Posts by DJTobes

A follow up to my post above. I bought Navira!

It's brilliant, no really, it's exceptionally good, maybe a little bright at times but nothing that the built in eq didn't sort out. And yes, it really can emulate the Virus hyper saw and filters, yeah I know what you're thinking, but it's true! I know for a fact because I've just spent £124 so you lot didn't have to

If Access don't provide the Mac community with updated drivers by around Christmas then my days with my old faithful Virus Ti2 DarkStar are over. I'll just sell it.

Quote from Quark

I'm a little late to the party, but look at what I've came across: http://www.navira.io . They claim to have replicated the TI Hypersaw. They even advertise how cheap they are compared to the real deal.

How did you find this? I can't find a single review of it via Google! Nothing on kvr, nothing anywhere!

Quote from Gern

Anyone on Catalina or Big Sur tried Sound Radix 32 Lives?

From the Sound Radix Support pages....

Will 32 Lives ever be supported on Catalina (macOS 10.15)?

Currently it won't work. If we'll ever have a solution we will update this article.

skittb123

Do you have any folders within in your Patches folder? If so then that's why buddy! I discovered that this evening when I fired up the v2 beta for the first time, it was driving me insane with it crashing whenever I tried to select anything else in the Patch Librarian.

As soon as I removed any of my folders within the main Patches folder and restarted the plugin, all was well! I know right‽!! Super silly.

I then started to move all of my patch bank .mid files into the main Patches folder, a few 'letters' worth at a time, and then I fired up the plugin. In other words, any patch .mid file that started with 'a' and so on until 'd' I copied into Patches, then I fired up the plugin. Move to different banks, patches, played around, you get the idea... all was well. Then I repeated the process until I finally reached any patch bank .mid file that began with 'z'.

It took a while as I wanted to make sure I wasn't just getting lucky, but no..... that's the culprit to the crashing, in my case anyway.... folders within the main 'Patches' folder.

I've been playing with v2 of the Mystery Islands Virus plugin now for a few hours.... not a single crash. Not even when trying to push it by using different sounds playing out of different audio outputs at different times as well. It worked for me no worries. I've also passed on my findings to whatisface, I forget the developers name now sorry, so he can improve it.

What I'm basically saying is.. for me... and I can only speak for me.... the Mystery Islands plugin is working perfectly once I'd figured out what was causing it to crash!!

Hope that helps,

Tobes

Quote from skittb123

Good luck. I own it and version V2.0 (beta)is very unstable and crashes Logic and Cubase all the time. On version V1.5 saving patches is a nightmare. Sometimes it does save and sometimes it doesn't. You might as well give up on the idea of a TI like setup & go midi only..

Is that via USB MIDI or actual MIDI In/Out?

I simply can't stand it any longer friends...

It's been almost a year now since my beloved Virus Ti2 Darkstar became nothing more than a lonely dust catcher in my studio. All my other synths have been happily gurgling, bleeping and generally making delightful synth sounds together since last December (2019) when the last Catalina hold out, my Roland System-8, finally had Catalina compatible drivers released by Roland.

Indulge me for a moment whilst I quote from page 12 of the Virus Ti Quickstart manual... "Access Music is famous for improving their products via free updates to the operating system. " Admittedly that manual was produced in 2009 as stated on page 9 "© Copyright 2009 Kemper Digital GmbH. All rights reserved." and it's now over ten years later. As we all know the last OS update released by Access (Kemper Digital) was 5.1.7.00 back in 2017, three years ago at time of writing. It still had 32 bit components that everything relied on in order to work so let's face it, the writing was on the wall and we shouldn't have been too surprised when the 64 bit only Catalina macOS appeared and Total Integration, one of the stand out features of the synth, simply didn't work anymore.

Whilst all of us on this forum are Mac users that own an Access Music Virus synth of some flavour, it time to face facts my friends. Total Integration is no more, in my case I now own a Virus 2 Darkstar!! And that's really the point of this post that you are reading. You still own one of the best synths EVER made. Like.... ever! It's a synth classic there is simply no denying that right?

Of course I'm super annoyed that after asking Access Music over and over again only to receive near as dammit zero replies to anything asked whatsoever, researching information about the Mac drivers (written by Ploytec) and asking them what the story is now that they have said to more than one of us here that they have given Access Music the Catalina audio drivers required... what's the point in getting frustrated anymore? Really? As I've previously written TI is gone, dead, over... but we still all have a great synth!

So am I selling mine? No. I'm lucky enough to have a Focusrite Scarlett interface with enough audio inputs and midi built in, so I'm giving up on Access Music to provide an updated Catalina driver & I'm buying the Mystery Islands plugin, a couple of long midi leads, and six very long audio jack leads. Yes it's going to cost me over £100 all together but guess what?

I'll be able to use my Virus 2 Darkstar again. Welcome back old friend.

I respectfully suggest that you consider doing something similar, and be happy again!

Quote from ProducerMP

I don't understand why people are saying that it doesn't work with Catalina? I'm using my TI2 with every DAW.

And the USB audio is working is it?

Quote from skittb123

UPDATE:

As most of ya'll probably know Apple just announced MacOS Big Sur.

As optimistic as I am I decided to give the Beta a try to see what changed regarding the Virus TI. Unfortunately I am sad to inform you guys that on MacOS Big Sur Beta, The Virus TI software now completely ceased working. The installer can only run by turning off System Integrity and while it does install the VST, VST3 and AU plugins, only AU is actually recognized by plugin validation. I’ve tried this in Studio One and Logic Pro and both just crash while trying to open the plugin. The VST and VST3 version don’t even make it to the validation process.

Another update: Weirdly enough MacOS Big Sur does still recognize the Virus as an USB audio interface and they've actually fixed audio on the Virus!

You can now select the Virus as an Audio out in MacOS's Sound settings and it works again. (doing that in Catalina resolved in no sound)

So it seems like Access wouldn't even have to work on that part. All they need to do is fix the VST, VST3 and AU plugin.

Display More

woah woah, wait a minute!!! So the TI plug in doesn't work yeah? But the usb audio DOES? And does the usb midi work? In other words could you set it up as a virtual instrument in Logic then? And does Big Sur recognise all three usb audio outs?

Massive thread about it here.

Due to what Apple are about to do with.... actually I gotta be super careful here, NDA and all that, but... well this bit is out in the public domain already if you know where to look so I can say this much at least. Apple are going to be a little more... forceful shall I say delicately, with prompting customers to move to the latest macOS version. No doubt they'll bang on about security yada yada, but I work for a huge media company in real life when I'm not being a musician in my free time & already the Catalina upgrade is.... available shall I say, even if you have forced it to be ignored. Yes, I can get away with that I think!

Basically, I've now moved to Catalina on my personal iMac Pro, I held out this long but... it's going to happen anyway, so either Access care about the customers who have been there for years or.... not. Who knows? But I couldn't hold on any longer, the Catalina Virus drivers were my only blocker. I still have faint hope that the Virus drivers will be updated for Catalina, I'll be a very happy customer if that is the case, but if not by the time the NEXT macOS is released, then I'm going to have to sell my Ti2, sad but true.

Apple's WWDC is in a few weeks, you'll find out more about why I'm having to be cryptic then, I really am sorry, but NDA's y'know?

Quote from MagicJukebox

Now that there is a CoreAudio Ploytec driver for Catalina, maybe there’s some hope for the Virus?

https://www.usb-audio.com/download/

You'd think wouldn't you? It was released March 31st, still not a peep here from Access though. Zilch nada. Not even a "we're working on it" or even a "not a hope, it's over" message. Until then, us faithful Mac users will have to keep this thread alive!

Quote from spanda

Interesting... Anyone know if any Kemper products use the same USB driver? fairly likely and there have been updates since Catalina there.. Maybe sorting Kemper first?

The Kemper Amps don't transfer any audio via USB. I couldn't find any USB driver at all in fact! I think the amps are simple class compliant USB ports and all the Rig Manager software is doing is simply transferring data to the amp.

Quote from ChrisCabbage

*cough* Apparently Elektron use the same driver, in case we want to compare and contrast *cough*

I have I haven't had a chance to test either the Elektron or the usb-audio demo driver yet, but I have dug into them a little.....

I must admit, I'm very surprised that just by renaming the .driver & .plugin files that the usb-audio files work! I'm guessing that the Virus Ti AU plugin is simply making a call to those filenames..... and the kext extension for that matter.... interesting! In the usb-audio plugin there are a lot more references to other vendors products, in the Elektron plugin though, only to their own products. However, there are NO references to Access in the usb-audio plugin either! So.. it might just be a case..maybe... of renaming the Elektron plugin & driver filenames as well!

You probably need to authorise the drivers.

Restart your Mac.

As SOON as the Desktop/Finder reappears, go into System Preferences (Apple Menu, top left) then 'Security & Privacy'. Select the 'General' tab if not the default already. Look near the bottom of that window, does it ask you to 'approve' anything? If so, approve it.

Any better now?

Quote from jroselli

Having the same issue... tried the same things... but I can't find any "PloyTec Gmbh"! Does anyone have a solution to this problem? Thanks.

Restart your Mac. As soon as the desktop reappears, go into System Preferences/Security & Privacy and you should see the approval button then. It disappears after half an hour until you next reboot y'see, that might be why you haven't seen it.

Ploytec still haven't released their Catalina UAB Audio driver yet... I'm assuming that's also what Access are waiting on as well. - https://www.usb-audio.com/support/

You're welcome

Right-Click on the "Virus TI Software Suite 5.1.7.00.pkg" file. Then in the menu select Open. Click on all the accept messages that appear then it should run properly.

Hope that helps.

Quote from StefanSze

Hi,

wouldn't it be on option to make make the code of the Virus Plugin publicly available. I guess there are some clever people around who could adjust the plugin faster than Access could ever do ...

... just a thought ... need to get a replacement for my 2011 iMac this year. And new Macs only come with Catalina ....

If only it were that simple!

Ploytec, the company who's audio code makes the Virus plug-in work, are working on a Core Audio driver, to replace the depreciated HAL audio code. I'd keep an eye on this webpage LINK as when they have their own driver it'll be there, I can't imagine that the Virus driver will be far behind. Unless it's never going to be updated of course. Who knows? Well, Access do but it's still radio silence...

What version of macOS are you running?