Live vs. Tracked in Cubase Sonic Variation

  • Greetings. I am having a bit of trouble from a sound design perspective with my TI2 on v5.1.1.0 and Cubase 8.5 Pro, Windows 10 Intel i7 PC, utilizing the Virus ASIO drivers and others. When I play in Live w/ my Virus, the sound is smoother with less harsh mids and highs. When I sequence and play-back without Live mode enabled, I get rigid transients and harsh tone. This variation in tone simply will not match my workflow. I have linked some samples at the bottom of this post.


    This patch contains a simple Sine 1st oscillator and a harmonic 2nd oscillator. Unison at 5 voices, ring mod at max. Slight filter and amp attack, with short decay. Filter is LP and BS with Light saturation. No LFO's are synced. Matrix is off. Arp is off. Analog boost, Soft Bounce, Phaser, Vowel, and EQ are enabled. Reverb is Small Room. Parameters being sent to USB 1, no effects.


    I have tried changing drivers, adjusting sample rate and clock source, changing parameters, disabling things in my signal chain, crying, screaming, and drinking rum. Again, please listen to the demos below and help me figure out what's going on! It seems Cubase and TI2 are not communicating effectively, and I'm not sure who is to blame.


    soundcloud.com/trentonabbott/tilive01/s-8Zm7H Live Mode, smoothed out.https://soundcloud.com/trentonabbott/tilive01/s-8Zm7H


    soundcloud.com/trentonabbott/tinonlive01/s-eNZmd Sequenced without Live mode enabled, gritty and dissimilar tone, almost like different patch parameters entirely.



    Thanks for your help


    -Trenton
    https://soundcloud.com/trentonabbott/tilive01/s-8Zm7H

  • The only difference is just the "Live" button? I suspect that the "smoother" sound of the live mode is them approximating a lot of the sound so that you get better payback performance. So I would expect the harsher sound is closer to the "actual" sound, as if the Virus were played standalone into a mixer. BUT that's just a guess. I barely ever use TI, I track standalone usually.

  • The only difference is just the "Live" button? I suspect that the "smoother" sound of the live mode is them approximating a lot of the sound so that you get better payback performance. So I would expect the harsher sound is closer to the "actual" sound, as if the Virus were played standalone into a mixer. BUT that's just a guess. I barely ever use TI, I track standalone usually.


    no, all the LIve button does is trade smaller latency with note timing accuracy. the sound does not change at all.

  • no, all the LIve button does is trade smaller latency with note timing accuracy. the sound does not change at all.


    I would be happy to share this patch with you, if you could do some testing and get back to me on it. I will continue to test and see if there's a workaround.

  • I'm new to the Virus, so bear with me if I'm completely wrong but.... it sounds to me as if Common > Initial Phase is set differently for the two takes: The Live take sounds as if Initial Phase is Off, and the other take as if it is set to some value.

    Bass Player and Synthesist.
    Virus TI2 Darkstar | Virus TI2 Desktop | Sub 37 | Voyager RME | Machinedrum | Analog Four | Digitone | MPC Live | NI Maschine+
    Mac OS 13.5.1 (Ventura) | Cubase Pro 11.0 | Ableton Live 9.6 | Logic 10.4 | MainStage 3.4 | NI Komplete Ultimate 13 | RME Fireface UFX+

  • I'm new to the Virus, so bear with me if I'm completely wrong but.... it sounds to me as if Common > Initial Phase is set differently for the two takes: The Live take sounds as if Initial Phase is Off, and the other take as if it is set to some value.


    Changing phase from 127 to Off seems to have fixed it! Thanks a million. /thread

  • Changing phase from 127 to Off seems to have fixed it! Thanks a million. /thread


    You're welcome. Glad I wasn't totally wrong and able to help :)

    Bass Player and Synthesist.
    Virus TI2 Darkstar | Virus TI2 Desktop | Sub 37 | Voyager RME | Machinedrum | Analog Four | Digitone | MPC Live | NI Maschine+
    Mac OS 13.5.1 (Ventura) | Cubase Pro 11.0 | Ableton Live 9.6 | Logic 10.4 | MainStage 3.4 | NI Komplete Ultimate 13 | RME Fireface UFX+

  • If it only happens once, I generally assume to have changed the value without wanting to.... happened to me a couple of times alredy when I was busy changing parameters using the hardware and accessing the secondary function of an encoder by pressing shift at the wrong moment. Or maybe some other MIDI controller sent events that control Initial Phase on the Virus.... (I had something similar happening where the arp rate of the Sub 37 changed the pan/spread on the Virus... confused the hell outta me!)


    If the phenomenon happens again, repeatably, you'll probably find out why.

    Bass Player and Synthesist.
    Virus TI2 Darkstar | Virus TI2 Desktop | Sub 37 | Voyager RME | Machinedrum | Analog Four | Digitone | MPC Live | NI Maschine+
    Mac OS 13.5.1 (Ventura) | Cubase Pro 11.0 | Ableton Live 9.6 | Logic 10.4 | MainStage 3.4 | NI Komplete Ultimate 13 | RME Fireface UFX+