andromeda : 2700 €
kc 2100 €
c : 1600 €

roland jp is discontinued I believe ??
Anyway you can't compare it to a virus or andromeda because it's far less powerfull.

Really you care too much about reviews.. go in a shop
how the f*** can you judge a synth on what people say..What is dark anyway?? what is warm ?? Those are all subjective terms. Go check them out or dl some sounds on inet.

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www.dezma.be

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/dezmamusic

Belgium, I highly recommend you get a Virus Powercore, and forget about the KC and C because for the extra your paying your not gettin your moneys worth. I bought the powercore virus recently and it was an absolute revelation for me. I had a nl3 and sold it cause i never used it, as the virus just impresses me day after day.

Now let me tell you why it's a smart move.

The Powercore Virus runs on a Powercore PCI card which also comes with additional plugins, most notably the classicverb, megaverb, eqsat, and the incredible masterx3 (they included it on the driver cd, blunder by tc). It runs exactly like a vsti in your sequencer and because it runs off your powercore card it does not drain cpu, if you run at low latency like 5ms, it drains maybe 5% but considering that zeta drains like 30-40% on 1 plug, it's more than acceptable. I run it at 20ms and get no cpu hit.

It sounds exactly the same and I would go as far as to say it sounds clearer than the virus b which its based on, due to my soundcard having better dac converters than on the Virus b. In short, it sounds insane.

I have the single license which gives me 4 instances of the virus sharing 16 voices. Yes 16 voices isnt alot and can go fast, but the multi license which will be coming out in september for around 200$ will give u 16 instances of the virus (yes thats 16 viruses running at the same time) and 64 voices, double that of a virus kc or c.

Now the only differences with the C is that it has Moog filters (which u wont miss, cause the virus filters are exceptional anyways) a 3 band eq , and a few modulation destinations. nothing mindblowing and nothing that you will notice anyways.

Now the greatest part of owning a powercore virus is the fact that you don't have to record like with hardware and the patch managment system. On a hardware version u can store 1024 patches and you gotta save and call up the patch everytime you load a project, while the poco irus has an incredibale patch managment system where u can browse through thousands (i have like 4000 patches) of patches which the click of a mouse, which is to me one of it's greatest features.

Stability should not be an issue as long as you have a decent pc with enough ram and your powercore card isnt sharing irq. If you own a mac then forget about a virus, it has major problems and is very unstable.

Now the poco + virus will run you 800-900 US, which is half of what a brand new kc costs, minus the poco effects.

I feel this is just the beginning of a new age in music production, i believe we will see more hardware units ported to dsp in the future. I have a feeling the virus powercore made alot of money, and more companies will follow the dsp bandwagon. Hardware will never die because it' s still the best solution for live gigs but for daw based production dsp cards is the future.

The vstation is next to be ported to the powercore. It will feature better filters than the native version as well as better sounding effects. Maybe a supernova will be next seeing that it uses the same dsp chip as on the powercore.

Before u go blow 1500 on a kc or whatever think about this. Don't give in to the hype of the hardware version with all its glowing lights and knobs.

Good luck with your purchasing decision

yes the powercore, omg man, thank you for posting. I read about it before. But I didn't know it sounded EXACTLY like the real thing. I'm being serious now, don't play with me, does it REALLY sound nice and warm like the real virus C ? I will come to canada and kick you around Toronto if it's not true

ONE thing though, can I switch it to a LAPTOP also ? Instead of a big PC ? yes I have a PC, thanks for mentioning the errors with mac. because if it goes on a laptop, and uses that little CPU, I could easily play live with it, using a midi board I think, no ? Yes I think so !

What good midi keyboard would you recommend if I were to buy the poco ? I don't need a load of keys as long as there is the possibility to transpose obviously (32 keys would be nice though). I would like to have some assignable knobs on the thing that I could use to assign to some of the onscreen poco synth, makes it more fun for me. Shit man, really, thanks for posting, I had read about it, but figured it was no good.

Please reply here trancenrg69, your tip was very helpful in making my decission even harder, but in a good way

Thanks for the price Dezma, damn, I thought it was cheaper nowadays, and I didn't know you couldn't compare a JP to a Virus, thanks for that too, makes my decission now between C or poco.

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No you can't switch it to a labtop unless you purchase the external firewire version which cost 1500US (in that case you might as well get a virus c which costs less ). As for a midi controller , you can't go wrong with the
Edirol PCR-30

http://www.edirol.com/products/info/pcr30.html

It'll more than meet your needs.

AS for the sound. The virus C and the Powercore sound the same, unless the patch calls for a moog filter or eq. the differences are down to the dac converters of the virus. Nothing you'll notice in a mix. Go demo the poco virus with a real one and you make the judgment, youll be hard pressed to hear a difference.

I offered my advice, it's up to you, but the best way to settle it is to actually try them.

Shit, sucks that it won't fit on a laptop. Damned man ! Why would they make it 700$ more expensive just for firewire omfg. If you can choose between the firewire version or the actual rack, I'm going for the rack. I'm really tempted now lol, I mean the powercore gets updates I suppose, more so then the hardware, so maybe in time it would be even better then the hardware version.. But shit not possible on laptop... Are you 100% sure ? And are you sure it's really THAT expensive ?

That midi controller DOES look cool lol. How about the m-audio ones ? I'm doing an article if you noticed in the music forum, and it's about live performance also. ANd I noticed BT has this controller from m-audio, it any better ? I don't wanne be the guy that buys everything the pros buy just because they have it lol. But the edirol has so few buttons no ?

damn man, 1500 USD

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M-audio , edirol, etc.. they all can do the job. But from reading reviews edirol seems to be better than m-audio. and how many knobs you want? 8 knobs and 8 sliders is alot. firewire is 1500us because its double the power of the pci version, and is external and portable. 2 pci powercores will still be a better option than a firewire since it'll cost you 1000us and youll get 8 instances of the powercore instead of 4, since u got 2 cards.

If you do live gigs than get the b or c. powercore is for production. don't make it a complicated decision. if you do both production and live gigs = virus b or c, home recording = powercore virus or virus b or c

Let me lay it down for you :

I loved to do live, my laptop recently died. Will miss it alot

Now I'm out of the live stuff for a while. But I want to keep live in mind for later on, since it's so much fun. If I buy the poco, I will only be able to use recorded loops of it, I don't know if that's a bad thing really. Do people even use a virus on stage ? If I get the poco, I can get a better audio card, and a midi controller that goes up to 300$ or more I guess. I don't mind investing in a really nice one, come to think of it, 32 keys is smaller then I thought lol. I compose on piano, and then go out on pc and click drag it with my mouse, so they cover more then just 3 octaves. Would be cool if I can save up that time by having a nice midi controller. This midi controller in turn I could use in live gigs. And might serve more usefull then just a virus C, which I would only be able to use as a virus, and not to mess around with other things (I THINK, not sure). I in turn also have a roland E-68 keyboard just sitting here doing nothing. It has a nice range of keys, so I could use that one for the key input if I get a good soundcard with loads of midi inputs, and then the smaller edirol to use as knob and slider controller. I'm not too sure what to do here. And if it's even possible, right now the E-68 has become a useless peace of equipment.. it was fun when I was 12, I'm way older now. It's one of those sample based keyboards, you can play piano with the sound of a trumpet etc.. but the samples suck rather hard. The only good ones are the piano ones (that's 1 of 158 patches I think lol).

You say the firewire is better then the other one since it's twice the power, but in your previous post you stated something about a free upgrade in the feature that would enable you to have like 16 virusses at the same time running, wouldn't that solve the problem ? And is the sound different between both ? Or the same ?

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yeah multi license will allow 16 instances of the virus, but costs 200$ more. 2 pci powercore cost 1000$ but you get 8 instance of the virus with the single user license which doesnt require the extra 200$ for multi. i mean 8 instances is overkill anyways. i never would use more than 8 viruses in 1 track.


Dont think to hard, look if u want to have the option one day of live giging then get the hardware version. better safe than sorry.
of course people use a virus on stage. even hip hop artists like Usher have the virus kc on stage for live performance.

Ok. Hmm. But is it not so that if you have a hardware synth, it's like having 1000 of time ? Don't you record the audio output to your pc as a wav file, and then simply loop it or have it play once etc... in your sequencer ? So you could record a 100 wavs, and have 100 virusses for all I know as a listener, no ?

Also, and check this out now :

-Let's say I don't get the Virus KC

I would be able to buy a laptop, new ram for my pc, the poco, and a small midi controller for about the same price.. I could do live, just without the actual virus there, I'd be looping avs when it comes to the virus... it's really hard to decide now.

I read a lot, and I see BT saying he's exchanging pretty much all his hardware to software synths etc.. there must be a reason for this. He performs with what, a midi keyboard, a mixer and a laptop ? Maybe a guitarist for extra fancy stuff, but that's about it no ? I am alone on stage, so maybe that extra virus synth would be too much to handle for me at the same time... you know what I mean ? And that 1000$ difference definately makes me think twice then. I don't wanne buy hardware because it's 'in', I just wanted a good synth that is nice to play with. But with that midi keyboard, it would be about the same as the actual virus in front of you I figure, except easier to browse around the patches... dang..

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PS : Am I wrong when I get the idea that a hardware is used in the following way :

-You hook it to your pc
-You record the stuff in a wav file
-You put the wav file in your sequencer, and tada, there you go

Or is it custom to use that virus to get midi feeds from the sequencer, and play like that ? Would this mean you can use that virus only for one part of the song ? And not for let's say a pad, a lead, and a bass sound all at the same time ? In that case the poco would be better... but I'm so lost now lol.

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Hardware has a midi in/midi out. the midi in sends midi signals from your sequencer to your virus. So if u put a pattern in your sequencers piano roll the virus will play it. you then make an audio track and record it. the problem is that once you record it, that's it, to late to change, if you want to change something u gotta re record it. also everything is recorded dry, you can't record to wav with vst plugins like eq, delay, etc.. as with vst all u do is add effects and an insert or send. point is bt uses vst cause its much easier and more efficient. problem is vsts dont sound as good as hardware, but now with dsp versions they do and thats what makes its so great.