Access Music User Forum

a5hl3y2k6........

You are not on your own here as reading around these forums will show, i have a virus Ti desktop running with logic 9.1.4 and snow leopard on a fairly new mac i7 950 quad 8 threads 6 GB mem. So my mac should be up for running it smoothly you would think.

But i too have run into most of your problems but have managed to get it too work after a lot of time spent trouble shooting, though it can still be a bit flaky.. heres what i can tell you.....

I don,t think it plays nice with Lion at the moment from what i have read here and i tried logic 9.1.5 update with Snow and and it completely shot my system with hanging notes and logic crashing after 5 mins into anything .....so i reverted back to 9.1.4 and its ok again.

You also have to make shure you the you follow the virus and logic tutorial which will help and it states to not use a usb hub and try to pick a port all for itself....NOW i have spent hours trying to find the best usb port that isn,t sharing it with any thing else by taking all non important things out and trying each port at a time and rebooting and so on....... and so on...But because of the way newer computers seem to hub these ports with in the motherboard itself dose not make it clear cut like in the manual seems to point out.....

SOooo like i say i seem to have got things running a lot better than at the start but i still feel like i am not getting full usb bandwidth witch i believe is about 73% on chosen usb port....... I WISH Access would just incorporate some sort of reading for USB bandwidth in there VC software seeing that it is such an important issue.....I read that something flags up in red when its seriously out of sync but this is after the horse has bolted imo.....

There is a few posts on here with guys saying the only way they ever got there virus Ti to run smooth is to get a pci-e to usb card, which i intend to do myself when i know which one to get for my system ........
Strange though that Access said to these guys that they did not think it was necessary yet to them they have never looked back.......

Hope this helps.

USB on the Virus does seem to be an issue for lots of users on these forums. I must admit, i do tend not to use the VC software unless i am sound designing or moving patches around, it is too unpredictable, however!... i have found the latest update a lot better in the fact that it syncs better with "Reaper" which is the DAW of my choice now.... anyway, I also installed a seperate USB PCIe card, and it definately improved my connection issues, even though Access support say it doesnt or shouldnt make any difference. I beleive there are so many different user setups out there it is impossible to cover everyones scenario and create a stable system for everyone. Afterall... USB is a PC interface and NOT a Virus interface exclusively, and PC technology as well as USB interfaces change almost on a monthly basis!... who should keep up with who??? the mind boggles

Each one of us Virus users has a unique set up (or you may get lucky and have exactly the same set up as Access test their software on...) so... find a system that works and stick with it (easily said than done i know) but, the USB side or "TI" total integration side of the Virus has still got a long way to go.... Try using standard Midi ports, i do most of the time and i do have less problems i must admit, but i lose the Editing and library of VC... but i learn to live with it as i love the massive Virus TI sounds!

I beleive there is a midi stand alone editor/librarian out there somewhere but i have not tried so cannot comment.

I have started to accept the virus TI as a stand alone hardware synth, and taken the TI aspect as a "bonus" or it will just drive me nuts thinking i paid £1800 for something that doesnt do what it promised... (almost)

Still love my virus tho...

I have experienced all the problems that the original poster has described with his Virus/Logic setup. I spent over a month (and probably an hour or two each night) troubleshooting these issues. I literally tried every possible solution that was offered on this site and others. Nothing worked.

So I just gave up and have been using the Virus TI via MIDI ever since. I couldn't handle the daily aggravation any more. I felt as you did that Access sold me a product that doesn't work as promised. But rather than continue to be pissed off and annoyed, I simply moved on. I suspect there is a LARGE contingent of disappointed Virus TI users who have done the same thing.

Don't get me wrong, it's complete bullshit that Access continues to sell something that is so problematic. On what planet are you supposed to spend months and months trying to get a product that cost over $2,000 to work? People on this forum continue to make excuses like it's just part of owning a Virus TI - something to be expected. Huh? That's insane.

If Vienna Symphonic Library can get their Ensemble plugin to work flawlessly over Ethernet and stream 32 (!) channels of audio with zero latency (literally ZERO latency,) why can't Access get 2 channels of audio to work?

There I go, getting riled up again. LOL. Better not to think about it and just stick with MIDI.

Quoted from "a5hl3y2k6"

Hi.

Thanks for the replies

the only reason i use a dedicated hub is because it was recommend by marc (access) from another forum on i3/i5/i7 iMacs. - i don't know if this has made an improvement i feel it is the same to be honest.

i have also been using the virus as an audio input which is fine, bit i feel i don't have as much control as i would have wanted. also if i use it to sample i still feel i don't have the control i want from it. i see a lot of people are using it via midi. could someone advise me how to set this up correctly with my current setup - am i going to need an additional interface? or can i do this via usb. to be perfectly honest i don't mind loosing the ti software as i like using the hardware knobs etcs. but i have the following questions if using it via midi

- how do i get it set up.
- would i be able to apply logic effects onto the channels automation etc.
- is it reliable

if someone has the time to go through this it would be great. and hopefully i will finally be able to use the virus and not have to keep restarting it and rebooting my iMac/logic every half an hour

Thanks again,

Here's what you need to do to set up the Virus TI via USB MIDI and standard audio via the main analog outs on the Virus. (As with all things Logic, there are probably 5 different ways of going about this. But this is probably the easiest).

You will NOT need a MIDI interface if this is your only MIDI device. You MAY want to get an inexpensive audio interface for your iMac. But you can always use the analog input on the iMac in a pinch. If you use the iMac input, you will just need a Dual RCA to stereo mini jack cable and then a couple of RCA to 1/4" adapters. (I have never seen a quarter inch to 1/8th inch stereo cable but someone probably makes one.) Then connect the main analog outs of the Virus to the iMac's input via the cable (with 1/4" adapters on the RCA ends).

Once you've done this, now it's time to set up Logic:

• Set Logic to use the iMac's own Core Audio driver in the Audio Preferences window
  
• Create a new MIDI multi device in Logic's Environment
  
• Click on each box within the MIDI multi device to enable all 16 MIDI channels
  
• Set the Port of this MIDI Multi Device to Virus TI MIDI
  
• Now create a new multi-timbral Software Instrument using the "New" track command in the arrange window. (Make sure to check the Multi-timbral box.)
  
• Assign the External Instrument "plug-in" type to the channel strip of one of the new tracks. (All tracks will "point to" the same instrument - they just access different MIDI channels of this instrument.)
  
• Open the External Instrument settings for this channel strip (just like you would open any other plug-in window)
  
• Assign the Virus TI MIDI MIDI multi device to the MIDI input of this External Instrument (in its setting window)
• Assign the iMac's analog input as the audio input for the External Instrument
  
• Now to access each part within a Virus multi, select that track/channel strip in the arrange window

Hopefully this gives you enough info to go on.

Regarding your other questions, yes, you will be able to apply Logic's effects to the Virus channel strip just like any other Logic instrument or plug-in. However, you would need to get a multi-input audio interface and connect all of the Virus's analog outputs to this interface if you want to apply effects to more than one mixer channel.

Although it sounds a bit complicated at first, this setup is 100% rock solid. The Virus will sync flawlessly and there will be no weird audio glitches. :-)

Now if Access would just pull their heads out of the sand and create a MIDI-based standalone editor, you could leave the nightmare of Virus Control behind you. (Don't hold your breath on this one. Access is apparently committed to flogging this dead horse.)

i spend nearly two days now trying to figure out what the actual problem is. here's what i've done:
- playing various test arrangements i have in order to understand when those weirds sounds as described come in. well, they didn't.
- measuring the arp against logic's metronome and playback midi notes to see, if there is an offset. this includes a tremendous amount of start/stop/continue action. sometimes, the arp was off when i started in at an odd time but was spot on on the next bar again.

this is with 10.7, logic 9.1.5. and the latest public beta on the virus' side using a mac book pro from mid 2011 with an i7 processor. now, i don't really know how to comment on all above, at least not with something meaningful. can somebody point me into the right direction so i can reproduce you problems? we only can fix what we can reproduce.
thanks, marc