Beiträge von flabberbob

First of all, it looks like you can emulate the minimoog/arp2600 square wave by superimposing a virus square wave over a virus triangle wave - just put one in each oscillator and mix (or maybe it is even possible to dial a "classic" oscillator between square and triangle). You might need to sync them and adjust the relative phase to get it perfect.

Another thing i've found is that the analog/vintage modelling available in the charachter FX "ruins" the waveform well enough to produce a vintage sound. The question is, where is the character placed in the routing scheme of the virus. If it was placed even before the filters it would have had the desired effect. I hope that at least it is not placed after non-linear channel effects, such as distortion.

Do these software suits support virtual instruments?

If not then I guess you must be using the virus as a soundcard. Make the Virus "audio in" the default recording source of Windows, start a recording program such as Windows' sound recorder, play some notes on your Virus, and see what it captures.

This explanation refers the VST plugin. If you need it explained for the panel menu/knobs, just say so, but it might take time...

"Turning off" LFOs - as said above, make sure all assigned levels are 0 (sometimes middle, sometimes leftmost - be aware), make sure there are no matrix routings from the uneeded LFO.

"Turning off" oscillators - The sub-oscillator actually has an off state... OSC3 is turned off by pushing its slider all the way to the left. Regarding the 2 main oscillators you can allow only one of the two by pushing the oscillator mix slider to either one of its extremes. No oscillators at all? push the oscillator volume/saturation slider all the way to the left. There is also a secret weapon revealed in the boot camp videos that may seem redundant but could be useful sometimes: a square wave in 99% PWM is a silent oscillator...

All effects have either an off option or an amount knob which can be set to 0.

Hope this helps.

It is possible to perform automation with the Virus VST, but it is not MIDI automation, but VST parameter automation. You need to choose the filter cuttoff of the correct channel from the list of VST parameters exported by the Virus VST, and assign values to it in an automation track.

In VST mode, the Virus will not output any MIDI data. The data of the knobs you turn goes directly to the VST. BUT you can switch the physical Virus unit to remote mode ([shift] + Remote buttons) which will send knob data (if defined it in the layout) to the USB MIDI out of the virus, to be intercepted by your DAW, and sent to any destination you wish, including back to the Virus itself, passing through the VST, affecting MIDI controller routings in the matrix, not the cutoff or any other internal parametr directly.

Hope this helps.

You can create a remote setup assigning any knob to any MIDI controller, and while still controlling the Virus from the VST window, access the the remote mode from the physical Virus itself ([shift]+Remote buttons). Now, when you turn a knob the Virus MIDI out will send the adequate MIDI message as per your remote definition. This will be intercepted by your host and sent back to the VST hopefully manipulating some matrix routing you have laid beforehand.

I wonder how it works in standalone mode - is it possible to feed the virus back with its own remote output?

And another question/request - is it possible to assign a static MIDI message to some of the buttons (of course, excluding those that are needed to return back from remote mode or turn off the Virus), messages such as "all notes off", setting something to an arbitrary value, or playing a note that is associated with a function of the host?

First of all, I'm guessing that you meant that the host block/buffer size is 128 samples. The sample rate should be one of the standard 44.1kHz, 48kHz, etc.
Look for Music Creator's VST configuration. There are usually several options you can play with is order to resolve VST compatibility issues.
Good luck

In my eyes (or ears) the saturation is just a way to emulate the behavior of true analog synths when they encounter "over driven" sounds, since the Virus has lots of spare bus overhead to let you add more and more dBs without resulting in distortion (I mean internally - the DAC or your DAW may still produce distortion for output over 0dB).

Now, the actual change or distortion of the original OSC sound depends on the printed circuit design, and exactly how the transistors interact in their saturaion and cutoff zones, which may change even from batch to batch of the same model... But I guess this is why more then one saturation option is provided (except for the analog 1 to 4 pole moog model, for which I guess the saturation is modeled as well...?). From my experience, the virus's saturation decision algorithm is very simple - once the sound is over a certain threshold, the chosen effect is applied in a level that is proportional to how louder the sound is from the saturaion threshold (probably derived from some RMS calculation of blocks of sound data).

You can hear it come into action in either of the following ways:

• Use a very very long attack time so you can clearly hear when the saturation kicks in.
• Make the OSC velocity very influenced by the key velocity (if you tend to strike the keys forcefully, make it inverse!) and play notes in different velocities. With the right patch, you will notice that sometimes, the sound is not saturated all the time.

The weird thing is that some of the saturaion effects are purely digital, such as bit reduction, which has nothing to do with analog modelling, but, hey, that's what's so good about DSP based synths, isn't it? Once you add a "processing block", why not exploit it to its fullest?

Regarding the interaction with the filter, it depends on the routing scheme. The saturation block will take the input from its left and send output to the right. Whatever filter you have to its left will have its output saturated and then filtered by whatever filter there is to its right. Since many of the saturation effects are types of distortion, which create new sub-harmonies from existing ones, changes in resonance, especially when self oscillating, will have a dramatic effect on the outcome.

On the other hand, there are some effects such as low pass, that reduce the velocity of the sound. I guess they can be used as some kind of compressor, affecting the sound dynamics.

Hope this helped.

Hello people,
While using the VST plugin, I was trying to create a simple bass drum by sweeping a sine using LFO1 as saw envelope. Besides keeping the OSC initial phase static and the punch at maximum, I usually also leave it to be key following so that I can get different kick sounds to match different productions using the same patch.
I was very pleased with the sound BUT the problem was that when I added more patches in other channels, the bass drum sound started to mutate on its own, in to some kind of cowbell... I isolated it to its own USB output and put it through a scope and what I found out was that when I muted (using the 'M' channel button) all the other channels in the VST window, the bass drum GRADUALLY mutated into the sweep pattern we all know of a sine wave getting wider and wider, and un-muting just one channel was enough to make it gradually change for the worse. It looks like the LFO is stuck on a value at a random place for some time. Un-muting other channels just changed the place where it was stuck.
I tried both OSCs and different rates and contours, tried to control it through LFO1's first 2 virtual knobs on the left, and through a matrix routing and I get the same behavior. this happened in both 4.1.0 and 4.5.3.

I have a second question, relating to the ARP problems other people mentioned. In addition to what they said, it seemd like the ARP is playing to the wrong tempo (which makes is go in and out of sync in a Steve Reich Piano Phase kind of way...). Is there any way to see what tempo the virus THINKS it is getting from the DAW, besides the LED (which is always off-beat because of the internal delays).

Thanks.
I like the site's clean design.

Zitat von needaname

You totally helped me!

I'm glad to hear that! BTW, what happened to those two patches you shared in the "Sound design" thread? They are not accessible from the provided links

Are you planning to use the VST driver? In this case there is no need to prepare a MIDI configuration for it, as the VST engine handles all the routing from the appropriate track(s).

If not, then you should detach the USB plug and let the Virus work as standalone with input from your soundcard MIDI out, and configure the MIDI out for your soundcard.

The other thing is that a hard drive is a bad neighbour, when placed on the same hub as you are... It has huge bursts of information enough to put sticks in the wheels of any other demanding/real-time device.

A good differential diagnosis would be to connect monitors to the audio outs, direct the current patch to go through them, play the the patch from Ableton and listen for any crackle and pops.

Good luck.

Let me refer you to chapter 17 of the Virus B's OS4 manual. You can sysex dump banks A and B or single patches, capture them as a MIDI file in your sequencer, and hopefully they will be recognized when you save and add the file to your Virus TI patch library.

Try to "program" a sound that uses the input, e.g. a vocoder patch with no actual processing (all effects are off). Play something to the soundcard output and try to redirect the patch output to USB1, 2 and 3 (common tab) just to see that it's working. Oh, maybe Cubase doesn't let you use the 3-output feature... can't recall right now. But, anyway, try to record the output now that you have a patch programmed.

Hope it helps, vague as it may be...