Cubase Studio4 + Virus Control; 6 parts and lots of missing notes... why. Help?

    Hi All


    I've recently upgraded to OS3 on the Virus TI, and am using Snow Leopard, with Cubase Studio 4. I am not an accomplished musician, but love to dabble on my synths and create some tunes.


    However, I have tried to emulate an old 80's chillout tune I was trying to remember, and in doing so have created a Cubase score, with the Virus connected via Virus Control and have only used 6 parts on the Virus.


    When I play the parts back through the TI (using the soundcard in the TI via direct USB connection to the Macbook) I get lots of audio blips and ticks, as well as loads of missing parts on a few of the tracks.


    I was under the impression that the TI could handle 16 parts, and I have only used 6, so why am I getting this significant drop off in performance...?

    _____________
    John
    Virus TI Keyboard
    Logic Pro x
    Mac OSX Yosemite

    I've got a quick layman's answer for you, and possibly someone smarter than myself can chime in with more detail later.


    The basic concept is that the Virus can indeed run 16 parts, but it is limited in the amount of processing power it can provide to drive each of those parts. Each part can consist of one or multiple oscillators, filters, and other effects, and the more complicated the part, the more processing resources you are taking away from the Virus until it has no cpu power left to drive your remaining parts.


    In practice, the Virus will drop voices when it runs out of processing power. I believe I read somewhere (though I can't find it now) that it makes an attempt to drop the most inaudible or unimportant voices first, but in practice I have had critical voices drop out as well, indicating it might not always be able to achieve this goal.


    Check out page 41 and 42 of the Quick Start manual for more info on voices, polyphony, and how to maximize your polyphony. Need a way around this problem entirely, or want to be guaranteed to hear every voice of every part? You should be able to achieve this by bouncing each part out into a wave file while soloed.

    No worries; I forgot to mention the part where I too felt heartbroken to realize my Virus wasn't infinitely powerful ;D


    By the way, while troubleshooting some other problems today, I stumbled upon a feature to set a part's priority as high or low. In Virus Control, right click the 'D' button next to each part button and it will show you a channel list, but at the bottom of the list is an option for high or low priority.


    Regards!