Supposedly the virus TI2 can have up to 110 voices of polyphony. This is of course subject to the complexity of the patches used. It's not like I or anyone else will actually need all of these voices simultaneously but I wanted to see if the limit is really up there - maybe as a sort of test for the DSP chips and the general well-being of my synth!
I did carry out the test - all 16 channels firing away a 6 chord simultaneously (so 16x6=96) using the init patch with no modifications whatsoever. Sure interesting enough, channels 1-4 produced 6 voices each while channel 5 and 6 barely produced 2 voices. Channels 7-12 produced no sound. Total voices = 4x6+2x2=28.
Switching all 16 channels to osc balance all the way to play only osc1 produced no change, which verified my understanding that the virus has always both osc 1&2 on - it's just a volume fader.
Switching now OSC1 to a sine wave ,naturally a simpler wave, produced again no change. I guess the reason is that it uses the same amount of memory as the init saw.
Switching to a WT and turning off the LFOs, again same result.
Carrying out the test live (no VC) I managed to have 6 non-init patches running at the same time, using 10 arpeggiated voices. If I remember correctly 4 patches had complexity 1/5 and the other 2 3/5, which I guess is similar to the 28 init voices as above. One of the 3/5 patches had arp mode=chord.
From the manual: Patches using e.g. 1 or 2 simple oscillators, one or two mod routings and one or two effects can achieve upwards of around 64 voices. With the very simplest of patches you can achieve far more than this - for example, please check out ROM B-124 ‘Tutorial 5’, a nice, warm PWM pad with Delay and Chorus, capable of being played with more than 100 simultaneous voices.
I loaded this preset, and the results were about the same, only change is that channels 5+ would randomly play either the full 6 chord, a single note or nothing at all. Definitely an increase -lets say 40 best case- but no way "more than 100". Even if we decide that each OSC is a voice, then here all voices are at the very best 80.
Now the question - where are these 110 voices? Is there something wrong with my unit? I know that one dsp chip takes over even channels (2,4,6 etc) and the other dsp the odd channels (1,3,5 etc) so I know both dsps have the same power. Can anyone verify or comment?