I'd be disappointed with my virus if I was trying to get moog sounds from it!
Less disappointed than you would be with the Arturia version - especially if you know how to get those tones out of the virus. I get some nice fat wall-shaking moogy squares out of the Virus no problem.
I'm an active remixer in the US. Love the sounds out of the virus but, have not used it yet on one track. I still have faith that Marc, and his team will get the TI perfect with Lion, iMac, and Logic Pro 9.
I'm perpetually perplexed by people who throw the baby out with the bath water on this one. Ok, so you might not have it working seamlessly in TI mode - so just use it in standalone, like you do any other hardware synth... Even if you exclude the TI aspect the Virus TI is still by far the best synth out there (or at least one of if you want to argue 
).
well if you compare a sine wave sub from the arturia minimoog to a sine wave sub from the virus, the virus does sound thinner. now i dont want to get all anal and talk about oscilloscopes etc im just going by what my ears tell me. Yes i can produce some great sounds on the virus, but all im saying is that it seems pretty thin on the bottom end. Both are in the digital domain so anyone talking about legendary analogue vs digital is talking frog pooh. theyre both digital!
and why on earth can i not automate any of the f***ing knobs in usb mode in cubase 5? Jesus f***cking christ. Lord have mercy.
okay, i've debated a long while with myself if i want to comment on this thread so, before you jump on what i'll say, consider that is my personal opinion and not necessarily a company statement.
to me, the quality of a bass sound is defined by the attack phase and the overtone structure of the sound. lets not talk about synth for a second but about an electric bass. when the plectrum hits the string, a bright attack with a lot of overtones which decay fairly fast is issued. if you hit the strings hard enough, you will hear the overtones much longer which help the sound to be audible on smaller speakers. the fundamental notes of a bass are to deep for smaller speaker setups and that's why you need the overtones in order to hear the bass cut through the mix.
now when you take a synth, the envelop attack time is important because that defines the punch a sound has. and of course the filter which allows you to hear more or less "overtones". i always found the waveform itself to be not very important. of course it defines how the bass sounds but the "quality" is of second nature. if you battle with "fat" (whatever this means, since it is so overused): fat goes along with space to breath. as for the bottom end: the waveform doesn't make or break it either.
i believe that the virus features great filters and very fast envelops. i can make any synthetic bass sound i need with it. i cannot imitate another synth in every detail but that's what you get when you don't aim for a clone of a vintage synth but an instrument which attempts to have its own soul.
best, marc
ps. there is a reason why there are virus presets in a state of the art bass library such as spectrasonic's trillian.
I've always felt it to be pretty dodgy to take one of the most legendary intruments in a particular field (be it Virus, Moog, whatever) and make the kind of statement that was initially made in this thread. To speak as if the fault lies in the gear rather than your ability to use it when that piece of gear is known for being one of the most powerful tools available is getting pretty lofty with the judgment of your abilities or knowledge of the instrument!
As per my previous statement, yes it is definitely possible to get the virus to sound like a moog at times.. but not all the time and not on all sounds so if it's not covering enough of that ground for you then the obvious choice is to get the real thing. A voyager & Virus make one of the most lethal combos around.
okay, i've debated a long while with myself if i want to comment on this thread so, before you jump on what i'll say, consider that is my personal opinion and not necessarily a company statement.
to me, the quality of a bass sound is defined by the attack phase and the overtone structure of the sound. lets not talk about synth for a second but about an electric bass. when the plectrum hits the string, a bright attack with a lot of overtones which decay fairly fast is issued. if you hit the strings hard enough, you will hear the overtones much longer which help the sound to be audible on smaller speakers. the fundamental notes of a bass are to deep for smaller speaker setups and that's why you need the overtones in order to hear the bass cut through the mix.
now when you take a synth, the envelop attack time is important because that defines the punch a sound has. and of course the filter which allows you to hear more or less "overtones". i always found the waveform itself to be not very important. of course it defines how the bass sounds but the "quality" is of second nature. if you battle with "fat" (whatever this means, since it is so overused): fat goes along with space to breath. as for the bottom end: the waveform doesn't make or break it either.
i believe that the virus features great filters and very fast envelops. i can make any synthetic bass sound i need with it. i cannot imitate another synth in every detail but that's what you get when you don't aim for a clone of a vintage synth but an instrument which attempts to have its own soul.
best, marc
ps. there is a reason why there are virus presets in a state of the art bass library such as spectrasonic's trillian.
good post marc!
Agreed, this is why the Moog was so popular to some for basslines as it was capable of providing a lot of bass very quickly to get that characteristic punch in the face attack - and the wonderful Moog ladder filter which give great contour to the tones. I also agree that it will never sound exactly like anything or cover the whole sound space of a particular synth - BUT the fact that it will sound 95% like a miniMoog one minute then 95% like a polymoog the next (or at the same time!) is invaluable.
