Posts by noct

Yes, it is possible to scrape this data from the .mid files; I figured out how to scrape the names the day you asked for a list of names, and after you mentioned categories, it took about 30 minutes to determine where in the files the categories are. I'm planning on spending some time over the holidays making a tool to scrape at the least the names and categories, and maybe more stuff if I don't get bored; it should be an easy project to start learning a new language with, and I was looking for such a project.

The factory .mid files are, I think, in your documents section under Access Music, most likely. Also, there are like 70 .mid files of patches on the support section of Access' website.

Probably Access doesn't have such a spreadsheet; I can't imagine them refusing that kind of information without a good reason, it's not like you're asking how the internals of the synth work. They probably just get x patches from their designers and throw them on the synth.
I feel your pain though; going through so many patches to get the names and categories manually would be horrible. It'd probably be a lot easier to use some sort of program that ripped this data from the files the patches are stored in. I think somebody in this thread was working on that kinda thing...

Anyhow, I like the site, it's minimalistic and easy to navigate. I'd like to make a few proposals though. I think it would make sense to allow displaying 128 or all patches per page, of a bank. Perhaps options for 32, 64 or 128 would make sense as well.
Another thought - since most patches won't have descriptions, but they should all have the other fields, perhaps the description could be the rightmost column? Also, an option to hide the description and display, effectively, a second page's worth of data to the side of what is currently displayed might be nice, as the description field takes up enough space that on a widescreen monitor you could really fit a lot more stuff on the screen without that field.
Also, have you thought about adding the ability to search every user's entries rather than just the currently selected? With this many patches, it seems a given user is unlikely to setup descriptions for each one, but if the site had many users, there would probably be descriptions for most patches.

For what it's worth, I bought mine from Access about a year ago, and its RAM banks were filled with patches. It's a TI2.

My guess is that the RAM patches probably differ from TI2 to TI2, based on which patches were new when that TI2 was created, but each TI2 probably has the same patches in the ROM.
Unless Access confirms that the TI2 ROM patches are all the same, though, we really don't know, and if they aren't, that may cause a bit of an issue for your website.
Also, basing your patch locations on where in the Virus TI2's ROM patches are located means your site would only be of use to TI2 users. Of course, as a TI2 user, that might not be a problem to you.

I think you could avoid these issues, though, by ignoring where each patch is located on a given Virus.
Instead, focus on where each patch is located within the files available for download on Access' website.
That way, each patch should be accessible in the same way for each user, regardless of Virus model or anything else.
If you decide you want to go that route, I may be able to help you, though I haven't tested my program thoroughly, so I'm not sure if all the files will follow the same formatting as those I've tried thus far.

Also, nms' suggestion is good for general use. I'm not sure if it would negate your need for your website, I guess that depends on if you want to do more than just have your patches organized/searchable.

It seems like my program might actually be useful, then. Would the patches from e.g. RAM Backup 102005 A.mid, RAM Backup 102005 B.mid, RAM Backup 102005 C.mid and RAM Backup 102005 D.mid be what you are looking for? If not, can you tell me which files would contain these patches and where I can get them? Then just let me know how you want the lists formatted, and how to get this to you, and I may be able to get you this stuff.

... I wish I'd seen your response before I went and wrote a program to rip that data out of the patch files. Oh well...

flabberbob's suggestion regarding Online Rendering is likely the key to your problem; I had the same issue (took me forever to figure that one out). When I did offline rendering, I ended up with extremely quiet tracks and when I boosted the volume, it sounded, as you said, like aliens. Switched it to Online Rendering, and everything was great.

What I do, is create a new project, add the Virus as a virtual instrument.
After adding it, rightclick in the section of the Fx window left of the Virus Control, and select Build 16 channels of MIDI.
Then, I add some MIDI to the track labeled Virus TI MIDI 1; I Insert a midi track there, then right click on it and use the built in midi editor.
After that, I make sure I'm at the start of the track and hit play. There should be sound at that point.
If there is sound, rendering should work. So I select the render option, and in that menu, like flabberbob said, make sure it uses Online Rendering instead of using Offline Rendering or Full Speed Rendering or anything like that.

Here's a thread where I helped another Reaper user get their Virus working, maybe it will help you; though it is for a desktop rather than a keyboard. Let me know how it works out for you.
http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=88721

flabberbob - Thanks for explaining what filter saturation is supposed to be; I actually never encountered it before and had wondered if it was something Access thought up. Also, your description of the behavior of filter saturation should be helpful, so thank you for that. I tried what you were saying with the long attack time a little, and I think that will be a good way to get some idea how to use the different saturation types. I'll have to give the velocity-based method later too.

Ionis - Thanks for that tip, I like the idea.

Hey all, got some questions about filter saturation.
I've been playing around with it lately, but I haven't quite gotten a handle on it yet.
I don't really know much about filter saturation other than that it can produce some extreme levels of distortion; most of the time the effect seems to be unnoticeable or else too destructive to be usable. It also seems in many cases to drastically reduce the volume of the sound, though I suppose that could be dealt with by raising the patch volume.

For filter saturation in general, besides oscillator volume/saturation, is it affected by anything else? For instance, do cutoff or resonance or the filter routing have any impact on the saturation?
Which part of the sound is saturation applied to? Is it applied to the entire sound evenly, or for instance does it peak near the cutoff level or anything like that?
Is filter saturation actually tied to filter 1, or is it just an effect applied between the two filters?

Can anybody explain, technically or otherwise, what the result of saturation is for the different saturation types?

I'd also be interested in hearing any tips on getting useful or interesting results out of filter saturation.

Ok, that answers my questions - thank you.

Maybe I wasn't clear what I was getting at, or maybe I'm misunderstanding this.

Let's assume for simplicity that the LFO is in envelope mode so it only triggers once.
A normal saw wave has its high point at the beginning of its cycle. So if it is modifying the pitch, the pitch will be higher than the base pitch when the key is first pressed, and eventually it will decrease to match the base pitch.
Using negative modulation on a normal saw wave produces the opposite effect - the pitch will be lower than the base pitch when the key is first pressed, and eventually it will increase to match the base pitch.
My thought was that an actual reversed saw wave would start at the base pitch and increase to where the pitch began with the normal saw wave.

So if you wanted to achieve the last effect described, you'd actually have to modify e.g. the oscillator's pitch in addition to setting the LFO to negative modulation.
At least, that's what I'm thinking; maybe I misunderstood this or what was being requested.

That would be similar, but not exactly the same, would it? Since you'd have to have whatever was being modulated set where it would have peaked from the modulation of the normal saw wave, I'm assuming. So it'd get the job done, but could require changing a bunch of parameters?

I hope the OP has found a solution by now; it's been like a year and a half since they started the thread.

Yes, thus far I haven't actually run into that situation; maybe one day it will be an issue - I suppose another solution then would be to get multiple Viruses... (if my wallet had eyes, it'd be glaring at me for that comment). To be honest, I'm still more in the "making weird noises" phase with the Virus, and just throwing a few sounds on tracks at my friend's request. Though that has started pulling me towards maybe actually doing something musical with the Virus, hence some of these thoughts.

A fairly expensive lunch, but filling. Though I meant more like, if there were patch changes throughout a track; if that doesn't happen, then you're right, that would work perfectly.
So far, I don't really see that being an issue, as my friend is using a different track for each sound he wants. Probably the person most likely to have patch changes in the middle of a track would be me, actually; in which case I can't really complain about having to change patches, since it would be my own fault.

I'll give that another try, but it didn't *sound* like I had the correct wave when I tried that earlier. Perhaps I should start a new, simple sound and try and determine this there, and then use those results.

That is true; I meant if I were lazy and wanted the MIDI to handle changing the track for me. I guess there's no such thing as a free lunch; either I have to tell the MIDI what patches to change to, or I'll have to manually change the patches. Not really that big an issue, and maybe I can come up with a way around it later on; I think Reaper is supposed to be somewhat programmable, so perhaps I can find a way to provide some degree of automation for this.

Thanks for all your help, nms.

Don't know if this will help, but I had a similar issue after fiddling around attaching and detaching USB devices to my computer a week or two ago, and switching the Virus to a different USB port solved the issue.

I'm not really sure how else to name this, but I'll start off describing the situation that made me think of this:

I was editing a sound, and had an oscillator set to a specific spectral wave I liked. I then decided that I wanted to have the oscillator start with a base sine wave, and have a soft knob change the wave to the spectral wave I liked, when twisted to max. So the knob at min would be a sine wave, and knob at max would be that particular spectral wave.

Unfortunately, while trying to set the amount to have the mod matrix change this, I realized that all I have are what seem to be arbitrary numbers there. That is, I can have the mod matrix change from -64 - +63, but what does that mean when you are changing a field that only has 64 options? So it's rather difficult to determine the mod matrix amount I need.

So, here's my request. I'd like each modulator, whether a control in the mod matrix, or an LFO or whatnot, to display, besides the numbers currently displayed, a derived value showing how much it will change whatever destination is being edited. So in the above example, I'd like to see:

Controller 13 +37 (+24) Osc1 Wave Select.
In that case, I would know that the actual mod matrix amount is +37, but that it should increase Osc1 Wave Select by at most 24 waves.

Likewise, an LFO could, e.g. for pitch, display:
Osc1 Pitch
+20.3% (+9)
Indicating that it would change the pitch by 9 half steps.

Admittedly, some such derived values might be more useful than others, but I could see this potentially being helpful, such as in the first example.
Than again, I'm not the most experienced Virus user, so maybe I'm approaching things the wrong way here, and approaching things the right way would negate the need for such a feature.

Any thoughts? Also, if somebody just happens to know what mod matrix amount I'd have to use to change wave select from sine to wave 24, please let me know; I gave up trying to determine that for the night after like an hour.
noct