Virus TI Operating System 2

Version 2.0 for the Virus TI adds Graintable, Formant-based oscillators as well as enhanced Wavetable synthesis. The new operating system introduces Section Locking for the Virus Control plug-in, searchable patch categories, 25 additional Wavetables and 256 additional signature ROM sounds, an improved user interface, a patch complexity indicator and loads of other refinements.

The Graintable oscillators applies techniques as those used in granular sampling and pitch-shifting algorithms to synthesizer Wavetables. It opens up a whole exciting world of new possibilities. Imagine bending any Wavetable far beyond what is sonically possible with common Wavetable synthesizers. It all happens in realtime and of course all parameters can be modulated in realtime as well.

The formant-based oscillators work in a similar fashion, only with one crucial difference: the formants remain fixed as you play. This effectively turns the oscillator into a filterbank on steroids comprising up to 256 resonant bandpass filter poles, whereby the cutoff of each virtual pole is determined by the harmonics in the current Wavetable index.

The existing Wavetable oscillators were also updated. OS2.0 allows PWM-style modulation and the degree of interpolation between the individual waves can be altered. As a result a Wavetable can morph from smooth to coarse to stepped (which makes it sound similar to a wave sequence). It's like turning a nice ambient patch into a dark, gritty sonic monster by only changing one continuously variable parameter.

Virus Control underwent major improvements. There is Section Locking enabling the TI to prevent specific aspects of a sound from changing. For instance locking everything but the arpeggiator. Now when browsing through the library the sound character will remain unchanged, but the arpeggiator pattern will alter depending on the settings of the selected new patch.
Forget about random patch generators. This is so much more fun. It's practically like having a completely new and intuitive sound design tool to your disposal. All you need to do is to choose what you dislike about a patch and find something better within the huge TI library which counts thousands of onboard patches.

Speaking of patches, 2 banks of signature patches have been added to the TI's ROM. Brooklyn based breaks and electro wizard Matt Stolley spend most of 2006 working on "10 dirty years" - certainly the darkest collection of Virus sounds so far. On top, Matt Picone supplied an excellent performance bank which is also optimised for the TI.

The patch complexity indicator shows how much resources a certain sound requires.