quote:

Originally posted by alanzo Am I the only one one in the world who is perfectly satisfied with Virus Ti? It's not my only instrument so I don't need more voices, 3 digital outputs leaves me with one output per instrument most of the time, and it syncs using the Virus|Control perfectly! (has been since I got it in Jan 2007). All these reasons and the fact that any future Virus releases would just be more of the same means any new instrument had better be a huge leap for me to upgrade. If it's just another B -> C transition, I'll stick with what I already have.

No, you're not the only one who feels this way. I love my Polar TI as well and it will take some very big improvements, new features, and the right price for me to upgrade. In other words, I wouldn't upgrade just to get some extra processing power and outputs, but those would be some logical improvements in the next version.

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I love my TI and yeah, I wouldn't even consider upgrading it unless what they're having replace it is truly extraordinary in some way I can't fathom right now =P

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Originally posted by Sean Walsh I love my TI and yeah, I wouldn't even consider upgrading it unless what they're having replace it is truly extraordinary in some way I can't fathom right now =P

I can't think of anything else, either.. except for maybe making it a VA / analog hybrid... throwing a few analog chips on the board, basically. I doubt it, though.

I predict another B -> C... new colors, more voices, and a few other minor additions (Moog filter and EQ in the case of the Virus C).

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I wasn't even looking for new features. I just wanted to pick one up when I discovered that they were disappearing. I was planning on using my tax returns along with some savings to finance the purchase, but that won't happen until at least late March. I'm just worried that I'll have the cash for one available, but the units will not be available for purchase by then.

I'm a fairly avid eBayer, but I hate purchasing something on eBay thats a modern product, when I can just buy it new. Its one thing to buy vintage gear in eBay since thats pretty much the only way to get it, but I prefer to buy modern gear new.

All I can do is hope that whatever they announce next week will be available by then.

It would completely destroy their reputation to release a rehash of the TI the way it should have been done. No one would ever feel comfortable buying their products again knowing that there was a good chance they wouldn't work and then a new version would be released which did work, rendering their $3000 synth worthless.

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Except it's not worthless, not even remotely. TBH I couldn't care less what they come out with next even if it's 10x better than the TI, as I'm completely happy with my purchase and have barely begun scratching the surface in terms of what I can get out of it.

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quote:

Originally posted by kitphillips It would completely destroy their reputation to release a rehash of the TI the way it should have been done. No one would ever feel comfortable buying their products again knowing that there was a good chance they wouldn't work and then a new version would be released which did work, rendering their $3000 synth worthless.

I'll have to disagree with you on this point. While it is obvious the the TI series has had it's share of problems, it's not stopping the products from selling like hotcakes all over the world. I see TI synths in countless studios, and while some people have had problems there seems to be a fair amount of users who have either no problems or the problems are certainly manageable.

The TI series can be describe as a smashing success by any measure. There can be only be two reasons that a wildly successful company like Access would discontinue its flagship line of hardware:

1. They are going out of business (highly unlikely)
2. They are upgrading the entire line.

There really can't be any other answers. Access is surely committed to the TI concept and no one over there is going to can a successful product simply because some of the bugs need to be worked out. Thats all the problems are, bugs. Bugs can be fixed. Design flaws can be fixed. Just take a look at Microsoft or Apple. DO you think that Microsoft should have given up on Windows just because Windows 3.0 was a poor excuse for an operating system? Should Apple have given up on their computer line simply because System 7/8/9 had become out dated and needed an overhaul? No. You put a product out there, see how it works and how people use it, and then you improve upon that based on the results. That's how things work in any technology business and from that standpoint Access is no different from Microsoft or Apple.

I can understand the frustration of anyone who lays out $3,000 for a synthesizer and then has massive problems with the unit, but a lot of times this can be traced back to things that have absolutely nothing to do with Access or its problems. I don't know anyone who has a completely problem free studio. There are always going to be little annoyances and glitches in any studio, simply because of the nature of what we all do. I have a crazy software chain going on right now, with UAD cards, a Receptor, and loads of Native plugins. Hell, I have a QUAD core Mac, and I still manage to max out both the native processors and the DSP cards on a regular basis. I can't even run anything below 512 because of the crazy software chain I have going on at the moment. However, I deal with it and I get the work done, plain and simple.

We're all cobbling together a random collection of software and hardware parts, none of which can even have the remote possibility of being tested together to ensure complete problem free operation. Every setup is SO unique. The only time I have ever had problem free operation with anything is when I ran Logic Pro on my notebook with nothing but the native plugins. No hardware, no external audio interface, no 3rd party plugins, nothing. Nearly every single studio is such a vast collection of hardware and software parts all trying to work together seamlessly, it would be impossible to anticipate the types of problems that creep up. Frankly, we're all lucky any of this stuff works at all.

If you want to get even close to a completely stable system, then the only options I see are going completely native as I did on my notebook with NO addons, or shelling out $20,000 for a ProTools HD 3 system and running everything off of DSP cards. Even then, things are not going to be completely stable. Go over to gearslutz and see how many of those folks are bitching about their $20,000 rigs.

I think were all really lucky that this stuff is even in the realm of possibility AND affordability for any of us, and to get the privilege of having a rig that allows me to make music for a reasonable cost is worth a few technical hassles from time to time.

ANALOG FILTERS!

quote:

Originally posted by Eric J I'll have to disagree with you on this point. While it is obvious the the TI series has had it's share of problems, it's not stopping the products from selling like hotcakes all over the world. I see TI synths in countless studios, and while some people have had problems there seems to be a fair amount of users who have either no problems or the problems are certainly manageable. The TI series can be describe as a smashing success by any measure. There can be only be two reasons that a wildly successful company like Access would discontinue its flagship line of hardware: 1. They are going out of business (highly unlikely) 2. They are upgrading the entire line. There really can't be any other answers. Access is surely committed to the TI concept and no one over there is going to can a successful product simply because some of the bugs need to be worked out. Thats all the problems are, bugs. Bugs can be fixed. Design flaws can be fixed. Just take a look at Microsoft or Apple. DO you think that Microsoft should have given up on Windows just because Windows 3.0 was a poor excuse for an operating system? Should Apple have given up on their computer line simply because System 7/8/9 had become out dated and needed an overhaul? No. You put a product out there, see how it works and how people use it, and then you improve upon that based on the results. That's how things work in any technology business and from that standpoint Access is no different from Microsoft or Apple. I can understand the frustration of anyone who lays out $3,000 for a synthesizer and then has massive problems with the unit, but a lot of times this can be traced back to things that have absolutely nothing to do with Access or its problems. I don't know anyone who has a completely problem free studio. There are always going to be little annoyances and glitches in any studio, simply because of the nature of what we all do. I have a crazy software chain going on right now, with UAD cards, a Receptor, and loads of Native plugins. Hell, I have a QUAD core Mac, and I still manage to max out both the native processors and the DSP cards on a regular basis. I can't even run anything below 512 because of the crazy software chain I have going on at the moment. However, I deal with it and I get the work done, plain and simple. We're all cobbling together a random collection of software and hardware parts, none of which can even have the remote possibility of being tested together to ensure complete problem free operation. Every setup is SO unique. The only time I have ever had problem free operation with anything is when I ran Logic Pro on my notebook with nothing but the native plugins. No hardware, no external audio interface, no 3rd party plugins, nothing. Nearly every single studio is such a vast collection of hardware and software parts all trying to work together seamlessly, it would be impossible to anticipate the types of problems that creep up. Frankly, we're all lucky any of this stuff works at all. If you want to get even close to a completely stable system, then the only options I see are going completely native as I did on my notebook with NO addons, or shelling out $20,000 for a ProTools HD 3 system and running everything off of DSP cards. Even then, things are not going to be completely stable. Go over to gearslutz and see how many of those folks are bitching about their $20,000 rigs. I think were all really lucky that this stuff is even in the realm of possibility AND affordability for any of us, and to get the privilege of having a rig that allows me to make music for a reasonable cost is worth a few technical hassles from time to time.

Its not about bugs in the product, its about thefact that people paid 3 grand for an unfinished product, and rather than access fixing the bugs, they would be expecting people to pay another 3 grand just to get what they should have had to start with.

I'm pretty sure that they know that that's not gonna wash, so I suspect they must have something more up their sleeve.

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quote:

Originally posted by kitphillips Its not about bugs in the product, its about thefact that people paid 3 grand for an unfinished product, and rather than access fixing the bugs, they would be expecting people to pay another 3 grand just to get what they should have had to start with. I'm pretty sure that they know that that's not gonna wash, so I suspect they must have something more up their sleeve.

This seems to happen all the time with lots of products. I see a lot of people that had problems with the Aurora 16 interfaces when they first came out and that's a $4,000 audio interface.

The point is that its just the nature of the beast. Technology will never be really bug free, and companies are going to release "unfinished" products with the idea that things will be fixed with updates at a later time. Microsoft is the KING of this type of approach and it hasn't slowed their sales any.

I sympathize with you that it is frustrating, but I'm just making the point that it's unlikely to change soon. Most companies don't pay a lot of attention to one off problems that people may be having, its only when multiple users report reproducible problems that they will get any attention. With so many people using the product in so many way, with so many different setups, I think Access has done the best it can to address the issues.

quote:

Its not about bugs in the product, its about thefact that people paid 3 grand for an unfinished product, and rather than access fixing the bugs, they would be expecting people to pay another 3 grand just to get what they should have had to start with.

/facepalm

Welcome to the 21st century, where companies don't have an unlimited time-line to come out with their products. As a programmer in the games industry I hear the argument you're making all the time, and while it would be nice to release things bug free and with every single feature we originally planned, the reality of deadlines and needing to actually ship the product within a couple of years come into play and cuts need to be made.

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Firstly, they've fixed most of the bugs. If you think it's bad now, holy crap you should have seen it at launch. Second, if a new Virus is announced, it will be based off of the current Ti. So all work on the new software will trickle down to the original Ti. I highly doubt we'll see the end of firmware releases with the release of a new Virus Ti based synthesizer.

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