Beiträge von dark_fader

  • Long-considered personal feature request list

    By the way, on the unofficial forum there's a thread about a maintained, relatively current parameter reference, collated from the addendums:


    http://www.infekted.org/virus/showthread.php?t=32495


    Not 100% ideal - it's in a Windows format (although there's a free reader) and it's not official, so there'll be a lag between feature updates and reference updates... And I have no idea about accessibility. But hey. Better than a slap round the face with a wet haddock.

  • Long-considered personal feature request list

    What a great list of well-thought-out points!


    Glad I'm not the only one thinking an additive osc would be good, although it sounds like you want an Imposcar style additive engine rather than something approaching Razor. Gotta say though, some of the really fun additive effects use selective phase and tuning changes on oscillators, which would make them potentially more complex than the hypersaw oscillators in theory. (See the end of the Razor demo.) No idea if the implementation would be more complex though.


    Loving the duty-cycle options as well. It sounds like you want something akin to the wave shaping tools in Z3ta+, which I think are the most exciting thing about that synth. (Especially now you can modulate them in Z3ta+2). I'm well on-board with that.

  • Independent volume control of osc 1 and osc 2 and cross-fader curve

    I think it would ease sound design if oscillators 1 & 2 had independent volume controls before the mix stage. Especially with the wavetables, some oscillators have quite different apparent volumes.


    Also, it would be nice to be able to change the way the crossfader blends between the two (crossfader curve). It sounds to me that in the middle position both oscillators are at full volume, meaning that a patch modulating the crossfader will rise and fall in volume.


    Unless, of course, anyone has any tricks to compensate? :)

  • Additive oscillators

    Fair enough. Maybe it it possible, and that would be gorgeous. Depends if the programmers feel that the sonic palette is worth it.


    Knowing my luck the Virus TI3 will come out next month with four times the DSP, USB 2/Firewire, the ability to offload work to the host CPU, additive, 6 operator FM and physical modelling. ;^)

  • Additive oscillators

    I see. So a modification of the hypersaw to turn the oscs into sine waves and snap them to the harmonics. (Or a knob to pull them there over time, why not?) A dial to change the harmonic components used (saw to square to other interesting waves) then a few knobs to control some tasty frequency domain/phase effects.


    Great thinking. Only problem I can see is that the hypersaw only has 9 voices IIRC. 18 with the sub oscillator, but I have a feeling that's a clever optimisation. If you disabled the second oscillator I suppose you could get 32. Halve the polyphony from an already severely limited range and you get 64, which is beginning to get there...


    But I think Razor has 320.


    I guess it would have to be a balls-out 'this feature will be monophonic, alright?' type setting for arps, leads, basses and the like, but on reflection I think it would probably consume the whole machine.

  • Oscillator trouble with TI

    Sounds nasty. Contact support.


    In the meantime, there are some things to try. You could reinstall the latest OS, try different USB ports, try not using a hub if you are, try using the Virus as a sound card if you're not, disconnect SPDIF, etc.


    I hope you get it sorted.

  • Multiple Instances of Virus

    Yeah, as it sounds like Cubase users experience the same issues, that leaves PC users a little shafted on that front. (And after paying for the synth I don't really want to shell out for a Mac + sound card + Logic. :P )


    I'll just have to bear with it for now and hope Ableton fix it for the next version.

  • Multiple Instances of Virus

    OK, after more research it looks like it can't be done - Ableton will always collect automation data in one channel for a multi-timbral VST. People have been complaining about this on the Ableton forums for quite a while.


    Using MIDI ccs limits you to using clips rather than automation lanes, which is not ideal.


    The fact that Logic can separate automation data makes it a sequencer problem. We should all pester Ableton. :)


    Also, the 'external instrument' plug-in limits you to the VST sound outputs from a plugin, if you set that plug-in as the MIDI destination. So you can't use it to consume audio inputs routed from the Virus analogue outs or SPDIF. Boooooo.

  • I guess I should introduce myself...

    ... seeing as I've already started posting quite heavily! :)


    I'm from London and I've been producing and DJing as a hobby for over a decade now. I've always loved the Virus sound and flirted with a hardware version (a Virus B) and the PowerCore version (which I abandoned due to latency/synch/audio drop-out issues).


    Until last week I had a software-only set-up, but I've long missed the immediacy of hardware interface. I always found that hardware got in the way of my workflow... But on the other hand I realised that over time I'd moved from someone who relished sound design to, basically, a preset whore.


    I'm starting to get some interest in my productions now, so after a long period of saving I finally went for what looked like a great all-round solution - a hardware VST. I'm now the very proud owner of a TI2. :) I'm having a couple of teething troubles at the moment with my sound card and Ableton, but hopefully I'll be able to sort them out quickly enough.


    Problems aside, I'm loving the power of the synth so far. The hands-on access to the filter and envelope settings fills me with joy. The array of oscillator types is great fun. I have a feeling the synth will really reward me for spending the time programming it.

  • Getting the Virus TI2 working with Emu1212m sound card

    Thanks Flabberbob.


    You'll notice that in the screenshot the buffer size (in samples) is grey. This means it's not editable, and it only changes when I update the hardware setup. This gives me a window supplied by the VST driver for the sound card, which in the case of the Emu drivers doesn't give the option of choosing a buffer size in samples. Only in ms.


    Using Reaper is a great idea though - thanks for the heads-up.


    Interestingly, I thought I'd fixed my MIDI timing problems yesterday when I turned off MIDI sync on all the Virus entries in the MIDI set-up page. All seemed to be good, until I used the Virus in a complex project. Then all hell broke loose. Every time I ran the project the MIDI was a different amount out, up to a 16th in some cases.

  • Multiple Instances of Virus

    Zitat von Ionis

    Actually, if it is such a big problem for you, you can use every track in Ableton from the Virus TI with its own lane if you run it via MIDI without VC. The issue is simple how Ableton handles plugins. I have found that the easiest way to run my Virus TI with Ableton is to have a starting template with no configured controllers from the Virus TI. I just add them as I go to keep it clean.


    OK. I'm completely happy to work this way, but have you found a way to record MIDI control data from the Virus within the MIDI channel that contains the note data in Ableton? This appears to be the crux of the problem.


    If you have, would you be kind enough to post up an Ableton project showing it in action and a screenshot of your MIDI preferences? :)

  • Multiple Instances of Virus

    Zitat von Ruari

    Yes, software can display the name of the automation parameter to the host. To get a finer degree of control then instead of the basic standard MIDI CC data the synth manufacturer can resort to what is called NRPN (Non Registered Parameter Number) where there is more than one piece of controller data sent for every bit of knob movement, but it is still just MIDI data being sent.


    I can see that. However, there seems to be a difference in the way Ableton deals with pure MIDI cc events and the software abstraction that makes up the finer-grained, labelled automation data. Specifically, this automation data isn't sent back to a sequencer MIDI strip controlling a particular channel of the Virus. It's sent back to VC.


    Zitat


    After you have recorded your knob movements, can you copy that automation data to a different lane?


    Possibly. I would have to manually look up the MIDI CC number for the control though, so it would be a major hassle. If VC is allowing finer-grained control through the VST then this would be lost.


    Zitat

    Ah right, now this might be a case of different things in different DAWs having the same name but the external instrument plug-in in Logic is for connecting up external hardware - like a Jupiter etc - & treating it as a software instrument. The only good thing about using the external instrument plug-in in Logic is that you don't need a separate audio track to be able to hear the instrument, if you wanted to use any automation on that instrument then you are far better off having a dedicated MIDI instrument lane (the automation shows up as CC# though) if you don't happen to have an external mixer then you will have to create an audio track with it's input set to wherever the synth is coming into your audio interface. You wouldn't use that if you were using the VC plug-in though.


    Sounds similar. However, I think the 'external instrument' plug-in in Ableton gives access to audio from hardware, ReWire or VST instruments within other channel strips. It may be possible to use it to grab automation data by pointing it at the VC plug-in. Obviously I wouldn't wire up the audio that way, the VC doesn't work like that. But it may do some better internal MIDI mapping than a plain MIDI channel strip.


    If I get any joy I'll post up here, but I'm thinking it'll probably be another dead end.