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Virus T1 Snow
review from velvetacidchrist.com
Let me just start by saying. Whoa, The Virus TI Snow is great. I never expected this. I was wowed by the virus A back in the day. The virus b and C never really wowed me like the A did. The virus A had this gritty cutting in your face sound that the B and C never had let alone the TI. The TI sounds faint, distant and lackluster on anything it does. I think its a converter issue and a power issue(my theory, let me stress its mearly my idea of why, is that when a synth tries to do to much, it has an internal bus and task switching processing it has to do, and some how this creates internal audio jitter that screws up the sound and makes it sound cold sterile and distant, I notice this with vst plug ins as well, sure there are buffers and things that are supposed to negate this, but I have pretty good fireface 800 converters, and when I convert any of my analog hardware synths to digital audio they still sound good and full, but when I use a vst or au no matter what synth, the sound is just lack luster, faint and distant sounding). The virus TI by far was the worst of the virus family. It sounded like a plug in. When I sold the Virus C I bought virus TI and was really unimpressed. It sounded worse, it had a buggy os, and there were all kinds of clicks and pops. I have owned all Virus models except the B. The regular TI sounds the worst in my book.
Now, I bought the TI snow. I thought maybe the presets were just better, so I decided to go and buy a regular TI again to see for sure. I ended up swapping the snow for the regular TI cause I got a good deal, thinking, the ti has more power and more out puts so its better right? WRONG. Same issue, the regular TI was faint, and buggy, even with the newest os update. I found some of the same patches on the snow and regular TI and compared them. The Snow is 100 times better, its loud, punchy, present, in your face, big for a digital synth. It does has a lot of bass. The snow sits better in the mix. Wait wait wait. This is only true when I play it with its own DAC. If I plug in the usb and do a AU instrument or VST, BLAH it sounds just like the crappy plug in synths I hate. So the audio over the total integration usb sounds faint and unpunchy , just like most soft synths. So, if want it to sound punchy, loud and aggressive, I run it out its main analog outputs. This is the key. Otherwise it sounds like the rest of the digital stuff I don’t like very much.
The original virus A sounded pretty good as well, but now the snow seriously sounds better than all of the viruses I have used before. It’s not just the better presets. Granted, it’s still digital so its doesn’t sound as good when you play it up high, compared to a real analog. It still has a plastic type sound to it. I love the filters, the osc, and the fx. This really is a step up from the others. The presets finally show of the power of the TI. I’m betting because the TI Snow was not stretched on processing power, it does less and has less in it, so the main output sounds better, no idea why for sure exactly, above, I’m just guessing. What can the TI snow do? Everything, pads, strings, bass, leads, arps, fx. It does them all very well. Sure I think real analog is a bit better in fatness and resonance and tone fullness, but this virus really holds its own, It is my favorite digital synth now.
Sure the snow interface is not as good as the regular virus, but honestly, if you put it in expert mode, and hit the buttons, its easy to find anything and edit it, or even make your own presets. It’s laid out very well in that regard. Sure only 4 timbers. Who cares when you can track stuff any way. That is why the regular ti is no big deal to me. The polyphony on the snow is about 32 voices on simple voices, 20 poly with a moderately complex voices, and 10 to 14 for very complex voices like if using strange filters or the grain or formant oscillators. This synth is cool, and now that it sounds a lot fuller and better tone wise on the snow, the virus really is worth owning along side real analogs. It adds all that digital stuff the analogs cannot do. This does not replace analog, just adds to it nicely.
This synth is great, it has a ton of filter types, 2 multi-mode filters (HP, LP, BP, BS) and the Analog Filter (modelled after the MiniMoog™ cascade filter with 6-24 dB Slope and self-oscillation). And awesome oscillators, WaveTable Oscillators for a completely new array of sounds. The basic idea behind the technology, is to take the existing wavetables, and apply similar techniques as those used in some granular sampling and pitch-shifting algorithms to open up a whole new world of possibilities. In each case, the Simple mode offers fewer parameters, and a higher polyphony. The characteristics of the Grain Table and Formant Table oscillators are quite different to those of traditional “granular” sampling/synthesis techniques, which tend to be associated with other-worldly “clouds” of sound. In the Virus TI Snow, they have instead employed the technology to achieve a very musical result which should prove every bit as useful as the other oscillator types in all manner of musical projects. It kicks ass. The Snow shows it off a lot more than the regular TI did. There are no buggy pops and randomly clicky envelopes like in the regular TI. The snow is a lot tighter over all. If you fidget with the presets while playing wildly, I notice notes can hang sometimes and it can take a second for the new sound to kick in with all its fx. Oh well, I don’t care about that really so it doesn’t bug me. There are still a few bugs with the SNOW, but they will be ironed out I think. The regular TI is still buggy and pops and acts stupid even after all the updates. The snow does not suffer from those anomalies.
The way you scroll through the presets is like an old roland juno or jupiter, you have a bank, then 8 sounds per bank. I like this. I can still search by sound type by holding a few buttons and getting into the options so all that is still there as well. you get 512 rom, and 512 ram sounds. That is more than enough. I hate when “ITS TOO MUCH”, when it comes to presets. The total control is cool for editing sounds and organizing stuff, but I do not like how it sounds over usb. I still love the way the virus stuff sounds being run through an old mackie mixer. Oh, and the presets are actually good on this virus. Its pretty small, easy to cary around, because it comes with its own carrying case. This is a great sound module. I give this a 5 out of 5. A must have. Its affordable.
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Top 10 Tracks ATM;
Fractured - Between The Lines
Headscan - Lolife
Aesthetic Perfection - Pale
Fractured - Try To Forget
Antichristus - James Addiction (Remix)
Distimia - Vile
Re-Agent - Brain Death (Fractured Remix)
PreEmptive Strike 0.1 - Symbiosis Denied
Lastboss - Parralax Scrolling
Grendel - Judged Ones (Fractured Remix)
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