Hi all,
First post here, new owner, all that.
Buying the Virus was very much an impulse buy. I never had the occasion to play an Access rig before, for various reasons, so I was curious about the TI when I saw it at the store.
To cut a long story short, I went there with a few names in mind that I could fetch, but I sat down playing this thing for two hours, and left the store with it It's one very fine sounding piece of gear... Sound-wise, I was floored.
I have to specify I knew nothing of the Access "environment" as such, meaning Total Integration and co. I was just enamored enough with the sound of the beast to get it right there and then.
So, yeah it sounds the part. Some sounds I don't think I've heard before, and that's saying something.
As for actually working with it in a DAW environment, I don't remember as tedious an experience, and I've been doing that a long time...
As so many others, I've experienced glitches galore, synch loss, the works. Not sure, though, that only the VST is at cause here.
Based from the few tests I've made, I'd rather lean toward the DSPs wreaking havoc when they're overloaded, i.e. when polyphony is exceeded, or many parts playing at the same time.
I did a whole track, entirely with the VST, experienced lots of problems, then switched the project to pure MIDI, replicating the multi part ensemble as set up in the VST as a Multi on the synth, and playing it over MIDI without any VST loaded. It was almost even worse. Timing problems, sound glitches, etc. And that's over the Analog out, not audio over USB.
So I think the internal DSPs are more to blame than anything else.
So, floored as I was with the machine to begin with, disappointment crept it. Sure, it sounds incredible. Is it actually practical to use? I think not, even though there are workarounds to most problems - if you're in a studio environment, you sequence your track and then bounce the parts to audio one by one when the project is done. It's quite tedious, but I don't see any other solution right now.
It seems a lot of things are rather piss-poor in their implementation, I don't mind saying.
I think I'll keep the synth, but do regret its many hindrances so far.
Before the USB gurus wake up, my DAW is perfectly functional, running Cubase 6 64bits in W7, I run tons of very demanding VSTs without a hitch (Omnisphere, etc. Heavy stuff), and I don't have one single problem with it. The crap then lies with the Virus. Not the DAW.
Cheers