weak oscillators

@Sarrova: don't worry, we are usually not closing threads, i just felt, as you pointed out as well, that the atmosphere in here is not ideal. as for my missing reply: i cannot reply to every post and especially the feature request forum i usually leave alone for a simple reason: we love reading about what our users want but sometimes we simply need time to make up our mind. in this case, please post audio files and links - it would be interesting to see if the raw oscillator sounds do have a different amount of punch.
marc

Zitat von Sarrova

Ehm .. I'm new here and this seems like a really awkward forum.

Sarrova - we are usually a friendly helpful community here, you will see that the recent events have been an extremely rare occurence - please don't misconstrue them as the norm.

1st of all, talking about a more "analog punchy sound" and then using VST's as examples is just sad... yes massive, sylenth, korg VST's are some of the best out there, but still.... not analog.

Different synths have different characters. That's normal. It is, however, ironic that for the last 15 years (from the birth of VST) people wanted a VST that sounds like the virus. Nobody was able to make it. And today we have people who want the virus to sound like some VST's.

On the other hand, I do understand where you're coming from, as I've also found (after the 1st year of "virus only" addiction) that sometimes there are better synths out there for a particular situation. Sometimes you want s very bright sound, sometimes you want a very hard raw analog lead. For these situations I found it better to use another synth or a VST. One can use the virus EQ, but that doesn't change the character, and can sometimes sound "forced", so to speak. But, again, this is normal. No synth can be best at every sound. And the virus is still by far the most used synth in my sound pallet, just not the only one anymore.

However, regardless of everything, IMO the virus would definitely benefit from some new basic oscillators and filters. Having multiple selections of saw/square oscillators and filters has become the norm in software for a while now, and for good reason. It give a single synth multiple characters. It would be awesome if the virus could follow this modern "trend". But is this possible considering the Ti's internal design to squeeze this in? That's up to the virus programmers to decide. Personally, I'd love to hear their opinions on the matter.

@Sarrova: thank you very much for taking the time to record all of this!

I did some A/Bing of raw oscillators of my Moog Voyager vs. the Virus and was forced to admit that you guys have a point.

I do want every instrument I own to have its own character, so I'm not entirely on board with the "it needs to be able to do X because other synths do X". But the raw waveforms do sound muddy compared to the Moog's, which sound very "crisp".

Zitat von neuromodulator

I did some A/Bing of raw oscillators of my Moog Voyager vs. the Virus and was forced to admit that you guys have a point.

I do want every instrument I own to have its own character, so I'm not entirely on board with the "it needs to be able to do X because other synths do X". But the raw waveforms do sound muddy compared to the Moog's, which sound very "crisp".

would you mind posting some short audio files?
thanks, marc

*sigh* I had deleted them, but I'll remake them. Might be the weekend before I get around to this.

Just MO, but this is a *brilliant* thread! I agree in part with the assessment of the Virus basic osc's, but in my decades of experience, virtually ALL analog(ue) synths have/had their own particular sound!

The basic building block of the 80's VCO/VCF/VCA sound was the Curtis Electro Music chip set....the VCO was the CEM3340 (with the VCA/VCF being 33XX...the actual numbers escape me) which was used in so many different synths at the time....

You wanna know a secret? Some of the synths built with the 3340 sounded rather 'thin"! A lot of the thickness in the synth sound at the time came from the filtering, distortion, mixing of the basic waveforms (was it saw square and sine?) and 'stacking'....the reason why the Memorymoog was and is my all-time favorite analog instrument is because it had 6 voice cards, and used 3 VCO's per voice! So all 6 voices going had 18 CEM3340's running at once, for some pretty rich sounds!

The Virus TI is absolutely my favorite digital synth platform, but yes, it could be improved.

But it is not JUST the oscillators; an analog synth is very much the sum of it's parts.

Carry on, Brothers and Sisters!

Roger aka goldenanalog

I dont think people should leave this thread die, i have been in the studio for the past month working on a project. When i needed to bring my virus in, i couldn't help but notice the weak oscillators after living in this studio with a moog little phatty, oberheim and a prophet.. I mean, the virus could be THE SYNTH. It lacked more envelopes and you are getting us that on the new update but you need to understand that the oscillators are lacking compared to the analog counterpart.

There is not much power and punchiness without effects, many people are hearing this, people that are knowledgable enough not some guys that had a synth or two. Wavetables can only do so much when we are talking about some sounds that you just want to use saws or squares..

You might think, yeah so what, thats the classic Virus oscillators take it or leave, its the character of the synth. Fair enough, just add another set of more aggressive, punchy typical classic oscillators. I mean with no fx the difference is clearly audible. The virus is such a versatile and strong synth, how can you leave such an important fundamental aspect such as oscillators out of the question? I doubt that a bootcamp with solve that. I tried everything for the shake of argument in that studio to prove those people wrong but well, i just failed. The engineer had a snow for years he knew the synth inside out and he couldn't do it either.

This could be the end of all synths with a better set of oscillators.. Its the king of modulation by having a modular approach to routing, the wavetables are VERY good, amazing collection, the formant synthesis is ground breaking, please consider A/Bing some voyager/oberheim what have you, even a roland and you will get the point of all those, people.

People might say you will never get close with a VA to such raw meaty punchy oscillators, but if you get the virus to use 96k internal and model those oscillators you will have the whole industry's jaws drop. You have to understand, soft-synths do come closer day by day, they already work at 96k, they already start to sound more analogue cause they are coming out each year and the developers are trying to create something groundbreaking all the time with better technology (see uhe Diva)

Zitat von papados

I dont think people should leave this thread die, i have been in the studio for the past month working on a project. When i needed to bring my virus in, i couldn't help but notice the weak oscillators after living in this studio with a moog little phatty, oberheim and a prophet.. I mean, the virus could be THE SYNTH. It lacked more envelopes and you are getting us that on the new update but you need to understand that the oscillators are lacking compared to the analog counterpart.

lol! You think? Welcome to analog synths? No, the Virus could not be "THE" synth. Not today, not next year. It will always have its strengths and weaknesses and will never replace analog.

Zitat

There is not much power and punchiness without effects, many people are hearing this, people that are knowledgable enough not some guys that had a synth or two. Wavetables can only do so much when we are talking about some sounds that you just want to use saws or squares..This could be the end of all synths with a better set of oscillators.. Its the king of modulation by having a modular approach to routing, the wavetables are VERY good, amazing collection, the formant synthesis is ground breaking, please consider A/Bing some voyager/oberheim what have you, even a roland and you will get the point of all those, people. People might say you will never get close with a VA to such raw meaty punchy oscillators, but if you get the virus to use 96k internal and model those oscillators you will have the whole industry's jaws drop. You have to understand, soft-synths do come closer day by day, they already work at 96k, they already start to sound more analogue cause they are coming out each year and the developers are trying to create something groundbreaking all the time with better technology (see uhe Diva)

Forget about the Virus ever being able to replace a moog voyager or similar counterpart. If you want a moog voyager or the sound of beefy analog then BUY ANALOG. I don't get pissed at my virus for not doing what my moog does and I don't get pissed at my moog for not doing what my virus does. You learn to get the best each unit offers and then you select the right instrument for the job. Now, getting better sound from it is something I fully support and yes I'd love to have the option of running the virus at 88 or 96k internally. For anyone unhappy with the sound I hope you at least run it at its maximum 48k internal rate. You can take off a bit of the digital edge by running it ou through analog compression or other gear. You can use compression envelopes to give it more punch as well.

Yes just add another set of more aggressive, punchy typical classic oscillators to sound punchier and full from the start . I really can't understand how Access can leave such an important
fundamental aspect such as oscillators out of the question. I think they are planning a new set of oscillators . But when ?. Maybe in the next months ?.

I understand that this classic Virus oscillators come from the first Virus model produced in 1997, 15 years ago. I expect Acces to add some new classic oscillators to complement the older ones. I think 15 years is enough !!. I mean is not 5 years . Is 15 years !!. I think will be normal to have a new additional set of classic oscillators every 5 years or so. Over 15 years have already passed and we are milking the same old classic oscillators . Just add new ones

Have you guys experimented with Hypersaw oscillators set to lowest density? With the Hypersaw, added sub-osc (which is a square), a bit of saturation and top end eq (internal) the Virus can sound pretty ruthless. While I'm all for new oscillator types, I feel like people tend to overlook the Hypersaw oscillators and/or assume they can only be used for unisoned and detuned trance-saw patches...