Beiträge von ismism

I have a working set of patches from a friend who's working on a set that I would like to load, but I cannot figure out how to do it. The file has a .syx extension, so I assume it's a sysex file. I copied it to /Library/Application Support/Access Music/Virus TI/Patches (I'm on a Mac, obviously) but it doesn't appear anywhere either in Virus Control Center or in the VST browser within Ableton Live. Is this a file from a sysex editor or something? I'm wondering if it's a file from a Windows application that has no Mac equivalent.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Daniel

Yeah, I was getting massive crackling, crashing, pitch bend spikes, radical oscillator drift, and unresponsive keyboard with 5.0, just like I did with 4.5.3 so I've gone back to using my external audio interface. Crackling gone, no crashes, no oscillator drift, no spikes, keyboard is responsive. Sure would be nice to use the VST, but for me it is totally unusable.

Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac9,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 4 GB

It seems like the more I use my Virus, the more I am noticing high-energy patches causing distortion at any volume level. The worst one is OffshoreMS, which is virtually unusable because of it. I've just noticed it in a BIG way with pd4Madonn@, which I don't recall ever having any problems before, although I may have used it only as a solo patch and not in chords like I'm trying to use it, now. With OffshoreMS, I've turned the oscillator volume down from +19 to -19 and turned off effects, which mostly removes the problem, but destroys the distinctiveness of the otherwise gorgeous patch. I've tried turning the volume knob on the Virus down which helps slightly, but it still distorts. I've got the pots on my external audio interface at about 25% (I can't use the VST because it is just unusable - crashing my DAW, oscillator drift, crackling noise, pitch bend spikes, etc., both 4.5.3.00 and 5.0). What in hell is going on?!! Have I got a defective keyboard?

I've been back and forth with tech support several times. I've pretty much given up.

Zitat von Marc

here's an update for you:
we did not announce a release date on NAMM because OS5 at this time was a technology preview. we were planning on a release last month, the update is feature complete but we ran into two issues we wanted to address before shipping the update. those issues were old issues and also present in OS4.x. as it turns out, addressing those issues takes more time than we anticipated in the first place, that's why you're waiting for the update since a while.
we'll do out best to ship before the holiday season starts. in our opinion it is better to test a little more and wait a little longer, so hopefully you share this notion and manage to stay patient for a little longer.
best, marc

Any chance those bugs are related to the VST consistently crashing Ableton Live (8.3), causing radical oscillator drift, random pitch bender spikes, and random artifacts introduced into the audio signal (recognized by a fellow Virus user in one of my pieces when it was played on Stillstream Radio)? Those have caused me to abandon the VST completely as unusable and not worth the trouble.

Zitat von scientificharmony

We can hardly play with it properly
until we have certain elements repaired!

I couldn't agree more. I've tried using the plugin for over 6 months, given up and tried again at least 5 times, and have finally completely given up and gone back to my ancient MOTU 828 Firewire interface. I don't have much confidence that the bugs preventing me from using the plugin will be fixed, but one can hope. The convenience of a single USB connection and easier access to patch parameters than menu diving on the front panel are very alluring, but the Flash Gordon zapping, radical oscillator drift, causing Live to crash, crackling noise, and sound quality degradation just aren't worth it.

btw, the AU is just as buggy. (Aren't you glad I'm all done SHOUTING?!) oops, sorry.

...not to mention all of the Flash Gordon zapping and unintended portamenti, some of which are so pervasive that there's no way I can keep them out of my music. A fellow Virus owner heard one of them during a broadcast of my music the other day and recognized it instantly because it happens to him frequently, as well. I have resigned myself to doing a fresh reboot of my computer, fresh restart of Ableton Live, and a cold reset of the TI2 (unplug, wait 30 seconds, plug in with the ARP EDIT key held down) before trying to record anything, but I still have to put up with THAT BUGGY VST (sorry to keep shouting, but it really makes me mad) inserting unintended and UNWANTED artifacts into my music. If it's dance music, then who cares, right? But ambient music, the making thereof to which I aspire is not compatible with these cheesy "sound effects." Thankfully Ableton Live is phenomenal when it comes to recovering work after the many, MANY CRASHES, often right down to the latest, most minute and unsaved edits. If it weren't for that I would be beyond furious. ACCESS: PLEASE FIX THESE BUGS FOR 5.0. Work with Ableton or whomever else you need to, but there is clearly no dearth of pervasive problems with your VST.

Edit: I'm sorry to rant. I know this isn't exactly productive, but I don't see any way to remove the post. I realize it would be much more productive to address my concerns to Access directly, which I will do. Obviously, I have a high frustration level over this, but as I said, Ableton Live has almost miraculous recovery capability so it's somewhat manageable.

I found what I'm looking for. I hadn't thought to go into the MULTI EDIT page using SHIFT+EDIT. Not long after posting my admittedly diatribal (yes, I made up that word) post, I saw the gray MULTI EDIT lettering under the EDIT button to the left of the LED display and thought, "Hmm. I haven't tried that." Sure enough, that was exactly what I'm looking for. Now, if only the 828 could monitor more than one stereo pair at a time. (Original model, circa 2001.)

I have completely given up on the Virus VST and my life has gotten SO much easier. It may be my special talent for screwing things up, but I tried, and tried, and tried, and tried, and tried, and tried to get the VST to behave and IT WILL NOT, at least for me. So I'm really not interested in any suggestions as to how to get it to work. It's been several months putting up with random pitch modulation spikes, radical oscillator drift, sound quality degradation, and crackling noise, so please don't waste your time asking what I'm hearing and what I've tried, etc. You can if you want to, but trust me: I've tried it. All of the above-mentioned problems vaporized along with my patience for the VST when I dredged up my ancient MOTU 828 Firewire interface and started using it instead.

My question is . . .

Is there any way to route a patch to the Output 2 or Output 3 pairs without the VST? The closest thing I can find is on the Surround page (and I mean the LED on the Virus, not the VST) where I can change the Balance to go between output pairs. There is NOTHING in the manual, printed or electronic about assigning patch output to ANY output pair, just a passing reference to the Output 1 pair somewhere.

So again, don't care about the Virus Control, I just want to know if, using the knobs and buttons on the Virus TI2 keyboard, can I assign a patch to other than the Output 1 Stereo pair.

TIA

Thanks flabberbob. Haven't been up here for a while, and just wanted to say thanks.

I should have said "almost" no problems at all. It depends on the patch. For example, with DigmahalPX (I've got it in ROM-L 35) there are clicks that obviously shouldn't be in there. They sound like loose wire clicks, not envelope clicks. Using the plugin, I can go for long periods without any weirdness, then all of a sudden it just goes nuts. Oscillator drift, re-triggered notes, the aforementioned zap noises. I noticed that the previous owner had to replace some components, but the part that says what was replaced has a security grid overlay that makes that part unreadable. I'm also noticing a significant response and tone difference with and without the VC plugin. I'm really beginning to wish I'd gone with plug-ins and a MIDI controller.
wtf?

OK, now I'm on to something (or on something ). After that last amendment to the post (Live), I decided to try the keyboard outside of the sequencer, and I'm not having any problems at all. Note that I have the problems whether or not I'm recording, as long as Live is running with an instance of the Virus VST. I have the plugin set to Output 1 L+R on the Common tab. I'm also getting white noise that isn't in the patch (ROM-L 81 Orion PX <- actually 3 spaces in the name, but don't know if this forum will munge &nbsp;) and random oscillator drift. I'm going to hunt around in Live to see if I can find where it's making the keyboard borked, but in the meantime, if anyone knows of a solution, I'd be most grateful. This is driving me NUTS!!!

I'm using Live Intro 8.2.7, by the way.

I'm having intermittent problems with random notes being triggered. Usually what it sounds like is as if I had portamento and mono on and hit a note several octaves below the note I'm playing. This happens at random, and yes, I've tried re-setting the keyboard, unplugging, holding down Arp Edit while plugging in, etc. It will go for a while without the problem - sometimes for days - then suddenly start making Buck Rogers zap gun noises again. Could this be dirty contacts? Anyone else seen similar issues?

The Virus manual, in "About Virus Control Center" section, "Burn To Flash" sub-section ends with the sentence, "To restore the original banks later, see 'Advanced Menu' below." Oops. No 'Advanced Menu' section. It goes right to the "Update OS" sub-section and then to the "About Polyphony" section. So, how DO you do you restore the original banks? I'm burning all 26 banks to ROM from the Virus TI2 Factory Backup folder in Virus Control, but it sure would be a lot easier to do a factory restore. That is, if the factory restore would have the same effect, i.e., burning all 26 banks to ROM. Does anyone else's manual have the omitted information or can anyone tell me how to do a factory reset?

TIA,

Daniel

AMEN to that, brother/sister/fellow earthling! I got so used to cringing and preparing myself for the worst (which inevitably ensued) that I am almost surprised to see things work on the first attempt on Mac OS X. Very, VERY pleasantly surprised. I can't help but think that the Windoze versions of the software are ported from the Mac by engineers not fully versed in the intricacies of the porting process. Not to disparage the folks at Access. I can only imagine the nightmares they faced in having to deal with that horrid OS, especially being used to such a stable OS as OS X. I understand that plenty of folks have no problem at all on Windoze, that it must be my hardware, etc., etc., etc. But after FOUR OS RE-INSTALLS and countless install/un-install/re-install cycles on that "other" dysfunctional system, I'm done.

Yes, this is a bit of a rant (which I think I promised not to do), but for anyone considering whether to spend a bit - maybe even a lot - more on a Mac, IT IS SO WORTH IT. They "just work." I'm guessing it will be a significantly different experience on a desktop with a dedicated USB card, I don't know, but beware before buying a notebook and make DAMN sure it has dedicated USB ports, a rarity on notebooks these days.

Thanks for the replies. I have completely given up on Win7. Months upon months of trouble. My son has graciously traded the iMac I had previously given him for the Asus "Replublic of Gaming" laptop, which is much more suited for him because he's into gaming and I couldn't care less about gaming. And guess what? Virus Control worked on the first try. No unplugging, turning off for 30 seconds, turning on while holding the Arp Edit key down, yadda yadda yadda. It just plain worked on the first try. It even walked me through finding a more appropriate USB port than the one I was using. I don't know what possessed me to switch to Windows. Well, actually, I do; not as expensive, being convinced by an instructor that it was a rock solid OS, thinking that after 10 years or so M$ had their act together, lots of users claiming to have no troubles with it, etc. I can only assume that they were all smoking crack. I will never try to go back to that horrid, HORRID operating system again. 3 months of agonizing, swearing, re-installing, un-installing ad infinitum ad NAUSEUM. And setting up my LAMP stack took about a half hour, compared to many hours on that other POS OS before finally giving up and using WAMPServer.
Perhaps this is a useless rant, but let's just say that if there is anyone reading this who is wavering between OSs to use with their Virus, my advice is to STAY AWAY FROM WINDOWS. I thought The Blue Screen of Death was a thing of the past, but I can tell you right now that you'll only avoid it if you don't install any software. In 10 years of using Mac OS X, not one system crash. In 3 months of Windows, I lost count.

I should note that I realize that I'm likely to encounter the same sort of problems on a Mac with Virus Control, but I have an old MOTU 828 Firewire interface and a MOTU Express XT USB interface that I know will work with a Mac, so that's my fallback if I can sell the Windoze machine.

I have been trying for about 3 months to get Virus Control to work on my Asus G73jw Windows 7 64-bit 14GB RAM laptop and just can not get it to work. In 10 years of using Macs, I had far, FAR less trouble than the few months since I made the mistake of going back to this horrible, HORRIBLE operating system.

HOWEVER, if I am unable to sell this computer, I need to find a workaround. So, my actual-question-not-a-rant is: If I buy an external USB audio/MIDI interface, aren't I going to be right back in the world of hurt I'm in now? All of my USB2 ports share the same bus, and when I try to connect to the sole USB3 port to the Virus all I get are error messages. Isn't the external audio portion of the interface going to be held up by these *@(*&!%$ing USB2 ports? If I can't even get Virus Control to allow me to exchange MIDI signals, am I going to be hosed just as with VC? I would be THRILLED if I could disable the USB audio until I'm ready to record the audio, but I can't even get that to work after countless tries (re-booting with the ARP Edit key down...again...and again...and...). The ONLY communications I can get to/from the Virus are to do the reboot-with-Exit-button-held down and put the Virus into USB Transfer Mode (or whatever it's called). My computer cannot see the Virus unless I reboot it, and then all I can do is backup/restore/burn.