonna keep Virus C for all the nostalgic retro trance sounds... It's great fun. Really, the nostalgia keeps the Virus going. You recognize a patch from your favorite track from 20 years ago and you're like WOOOOOOOOW

Nostalgia is a big part of it. Owning these legendary synths is a dream come true.

Now if Roland could release a proper JP-8000 plug-in...

[frag]

Vavra beta works fine. Volume is too low, and Save doesn't work.
In Cubase, you can just dial +12db channel gain and save patch as fxp.

Micro Q is not my thing... Cold and harsh, very different than Virus. In fact, Largo sounds similar to Q. Sound quality and interface are better on Largo, but I've never used it in a track. I guess I'm a Virus/JP8000 guy and not the Nord Lead/Micro Q guy.

The presets do make a difference! Largo factory presets are mostly bizarre, even 3rd party are bizarre. Waldorf obviously doesn't want to cripple the sales of their hardware synths. On the other hand, you may find decent Micro Q presets. Maybe even combine some with Virus C.

I also have a question concerning Virus soundbanks.
There was Incubation series by Manuel Schleis. Vols. 1-3 were downloadable for free, but then 2 & 3 disappeared. One guy asked Vengeance about it, and they said they couldn't find the files.
I've found 1 and 2, but for some reason, all copies of Vol. 3 on the internet appear to be damaged on purpose. There are 20 patches in it with weird characters and noise.
Damaged file is around 26KB in size, and I think the original .mid should be around 66KB unzipped.

Does anyone have a working link for Incubation Vol. 3, mid or syx? Can someone upload it?
There are many banks for Virus, but Incubation Vols. 1-3 are the essence of Virus trance sound. Almost a cultural treasure for future generations

[aMUSEd]

I have working copies of all 3 but I would not feel comfortable with sharing those on the net without explicit permission from Vengeance. You could PM Manuel here and ask him.

[SouledOut]

Vavra beta works fine. Volume is too low, and Save doesn't work.

As to the volume, this is not emulator devs fault, but it's exactly how the real Waldorf MicroQ behaves. It's output is just a bit too low for some obscure reason.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I actually thought it was nice that a synth wasn't blasting my ear drums out and leaving a healthy amount of headroom. I can't stand when a synth has every preset set to be as close to 0dbfs as possible. It just encourages bad gain staging.