Odd distortion on just one patch?

    Hey, folks,


    I was working on some projects last night, and I was using a patch (Vanilla PD - don't remember where it came from). It's an ambient-type pad. So, anyways, as I'm listening to playback, at a reasonable volume, I'm hearing this occasional sound, sort of a harsh distortion, just a bit, almost like the speaker's just starting to overload. So, of course, I'm freaking out, because I'm playing it through my new QSC 8.2's, which shouldn't be doing that at such a low volume.


    So, curious, I tried some other similar patches, even playing them rather loudly, and I didn't hear any distortion. I decided to turn off the speakers, and listen right out of the TI's headphone jack, and, sure enough, on that patch, I was getting this strange distortion at times, regardless of the volume. It doesn't sound like something that the patch author intended.


    Now, I'm still more of a preset guy than a patch designer, so I didn't really dig around, much, but is it possible there's some particular thing in that particular patch that is pushing signals past the limits, before they're even making it out of the synth? Could this be something wrong with the Virus (I've had it about two years, no problems, bought it new)? I'm truly baffled by this. I was able to use another patch, but, still, this is concerning.

    Didn't realize Vanilla PD was probably not a stock patch. My Virus is not set up for use at this time to check anyway.

    If its just that one patch then there's probably nothing wrong with your Virus. :)

    Although you mainly rely on preset patches, since this might be a custom patch that I won't have, you will have to bite the bullet and check parameters to see if you can find the culprit.

    Things I would check are Filter Saturation, Effects Distortion, Osc FM, Mod Matrix curiosities, and LFO assignments, etc.

    I have had similar experiences and sometimes had to dig long and deep to find something frustratingly odd that I didn't like about a patch but its a lot of fun when you finally find the little bugger! And you will learn a lot about patch designing on the Virus in the meantime. :)

    Cheers!

    Might be silly question, but does the patch also distort on other speakers or headphones?


    Also worth checking the EQ settings of that patch. I've run into some third party patches that were already pretty loud and had the EQ cranked (which sounded good and mighty) but had the Virus distorting internally on a few selected notes. Turning back the EQ solved that problem

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    I'm glad I came across these descriptions. I had a Virus C for years, and now I'm in the TI2 world. On the comment on oliAtBass. I also ran in to the same situation with a couple of costumed patches. The strange thing was that the bloated cracking sound was absent on the direct headphone output of the Polar. On occasion I also managed get rid of the sound problem by assigning the patch to a different physical output. which left me clueless . After resetting the unit and checking only the factory patches I've failed to reproduce the problem.