Virus Darkstar - connecting to Reaper / Spark drum machine

Are you using the TI plugin or good old MIDI?
The advice that is good in any case is to:

• Make sure tempo data is being sent to the tracks
• Virus MIDI notes should be quantized and snap to bars since ARPs in the Virus relate to the note-on and not bar/beat grid. Without quantization and snapping you will hear an apparent rhythmic phase difference,

Regarding everything else, it depends on how you hook up the Virus.

Hope this gives you a good start.

One important thing regarding using the Virus Control Plugin which is important specifically when comes to ARPs, is to leave 1 or 2 bars of silence at the beginning of the project, or else the ARP will sound like you woke it up in the middle of the night - meaning it will take time for it to understand what's going on and where to fit in (this will happen also when you play the project from somewhere in the middle, but since you don't do your final mixdown from the middle of the project it can be tolerated).

If under the hiss it plays without gaps, go to the synth itself and on the config menu reduce the INPUT THRU to 0. If it stutters and crackles you probably have a USB throughput problem.

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