Beiträge von maxim_porges

Have you tried simply using the USB ports at the back and seeing if that helps with latency? Something else you can do to see if a bus is involved is to open System Profiler and look at the USB section. It will show you a tree structure for your USB devices and indicate any hubs in the hierarchy.

I'm in the same boat as you. I remember reading the reviews on the Virus series in Sound On Sound years ago, and lusting after the Indigo and then the TI series when it came out. Last year I turned 30, and bought myself a used TI off of eBay as a birthday present. It really is the best instrument I have ever owned - it sounds amazing, it *just works* beautifully with Logic (no messing around with tons of cables or latency or MIDI issues), and the interface on both the hardware and software is stunning.

There's obviously some emotion on this thread, but I for one want to thank Access's team for providing the beta 64-bit support for OS X 10.6.

The point here is that Apple released Snow Leopard a month ahead of schedule, which caught a lot of software developers off guard. For Access to release beta support in a little over a week, you have to give them some credit. I'm lucky enough to have a work computer running Snow Leopard and a personal computer that I don't need to upgrade yet, but not everybody is in that boat. My guess would be Access is working hard on providing 64-bit support for Windows as well, and as soon as they are happy with the quality you guys will see it released.

For all the guys using Windows and complaining - believe me that I feel your pain, since most software companies that support both platforms release Windows versions of their software ahead of the Mac versions. Sure, it would be nice for everybody to get the shiny new drivers at the same time, but since I'm a software engineer at my day job I know that the reality is you only have so many engineers and so much time in the day to get things done. On top of that, Microsoft and Apple provide vastly different architectures for their OSes, so I can only imagine how hard it is to provide feature parity across both platforms and coordinate release schedules.

In the future, if the Access team gets support working in one platform and not the other I hope they will continue to release whatever they have working regardless of which platform gets it first. At least that way, somebody is able to benefit as soon as the software is working.

Hi,

I know from reading the manual that I should connect my Virus TI directly to my computer's built-in USB ports, but I am wondering if there is an actual technical limitation that prevents USB hubs from working, or if this is just a "best practice" to help users from seeing any issues and as a result Virus Control enforces that the connection is through a built-in port.

Specifically, I am using a late 2008 MacBook Pro with a PCI Express slot. This laptop only has two built-in USB ports. I bought a PCI Express expansion card that gives me an additional four USB ports, and I can easily use these additional ports for less demanding peripherals such as a USB mouse (which is really what I bought it for). However, I was hoping that I would be able to use the Virus TI on this hub if I wanted to. Sadly, Virus Control doesn't like it when I connect the TI via the hub, saying that the "audio driver failed to load" when I open up the Virus Control plugin in Logic.

So, my questions are these.

1) Since a PCI Express card slot is so fast and gives me direct connectivity to my computer's bus (much like a PCI expansion card on a tower's motherboard would do), what's the real technical difference between using a built-in USB port and using USB ports on a PCI Express expansion card?

2) Does Virus Control actually perform explicit checks to see if the Virus is connected to a USB hub and then prevent the device from working, or is the driver actually failing due to a real connectivity issue? My guess is that the USB bus check is explicit, since if I connect my Virus via the PCI Express card, it shows up as an audio interface as normal everywhere except for Virus Control (i.e. in the Sound preference pane). Also, Virus Control Center did not have any issues connecting to it via the PCI Express bus.

If a USB bus connection is checked for programmatically in the software and forced to fail, I would like to request that a feature be added to Virus Control allowing advanced users to turn off this check at their own risk. Each system is unique, so if I have a system that uses expansion cards but is using a hub fast enough to support the Virus being connected to it, I feel like I should be allowed to do so. Each user can then experiment with their system and fall back to built-in USB ports if they have problems. I'd really like to have an engineer from Access weigh in on this issue if possible.

Thanks as always for the attention to the forums and for making such a great instrument; I have to admit that the Virus is the best piece of kit I have ever purchased and I am always babbling about it to my friends! I'm also looking forward to the support for Snow Leopard, with which I see you guys are making great progress.

Cheers,

- max

Never mind, I figured this out by myself.

Since the TI shows up as a software instrument in Logic, there's no need to also have it set up as the audio input unless I want to use the TI's inputs. I set up my project so that the 828 is the main audio input, and I can still hear everything from both the TI and the instruments connected to the 828.

I am using a Mac with Logic Express, and I have both a MOTU 828 mkII and a Virus TI Polar. I am getting my studio set up, and what I'd like to do is the following:

1) Have the Virus TI plugged in and available as an audio device so I can make use of the zero-latency monitoring features.
2) Have the 828 plugged in at the same time for incorporating my other instruments in to the mix.

Since Logic Express only supports a single audio device, I found a tutorial for setting up an aggregate device in Audio MIDI Setup (http://www.apple.com/pro/techniques/aggregateaudio/). What you can do is create an aggregate device, and then add multiple connected devices to the list. Logic will then treat all the devices as one. However, when I pull up the list for the available devices to put in to the aggregation, only the 828 shows up - the Virus TI does not. The Virus TI shows up fine everywhere else. I'm guessing that the Virus cannot be used as an aggregate device, but I wanted to check to make sure.

I'm also guessing that if I can't get this to work, the next best thing would be to do without the zero-latency monitoring and instead just run the the Virus TI through the 828, and use the 828 as my sole audio device. Another potential option might be to mix down the 828 in to a stereo pair, and run it through the Virus via the SPDIF input. Does anybody have any suggestions for the best way to set this up?

Thanks,

- max