Virus TI Midi Editor based on Ctrlr

Hi all

I've been working on a Virus TI Snow Midi Editor based on Ctrlr, an alternative to Virus Control. It's a replica of Virus Control but deals only with midi, no audio, and works with usb port or mdi ports.

[Blockierte Grafik: http://ctrlr.org/wp-content/up…13/04/Virus-TI-Editor.png]

UPDATE April 9, 2013
The new skin is ready.

UPDATE March 14, 2013
I just received en email from Access saying that I can't use their copyrighted graphical elements in my panel, so now I'm forced to remove the download links until I've changed all graphics.
Access give me some time to change the graphics. Download link is up again.

UPDATE February 24, 2013

The panel is finished. The big panel is no longer supported.

There is a version for Virus TI and another one for Virus TI Snow.

Download Page

It's a work in progress, as Ctrlr is being updated very frequently, but right now it's fully functional, at least in stand alone mode. At this point you can request any patch from the Virus, send patches, load and save patches in sysex format, and load patches from libraries and from Rom/Ram banks (that is, a basic librarian function).

The final goal is to use it inside any DAW as a vst, allowing to automate any parameter with total recall and no latency. Unfortunately, Ctrlr only manages right now 256 parameters, and a Virus Ti patch has more than 500.

For non Snow users: The editor work with non Snows Virus TI, as they share the same engine. The only differences are the number of outs and the Rom/Ram banks, as the Snow only have 64 patches per bank.

There is another version of the editor, this time a big panel with all controls on view. This panel need a bit of work in the library aspect, I'm working on this.

Known Issues:

· The Virus TI can read patches from Virus A, B and C that have a different way to organize the sysex data. Right now the editor can open libraries and patches only from Virus TI.
· Some characters from the name of the patch can be problematic when opening a library/patch and will give an error. I'm working on this.
· The name of the patch can be changed but is not saved right now. Working on this. Fixed
There could be some bug, please report it here.

Ctrlr works as Audio Unit on Mac. Never tested as I'm on Win, but give it a try.

You need Ctrlr. Its a vst/au plug-in to control hardware. You can download it here (select the nightly build). It works as a standalone application too. Install it, run it and open the panel you downloaded. Then select the midi in/out ports (Virus TI Synth if you have it connected with usb or the midi ports if you got it that way) and voilà.

It's a little tricky to use it inside the daw. Ctrlr needs to open the midi ports it uses independent of the daw, and if your midi interface doesn't have multi client support, you will have to close those midi ports in Logic. I think OSX drivers in general do have multi client support, not like Windows drivers.

If this is not the problem, enter in edit mode (a pencil icon) and there you can click on "Midi Thru" and "Panel wants VST midi input" to see if now works.

The panel was mainly done for several reasons: Been able to play without latency (good for live use), allow sending patch changes (having the Snow only 4 parts this is a must) and at the same time having almost the same control as with VC without the problems derived with the USB audio.

I forgot to say that for every part you need to open a new Virus panel and select a different part.

You are right. It's simply a program that sends cc and sysex midi messages to the Virus. Tweak a knob in the panel and the Virus responds, and vice versa.

Hi Daniel

There are two Virus Snow panels. You must use Virus Snow VC panel, the one that is like Virus Control. The other one is discontinued. Download the panel from the Ctrlr page, I've uploaded the latest version.

About Ctrlr, again there are two versions, Stable and Nightly. The actual nightly version (rev. 1161) has some bugs and don't send sysex messages correctly. The stable version (1102) should work fine. I'm working with version 1137 and works fine.

This is still a work in progress until Ctrlr became stable. In the near future there will be a vst and a stand alone version of the panel that will work in the same manner as Virus Control. Once I get it working right I'll let you now and post about it here.

Anyway, if you have any other question please ask me.

Cheers,
Hugo

I just updated the panel today. Ctrlr is much more stable and it seems to work fine now.

You will need the latest Ctrlr nightly, here is the link. The panel can be downloaded here

It's updated to Virus OS 5.0.3

The panel is only for one part.

If you are using it in standalone mode, you can use it in two ways:

· To edit sounds, control all parts at once with a single panel. Clicking in the blue box with the part number next to the patch name you can select the part you are working on. Select the part and press send or get. This way you can control all parts with a single panel

· Use a panel for each part. You can open several times the same panel and assign each one of them to a different part.

Inside the daw, you should create a panel for each part to allow automation for each part.

As the panel is for the Snow, there are only four parts available. I will make a panel for non Snow Virus with all 16 parts once I'm sure it's working fine.

Just uploaded a new update (5.3)

There are now two panels, one for Desktop, Keyboard and Polar users and another one for Snow users.

Fixed some issues in the Browser section. Now, the first time a bank is selected in the browser the panel will request the patches of this bank from the Virus, creating an index for each bank, so the next time the same bank is selected there will be no patch dumps.

To request again a bank that has been indexed, click “Sync Banks” button and select the bank.

Make sure the Virus accepts midi dumps (Config -> Midi -> Midi Dump RX -> Receive Dump: Enabled.
If midi dumps aren’t enabled, the whole browser part of the panel and patch send will not work.

Download Link

Hi boreg

Zitat

Trying to sync patches results in error (sorry, didn't take a
screenshot, but it was something about SysEx). I did verify that SysEx
reception is enabled on the Virus.

This is hard to know with this few details. Could you elaborate a bit more about this? Do you mean sending or receiving a patch, requesting a bank or the option to "Sync Banks"? Remember that only patches from Virus TI can be loaded (those with size 524 bytes).

Btw, Virus Snow or Desktop panel?

Zitat

Sometimes, the panel would just stop responding to mouse clicks. Other panels opened in Ctrlr still work.

When there is a bank request I disabled mouse clicks in order to not interrupt the incoming dump. This could be related to the issue above, if there is an error in the dump it could break the mouse click activation.

Zitat

Other times, opening the panel resulted in loads of messages along the
lines of 'Failed to import resource ..., resource already defined'.
After clicking OK a dosen or so times, I had to kill the application
(since I know Virus has over hundred parameters

This is a Ctrlr problem with late revisions. You can do the following to solve it: Click File -> Save As and use the new saved panel (extension .panel). This file don't include the resources, so there will be no more messages.

Anyway if this happens, press Intro key without releasing the key to close the messages until it load all resources (a few seconds).

Many thanks for your kind comments. Still a work in progress, Ctrlr needs to work better as a vst, but the standalone mode
works flawless here.

I just received an email from Access. They don't allow me to use their copyrighted graphics in the panel (something totally fair), so I need to change them before posting a new download link.

Sorry guys.

EDIT: Access give me some time to change the graphics of the panel and in the meantime they allow me to publish a download link. Thanks Marc.