The NI Massive in your Virus

So, I've been using software synths for the last two decades, mainly NI Massive for the last couple of years and just recently turned towards the Virus. In order to learn the synth, and also to have some of my favorite sounds available, I tried to replicate some patches from Massive.

Having the synth and sounds right in front of me, I did that by disecting the original sound and trying to emulate each element of it as close as possible. By doing so, I run into walls but also learn a lot about the Virus and it's capabilities. Alongside, I read a lot in the manuals and online forums, watched Youtube tutorials and used an oscilloscope to have some visual to identify differences and similarities. Needless to say that I not only learned a lot about the Virus but also about Massive and sound design in general.

In this thread, I'd like to show and discuss how techniques known on NI Massive can be replicated on the Virus with very similar or identical results.

Massive offers a dedicated modulation oscillator which allows to modulate the phase (or pitch, etc) of an oscillator at audio rate.

The virus can do the same by using OSC1 as modulator for OSC2:

- Set OSC 1 to sine wave
- Set OSC 2 to wave table (e.g. "Filter Sqr" at 127)
- Set FM Mode to PhaseMod
- Set OSC 1/2 Balance all the way up to only hear OSC 2

Now OSC 1 is acting as a tuned audio range modulation source to modulate the Phase of OSC 2.

Adjust OSC 1 Pitch, OSC 2 Pitch and FM Amount to achieve the desired phase modulation effect.

Massive's 3 OSC always use wavetables but offer different modes (Spectrum, Bend, Formant).

While Spectrum is just a "plain" wavetable oscillator, the other two modes offer quite different results. The Formant mode is described as follows in the manual:

Zitat von NI Massive Manual

When Formant mode is chosen, Intensity controls the additional transposition of waveform formants. In practice this sounds a bit like the effect achieved with two oscillators where the master oscillator synchronizes the slave oscillator’s phase and the Intensity control then changes the transposition of the slave oscillator. Try modulating the Intensity control with one of MASSIVE’s modulation sources: this will change the sound’s formant while the pitch still remains stable, simulating the sound of morphing vowels.

Modulating Wt-Position and Intensity with an LFO yields interesting aspects from rhythmic motion to tortured screams (I liked to use it for the latter).

The Virus acheives exactly the same with the Grain Simple oscillator mode!

In this mode, the Virus Formant-Shift control has the same impact as Massive's Intensity control but with a larger range.

- Set OSC 1 to Grain Simple (e.g. "Pling Saw" at 25)
- Set Formant Shift to around 25
- Set Interpolation to 29 (to have a little less bleeding of the wave forms in the table)
- Set LFO 2 Shape to saw
- Set LFO 2 Modulation Shape 1+2 to 14.1%

Now the wavetable index moves between from Square to Saw and jumps back. Nothing really new so far.

Let's add some movement to the Formant:

- Set LFO 2 Assign to OSC 1 F-Shift
- Set LFO 2 Assign amount to 7.8%

Adjust LFO 2 rate to a rather high speed (or lock with clock to 1/8). Now there's a nice base for an aggressive lead in the style of Skrillex or Knife Party.

Now add some modulation fun

- Set LFO 1 to triangle
- Set LFO 1 Assign to OSC 1 F-Shift
- Set LFO 1 Assign amount to -14.1%

Adjust LFO 1 to a rather slow rate to achieve additional motion in the growl.

Way cool! Thanks to your screenshots, I learned how to make good use of rind modulation...

First I recreated the sound in the screenshots and did some experimentation, then I created two other patches from the above mentioned Grain Simple setting.

File with patches attached. Enjoy!