@dark sword: hhahahaha what the fuk?! 1475 pounds! hahahaha.

the price tag should include helicopter rental.

i really admire how yamaha just wanted to hand make the most fuking awesome ultimate synth, and bugger all the hobbyist musicians who cant fit one in their living room.

shows they really cared about making something special. from what i read the gx and cs80 are really special synths. id love to play on one at some point. but i dont know anyone that has one

@serban:

quote:

but im sure ill do fine, im in univesity now doing my 3rd year math major, im sure i can figure out a silly synth...

mathematicians != musicians

just because you are good at maths doesnt mean shit when it comes to programming a synth. you may understand some of workings of the synth. for instance, how to change the filter envelope decay curve by recursively modulating the filter decay in the mod matrix. or maybe you dont. point is, you dont know how it will sound like. how it will behave when doing this. in the end its an instrument. not a calculator. you can start by dropping the arrogance.

with that out of the way, theres plenty of virtual analogues that dont break the bank and which are more user friendly than the virus.

the nord lead 2 is one of them although the keyboard version is still expensive and the keyboard isnt really very good. it has a spongey action and no aftertouch. meh.

roland jp8000/jp8080 is also alot easier than the virus to use. much less modulation capabilities making it less versatile but more immediate to use. plus it has the pedigree (read: infamy) of being the synth responsible for *THAT* trance sound. some people love it. some people hate it with a vengeance. around here though, people like azndragon build temples in their mind around it

novation k-station is really easy to program too and it rips but lacks the flexibility of the virus.

overall im glad i bought my virus. its one of my fav synths. but im also glad i had a year's practice programming refx vanguard which is in my mind the most intuitive synth interface ever. one of the best introductions to subtractive synthesis. and it can make a wide variety of hard trancey type sounds.

my advice. get triangle 2 now. get a free sequencer like buzzmachines. over the next month or 2 practice with triangle 2 building sounds from scratch, dissecting patches and reading up about subtractive synthesis during the day. at night, ebay a virus b keyboard. dont buy the first one that comes along. look for the best deal. you should get a full sized virus kB for under £500 sterling. it should also be in excellent condition. aside from the buttons viruses are built like tanks.

and before you do make a purchase. please. go down to a turnkey or any music store which has one. try it before you buy it. some people just hate some of the annoying stuff about the virus. ill even admit that many aspects of the synth piss me off. like the useless multimode. the non global reverb/delay. making multimode even crapper if you use effects in your patches. the fact that you have to spend ages looking into this tiny backlit submenu flicking through options to slowly build up a sound. some people really hate that last bit. if you can perservere and you like bass then the virus is for you. some people just love switching on the nord leads though and letting rip with a huge unison FM lead, completely hands on without sub menu flicking. some people just wont let go and have to go buy a dave smith poly evolver. people who just love knobby analogue keyboards and even the virus doesnt do it for them. shrugs.

Last edited by Derivative on Oct-26-2005 at 19:11