Beiträge von eugenebalt

  • Is it possible to repair this?

    Hi,


    Last month, I sold a 2012 Virus TI 2 Keyboard via eBay. The keyboard was in top condition, and in fact, the LED display still had the plastic covering over it, which I hadn't peeled all this time. The synth was shipped with the plastic LED adhesive still in place, although beginning to peel off at the edges, but just a little bit.


    For some reason, the customer received the synth in the following condition: the middle part of the LED looks like this (I assume the plastic adhesive was either removed or lost).


    It's very shocking to me and it's the first time I'm seeing this. Either something broke during shipment, or maybe something was spilled on it. Does anyone have ideas on what could have happened to the LED?

    But most importantly: is it possible to repair this in any way? Is there anything that can be done, or I have to send this to Access? Thanks a lot.




    [Blockierte Grafik: http://i67.tinypic.com/5yztrk.jpg]

  • General Sounddesign Topic : Hardstyle

    I welcome this topic, as I'm a Hardstyle artist myself ;) (youtube.com/infl8or) Probably 90% of people visiting this forum produce Hardstyle.


    MiddleThinkr, I visited your SoundCloud and was impressed by how nice and clean your sounds are. You also got the kick right, prior to 3 months ago it wasn't good but your two recent tracks (in the recent 3 months) finally nailed it. Congrats!


    I wanted to ask you: Do you master your sounds to make them so pleasant and clean? Some kind of EQ on the leads and screeches? My sounds are dirty, for that matter all of Virus' built-in sounds also sound dirty to me.

  • All Parts Stop Playing in the Middle of a Work Session

    This new issue has never happened before but started happening recently.


    I open my project and in the beginning all the parts play properly. Then, some time passes as I'm working, and the Virus stops playing -- all the parts are dead when I play their arrangements.


    In the Virus VST, none of the parts lights up, even though the DAW (FL Studio) shows that each channel is playing. Also, this sometimes happening on opening a project. Since VirusControl shows none of the parts lights up, maybe something's not reaching the TI after that point.


    Problem #2
    I'll take this opportunity to post another annoying problem: Sometimes the Out USB1/2/3 L+R setting is lost on a channel, and Virus gives me an error message saying "Your Out USB1/2/3 has been reset." Why is this setting getting reset??


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://i59.tinypic.com/n71v02.jpg]


    However, the most immediate issue for me is #1, I need to resolve why the TI stops playing all of a sudden.

  • Can someone help me fix this painful Euro Lead?

    Hi,
    I'm a newbie in sound design, but maybe this is a good time to learn.


    The following Euro Trance preset, which I got from somewhere long ago, is too painful; it somehow hurts the ears when I listen to it. However, it sits well in the current mix, and I don't have time to completely replace it with something new. I need to preserve this current lead with its full and rich quality, but just tweak it somehow so it's not so painful and bright and raw. It's probably not the EQ - if I change the EQ it will lose its richness and the way it sits in the mix. Something else is the culprit here.


    Here's the audio sample:
    http://www.sendspace.com/file/76mdxc
    http://www62.zippyshare.com/v/23324618/file.html (please download in full quality to hear the true sound)


    Screenshots:


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://i60.tinypic.com/2rfgcug.jpg]


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://i57.tinypic.com/90mtfa.jpg]


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://i62.tinypic.com/2nl4f3a.jpg]


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://i59.tinypic.com/2rnbsic.jpg]


    Thanks for any help, I appreciate it.


    P.S.: Just as a sidenote, I've had real trouble finding good-quality standalone Euro Trance leads for the TI. When I say "standalone" I mean a preset that is loud, rich, and doesn't need additional layers to sound complete. I've tried everything including the Vengeance Incubation series, 7 Skies, Ummet Ozcan, etc. All these banks focus on "stab-ish" or "pluck-ish" or too spacey sounds that can't support a standalone melody at all. The closest I've found is this and a couple other sounds. Nexus VST has a variety of trance leads but its built-in filter and controls are bad. Is it really so hard to create a full-body, constant (not plucky) trance lead that can stand on its own?

  • Unreliable Sounds on Each Render

    Maybe I'm missing something but everything you mentioned is a fixed variable. Fixed variables, when plugged into the algorithm, are always supposed to give the same result. There's no randomness unless I specifically introduce a random variable and I'm not. So the same sequence should be identical.


    I'll look into the Phase-Init but that will take care of the obvious phase changes. I'm also talking about subtle, very grainy changes that are driving me crazy and forcing me to re-record 10 times, where there's no obvious phase culprit.


    At least with Nexus, which is a sampler, everything is 100% reliable from render to render.

  • Unreliable Sounds on Each Render

    Basically every time I render a track my Virus sounds "change" ever so slightly. You wouldn't pick it up unless you were really paying attention, but if you are, it will be audible.


    Sometimes there's a harder twist or turn here and there, sometimes a bigger or smaller buzz on a buzzy lead. Other times, the sounds are blatantly different every time like a kaleidoscope. They have different sounds even though my automation curves are well-defined.


    I can't render my track 10 times in the hope that all the sounds will be exactly as I want them. My only other choice is to sample a certain sound and always use that sample, but that's tedious and you can't do it for every sound. The whole point is to have the TI open in your DAW and give a reliable result every time.


    Why are renders with the TI so unreliable (although on a very small, granular, almost imperceptible level) on some patches?

  • Good Mastering Plugin

    I am writing this as a warning to those considering so-called "professional mastering services." I've been getting my tracks "professionally" mastered for many years, and just recently, thinking I still wasn't good enough, I submitted my latest release to a well-known, expensive mastering studio (which I shall not name here). I'd done my own master as well, but since I don't trust myself, I wanted to wait for the "professionals."


    When I got their master, I discovered the exact same thing that had happened to me with hundreds of other masters, from different engineers/studios around the world:


    - The sound is a minimum of 2-3 units quieter than all comparable commercial tracks. (Sometimes more than 2-3 units quieter.) They never master loud enough.
    - They boost the Bass and Hi-Freq, making the Mids disappear, so the track sounds like a thin wire. There's no body to the track, since the Mids are gone.


    These two things have been happening for like a decade, with all kinds of engineers. Maybe they don't like the "loudness wars" or disagree with them. If you watch their ads, you'll see these old men with intelligent faces saying how they "understand the music business" and "volume is important" but all this BS isn't worth a damn, I don't think they've recently listened to any modern music, whose RMS is much louder than even a few years ago. And for some reason they boost the bass too much, bass isn't all that important in today's world. Most modern tracks don't accentuate the subs.


    Just for fun I listened to their master back-to-back with my own master (which I thought was bad) and mine was a hundred times better! I just applied a T-Racks VintageEQ preset for brightness, and T-Racks OptoComp ("Natural Sweetening") +15 for volume. No pumping, distortion, or artefacts. Loud and ready for prime time, it sits great in the mix with all the other commercial releases.


    The paradox of life is that, while musicians say "you should never trust your own ears, and give the track to others for mastering," it appears that you should definitely trust your own ears, and AVOID sending your tracks to all these "professionals" with degrees who don't actually know what the hell they're doing. If you do - prepare to come back to them, complaining about lack of loudness, and watch them increase the volume by 0.01 dB and it's still nowhere near loud enough.

  • MIDI Controller Recording Not Capturing Wheel Actions

    SOLVED
    - Click on the instrument for this patch to bring up Channel Settings.
    - Right-click the Pitch knob in the window
    - Select "Link to Controller"
    - At this point, move the Pitch-Bend wheel on the keyboard, simply move it, don't press any notes. The window disappears.
    - Now, after the window closed, verify that when you move the pitch-bender, the Pitch Knob in Channel Settings moves left/right.
    - Increase/decrease range (up to 48 ) via the LCD display to the right of the knob.


    Now the pitch changes get recorded.

  • MIDI Controller Recording Not Capturing Wheel Actions

    To add to my post. In FL Studio, I've linked my MIDI CC #0 and #1 successfully, but this has no effect on Pitch. It looks like there's no MIDI CC # event for Pitch-Bending in the list that I see.


    The test program MIDI-OX shows that there is a Pitch Bend event sent when I move the wheel. The Range is -50/+50 in Virus Center for that patch, so it should be really audible. But the sound is constant.


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://i40.tinypic.com/ruy25c.jpg]

  • MIDI Controller Recording Not Capturing Wheel Actions

    My question is similar to the one below mine, also about using the TI as an integrated MIDI Controller (but I'm using FL Studio as my DAW).


    My TI2 Keyboard is working and I am capturing (1) notes and (2) knobs during recording. However, I am not capturing the Wheel actions (Pitch + Mod). For example the patch has -50/+50 Pitch Bending and there is no effect, either live on recorded playback, when I slide the Pitch wheel.


    What could possibly be the issue here? My MIDI input is "Virus TI Synth", output is "Microsoft MIDI Mapper". Notes and knobs are fine. Thanks


    (Edit: The only way to hear my pitch changes is to put the synth in Config / Local Mode = ON.)

  • Auto-Pitch Modulation

    How do I make a note automatically pitch, as part of my preset (without drawing the pitch envelope)? Suppose it's based on note length. At 50% of the note let's say I want the pitch to be -50%, for example, while 0 it's 0 and there's a smooth auto-modulation.

  • Good Mastering Plugin

    It's been a few months since I started this thread, so I wanted to give an update, in case anyone's interested.


    I found that the following sequence produces good mastering results for me.


    1) HarBal v3.0 for EQ
    2) T-Racks Opto-Comp for volume/compression


    Har-Bal was recommended in prior posts as "auto-mastering" tool to copy the profile of other tracks. It's good for EQ, but not good for volume maximization (it produces bad artefacts/jumps). However, for EQ only, it gives good results. I give it a track to approximate and it produces a result with good EQ. I save the EQ-only output.


    Afterwards, for commercial volume, I use T-Racks OptoComp. Only OptoComp seems to transparently raise the volume to good levels without any defects or artefacts for me. I've tried all of their other tools like "Vintage"/"Classic" and the Brickwall Limiter, was not satisfied with any of them, too saturated. The OptoComp did it for me very well.


    Hopefully this helps those interested in good mastering.

  • Virus suddenly making garbled noise, not working - everything was fine

    Thanks,


    I actually got back to normal by doing a Windows System Restore (thank goodness!). Afterwards, it started working again.


    So I need to understand what exactly could have happened, because I certainy don't want to get these unpleasant surprises on a random morning. As I said, yesterday everything was fine.


    My theories - please comment on which one is more likely, keeping in mind that the Windows Restore fixed it:


    1) A Windows Update, which got activated on shutdown of the PC last night, installed something which broke the TI or soundcard configuration;
    2) Some kind of malware/trojan/virus on the PC;
    3) 3 days ago I installed the Evaluation version of T-Racks 3, which I am still evaluating. It installed the VSTs and the Custom Shop standalone, which worked fine for 3 days, but it's possible some kind of soundcard configuration had been made, maybe it's part of how T-Racks works. I'm about to purchase it, but I certainly don't want to waste my money on something that can potentially break the Virus TI (if that is the culprit).


    I don't have any other theories. Thanks