Motorola DSP563xx Emulator (BETA) (Access Virus, Nord Lead, Waldorf MW...)

[chk071]

What are the controls of the Virus emulator plugin actually doing? I was wondering about that. A lot of those had names like "Control 69", and, whenever they had actual parameter names, the parameter names didn't seem to match the controls of the ROM.

Sorry if that's a stupid question (I assume it is).

[Ah_Dziz]

Did the Nord modular use these chips?

Yes they did .
I think the hardest part for the nord modular will be the editor ( if when they will ever do one )
It requires a separate midi bus for handling sysex data .
Happy G1 rack owner since 2003

I had a NM1 and a micro for ages. I bought a G2 layer on because I missed having these sorts of things. Do they support processing audio through the emulation?
I'd imagine that running a giant array of modulars on my cpu would be a beautiful thing. Hell I'd buy another one to use to control the software.
This is a neat project. I'm amazed it took a group of random people on the internet to get this going. I would have figured that at least one or two of these companies would have taken this approach to port their own stuff to the computer world.

JJ

[Shiek927]

I would have figured that at least one or two of these companies would have taken this approach to port their own stuff to the computer world.

They're all too busy making another Roland Juno emulation or NI Massive-killer

[recursive one]

What are the controls of the Virus emulator plugin actually doing? I was wondering about that. A lot of those had names like "Control 69", and, whenever they had actual parameter names, the parameter names didn't seem to match the controls of the ROM.

Sorry if that's a stupid question (I assume it is).

Look here for the Virus CC list https://www.virus.info/forum/index.php? ... ters-list/

I couldn't get the Virus HC to work for whatever reason (must have messed up with the midi inputs/ outputs somewhere I guess, despite I followed their guide carefully) but the emu works fine with the Studio One generic control surface. I kinda makes a sound, I can select presets (without seeing their names though) and tweak things, program some midis and bounce it, but I'm getting a lot of CPU spikes and audio dropouts in a random manner (Virus B ROM, new i5). Loading a second instance may crash Studio One, though not always (good to know it may be used as multi-instance in principle).

Hope they improve the perfomance and make a GUI soon. Hearing that Virus sound in my DAW without my Virus being connected made my heart beat faster

[chk071]

What are the controls of the Virus emulator plugin actually doing? I was wondering about that. A lot of those had names like "Control 69", and, whenever they had actual parameter names, the parameter names didn't seem to match the controls of the ROM.

Sorry if that's a stupid question (I assume it is).

Look here for the Virus CC list https://www.virus.info/forum/index.php? ... ters-list/

That's how I did it: Mapped some of those CC's to my controller's controls, and played a bit with the init patch, using the program change on the Virus emu's interface.

What I wonder though is what are these controls on the Virus emu's interface? I can't make sense of it, especially as they don't seem to always do what the knob's names suggest (e.g., the filter cutoff doesn't do anything with the Virus' filter cutoff. Only the program change, and some general things work as they should).

Hope they improve the perfomance and make a GUI soon. Hearing that Virus sound in my DAW without my Virus being connected made my heart beat faster

Same.

And, as I mentioned above, I had some serious droput issues as well. My CPU just can't handle this. I don't think it's very accurate to say that CPU's which can handle above 136 or 108 MIPs in the test tool really does reality justice. I guess CPU's should be able to handle 200 or more MIPs, and don't drop below that. E.g., in the test, I had about 150 MIPs with my CPU in average, but, sometimes dropped to 103. Looks like that's not at all feasible to run this. I can play very simple 1 or 2 oscillator sounds, without long release, but, when I activate unison, or play some sounds with long release, it's absolutely unusable.

[recursive one]

What are the controls of the Virus emulator plugin actually doing? I was wondering about that. A lot of those had names like "Control 69", and, whenever they had actual parameter names, the parameter names didn't seem to match the controls of the ROM.

Sorry if that's a stupid question (I assume it is).

Look here for the Virus CC list https://www.virus.info/forum/index.php? ... ters-list/

That's how I did it: Mapped some of those CC's to my controller's controls, and played a bit with the init patch, using the program change on the Virus emu's interface.

What I wonder though is what are these controls on the Virus emu's interface? I can't make sense of it, especially as they don't seem to always do what the knob's names suggest (e.g., the filter cutoff doesn't do anything with the Virus' filter cutoff. Only the program change, and some general things work as they should).

What DAW are you using? I think these knob names are assigned by your host and aren't specific to the emu itself. The cutoffs are CC40 (filter 1) and CC41 (filter 2), they are called just "control 40" and "contorol 41" here. Tweaking these knobs does change the cutoff, as I hear.

And, as I mentioned above, I had some serious droput issues as well. My CPU just can't handle this. I don't think it's very accurate to say that CPU's which can handle above 136 or 108 MIPs in the test tool really does reality justice. I guess CPU's should be able to handle 200 or more MIPs, and don't drop below that. E.g., in the test, I had about 150 MIPs with my CPU in average, but, sometimes dropped to 103. Looks like that's not at all feasible to run this. I can play very simple 1 or 2 oscillator sounds, without long release, but, when I activate unison, or play some sounds with long release, it's absolutely unusable.

I've got a pretty fast CPU, not the fastest in the world but I can play 6 note chords in Repro 5 HQ/multicore just fine. It's not constant overload, I can play notes and chords in the emu with about 7-8% CPU load (5 note chord with the default patch may play fine), but the next moment it will radnomly go through the roof for no apparent reason.

[chk071]

What are the controls of the Virus emulator plugin actually doing? I was wondering about that. A lot of those had names like "Control 69", and, whenever they had actual parameter names, the parameter names didn't seem to match the controls of the ROM.

Sorry if that's a stupid question (I assume it is).

Look here for the Virus CC list https://www.virus.info/forum/index.php? ... ters-list/

That's how I did it: Mapped some of those CC's to my controller's controls, and played a bit with the init patch, using the program change on the Virus emu's interface.

What I wonder though is what are these controls on the Virus emu's interface? I can't make sense of it, especially as they don't seem to always do what the knob's names suggest (e.g., the filter cutoff doesn't do anything with the Virus' filter cutoff. Only the program change, and some general things work as they should).

What DAW are you using? I think these knob names are assigned by your host and aren't specific to the emu itself. The cutoffs are CC40 (filter 1) and CC41 (filter 2), they are called just "control 40" and "contorol 41" here. Tweaking these knobs does change the cutoff, as I hear.

Studio One 4.

I can only guess here, but, maybe the parameter names on the Virus emu's GUI reflect general MIDI CC parameters, as you say, unspecific to the ROM which is loaded. No idea though.

[recursive one]

Ah, I see, it does have a "cutoff" indeed. It just seems to display a generic Midi CC list which doesn't correspond to CCs in the Virus anyhow.

[gentleclockdivider]

What are the controls of the Virus emulator plugin actually doing? I was wondering about that. A lot of those had names like "Control 69", and, whenever they had actual parameter names, the parameter names didn't seem to match the controls of the ROM.

Sorry if that's a stupid question (I assume it is).

Look here for the Virus CC list https://www.virus.info/forum/index.php? ... ters-list/

I couldn't get the Virus HC to work for whatever reason (must have messed up with the midi inputs/ outputs somewhere I guess, despite I followed their guide carefully) but the emu works fine with the Studio One generic control surface. I kinda makes a sound, I can select presets (without seeing their names though) and tweak things, program some midis and bounce it, but I'm getting a lot of CPU spikes and audio dropouts in a random manner (Virus B ROM, new i5). Loading a second instance may crash Studio One, though not always (good to know it may be used as multi-instance in principle).

Hope they improve the perfomance and make a GUI soon. Hearing that Virus sound in my DAW without my Virus being connected made my heart beat faster

You don't need to load a second instance , the virus is 16 part multitimbral .
Just point another midi channel track to the emulator to control the other 15 parts .

[kmonkey]

No, but then again I've never asked the same of any developer who's released a software emulation because AFAIK this is a unique situation. Just a passing thought, no need to be salty.

You are right I apologize. It was my usual "ready for KVR" response but it wasn't needed. Sorry.

[recursive one]

You don't need to load a second instance , the virus is 16 part multitimbral .
Just point another midi channel track to the emulator to control the other 15 parts .

Yes, but Virus doesn't have 16 stereo outputs afaik.

[pepelogu]

This is the most exciting project to follow since the introduction of the entire VST concept in my opinion.

Has anyone been able to store patches in Cubase? Or has made settings recall work in projects?

[chk071]

You don't need to load a second instance , the virus is 16 part multitimbral .
Just point another midi channel track to the emulator to control the other 15 parts .

Yes, but Virus doesn't have 16 stereo outputs afaik.

... and is limited to 16 voices.

[PAK]

A 1st gen (2.66GHz) i7 will scrape 108 MIPS, in the test tool, with a prevailing wind. So almost any i7 "should" manage the Virus B minimum in theory. In practise background tasks, system factors, and host performance means it'll need some sort of margin.

However the overhead, the emulator itself requires, is significant. Though it's not "oranges to oranges", to give some idea of just how much - the raw MIPS performance of said 1st gen i7 is 82,300 MIPS, to (almost) generate 108 MIPS with the Virus B rom. On the Mac side the performance appears approx 10% worse, though the test tool delivered more stable MIPS numbers than Windows.

The fact it exists at all is technically impressive. But, once you get past that appreciation, the reality is that it has the feel of something which is still at an early stage, and whether people use it will likely depend a lot on how much things can be smoothed out and CPU performance improved. If not then it may remain just an interesting curiosity for many.

Performance would have to improve a lot for some synths. EG Clavia threw much more DSP at things (in order to run at 96kHz internally) and thus would require large performance improvements to fit on a single core. The Virus cut costs by doing everything on a single chip, but the TDM/Powercore VST Virus (which was based on the Virus B but, iirc, had the Virus C's extra arp features) could display timing issues when the DSP load generated got anywhere close to the maximum, and that was likely part of the reason why it was limited to being 4 part multi-timbral. Meaning it seems like Access ran things pretty close to the edge, in terms of squeezing what they could out of a single chip, and those alternatives had some issues even when using Motorola DSP's themselves.

On my system the bat test files generated correct sound, but the FX didn't seem to be working properly when used as a plugin. Some presets sounded normal whilst others barely made sound. Switching focus to something else, then going back, was enough to have it stop responding until reloaded.

I've seen some mention some sort of GUI. I think that's host specific (they're auto generating a generic CC interface) as nothing was displayed for me in Cubase. The plugin will respond to MIDI program and bank select changes just fine and, likewise, mapping controls to the relevant MIDI CC's should see them respond - though previously mentioned bugs mean they may not always behave as expected. I think the whole loopack thing maybe created some confusion too, with some failing to understand it was just to enable GUI control with utils which send MIDI messages to the hardware.

[chk071]

Your CPU needs at least 200 MIPs to run the emulator, is my estimation. I have an average of 150 MIPs in the test tool, and the Virus emu ist still pretty much unusable.