Beiträge von crayolon

Thanks chaps!

TO CLARIFY: I didn't make all of the Ctrlrs; just the Virus Ctrlr! atom is the developer of the underlying framework and has built most of the ctrlrs, while I just happen to be the first person who's come along and checked out a copy of the sourcecode to build my own. Woodster - I'm afraid I can't help you with the Mopho editor, but you should flag up the issue on the ctrlr.org forums and atom will help you - he's very quick and sorting out bugs. Also remember he gets the 'legend' status for doing the bulk of this project, not me

Timo: it started as a B project, because I only have a B, but I'm confident it'll work for all 'vintage' models, as woodster says. C, KC, Classic, XL, they should all be fine. A, we'll just have to see but I *think* it'll be fine.

I'll go into the code and rename everything to just Virus instead of VirusB so that there's less confusion.

I just finished this last night and uploaded the first Windows builds this evening - now ready for people to try it out and feed back with bug-reports, extra feature requests, etc.

Based on the Ctrlr project, which is a framework for making VSTi, AU and standalone executable MIDI controller apps, the Virus Ctrlr allows you to program almost all of the pre-TI Virus ranges' synth parameters and many system settings from inside your DAW. It's great for exposing parameters - whether common ones like cutoff or 'deep' ones like arp clock division - to automation and offers what is hopefully a reasonably intuitive GUI for doing it in.

Such things have existed in the past, but have (as far as I can tell) been commercial products which have never quite lived up to expectations and mostly seem to have been left in dev limbo without critical updates and fixes. Well, this is open source and all my code's up there for people to see, tweak, improve upon, etc. If I drop dead tomorrow, somebody else will be able to pick it up

What it DOES:

• behaves like a VSTi - as long as you can get the Virus' audio into your DAW in the usual way, you can use the Ctrlr to treat it like a VSTi without ever having to touch the hardware. But if you want to touch the hardware - like to get some nice smooth knob automation - just set the Ctrlr's input to the MIDI device that's connected to the Virus. The Ctrlr will merge your host's MIDI commands and make it all work (though you may have to try a few combinations of settings before you get it set up the way you want )
• allows automation of everything you'd expect, plus some stuff you wouldn't - you can sync the LCD display's contrast to your dubstep bass, for instance
• operates optionally in standalone mode, from the included executable

What it DOESN'T do, but MIGHT do eventually:

• act as a full sysex patch librarian, a la Virus Control. The guy who codes the underlying Ctrlr framework is working on this, and hopefully it'll be possible before too long. You *can* send a snapshot of all the Ctrlr's values to the synth and save those values on the DAW-side, which means if you work from an init patch and set it up carefully, you can have a flimsy sort of total recall...and you can even instruct the VSTi to do this on load (with any sysex ms delays you need), but it's all experimental so far. Hopefully this will come.
• handle Multis, part control and patch names. This is all perfectly possible, but fiddly and I haven't had time to do it yet. If there's a LOT of demand, I will.
• handle audio, lik the Virus Control does. Obviously. But not even Virus Control gets this 100% right, and a lot of people with TIs just use VC for editing and automation, but use analogue outs for audio...so if you have an older Virus and you use this Ctrlr, you end up on almost an even footing with all those TI users (only with slightly less polyphony ;))

Feedback, criticism and bug-reports are all appreciated. If the criticism is along the lines of "it looks butt-ugly", well feel free to make some nicer GUI graphics and send them to me - that's what Open Source is all about

Note: I made this for my Virus B (which has faulty buttons that I can't afford to get repaired - the Ctrlr has solved that problem and was my main motivation!). I've added an EQ section which should make it usable for the C, though I don't own a C to test it on. I have no idea how well it'll work on the A, but I'd love to hear from people who've tried it. There aren't many parameters I've missed out, but there are some...and if you can make a case for their being absolutely essential in everyday use, I'll think about implementing them.

Download from here: http://ctrlr.org/page.php?p=download

I'm busy developing a Virus editor that'll run standalone or as a VSTi, based on the Ctrlr project. I've just finished the first release of my Novation Supernova II controller, which handles most CCs and lots of critical NRPNs; tonight I got Virus B control working with sysex, so the hard stuff's out of the way. Other controllers are available to download too, if you want to try them with other hardware.

It'll take me a while to map all the matrix combinations, but I'll post on here when it's ready for public beta testing. When the Ctrlr codebase gets full patch librarian capabilities (not 100% there yet), I'll implement that too.

Anyway, as well as easy computer-based patch editing, the other huge advantage is exposing CC parameters to sequencers for automation - stuff like Ableton, for instance, which is colossally shit at all things midi/sysex/external hardware related. (I do use Ableton, by the way, alongside other stuff, so I wrote this mainly as a result of my own bad experiences).

I'd never heard of that Rekon thing until now; it's a bit whack that the feature description is so poor. Obviously if it has patch librarian capabilities, it's a step ahead of mine, but by the time mine is released I may be able to save patch data as a parameter snapshot with the DAW project (or fxp/fxb). Anyway, mine will be FREE, which - according to my rough calculations - is a damn site better than 50 bucks \o/

Edit - I've had a look at the Rekon manual...it seems it doesn't let you select MIDI ports from within the VST, which is fine if you only have one set of MIDI I/O and also have one of the few DAWs they support...but not so good if you use Renoise, Ableton, or various others which do MIDI differently. I've got about six MIDI I/O on various devices, so it's no problem to load my VSTi, assign I/O to, say, a Midisport 2x2, then treat the hardware just like it was a virtual instrument, with audio coming through on a different track.

It's a shame Rekon doesn't seem to be in development any more, because if they fixed that, it'd be a great product and far more people would buy it. You *can* sort of use it with Ableton, I'm told, but naturally it crashes if you accidentally cause a MIDI feedback loop :\

Anyway, my motivation isn't huge, now that I've seen that other products exist (and also now that I have a Virus Snow). None of the buttons work on my Virus B and I wanted to make it useful again...maybe I'll still make the damn editor, just for fun

Hi there,

My Virus B is behaving quite oddly - most of its buttons are working fine, but the Value, Parameter and Part buttons act unpredictably.

When in Single mode, I press 'Value +' and once out of ten clicks, it increases the program. Nine times out of ten, though, it switches to LFO 2 Edit mode (as if I'd pressed LFO 2's Edit button). Further presses either cycle through the LFO2 shapes or occasionally increase the program number. Pressing 'Value -' goes either to LFO1 or Oscillator 1 but never decreases the current program.

Parameter, in Single mode, does similar stuff - '< Parameter' switches to Multi mode, while 'Parameter >' generally cycles through LFO2 destinations.

Most frustratingly, in CTRL mode, 'Part +' successfully cycles forwards through CTRL options, but 'Part -' doesn't cycle back; instead, it jumps to the EFFECTS menu!

I sprayed contact cleaner on the PCB around where the buttons' microswitches are soldered, around the button housings themselves, and I also generally cleaned up the PCB with contact cleaner spray and a lint-free cloth. It seems like there's some crosstalk going on - like the buttons' signals are working but other circuits are picking up interference from them - but I guess it could be occurring anywhere between where the buttons are soldered and where the ribbon cable joins the mainboard...

So I'm hoping someone can tell me whether they've heard of this issue before, and if there's any repair solution short of buying a new Virus B (which I really can't afford to do!). I have moderate skill in electronics and work in a research lab alongside helpful people with tonnes of skill, so feel free to suggest audacious challenges if you think they'll work

By the way, I put OS 4.9 and all the patches on fresh last night, to be certain it wasn't OS corruption of some kind. That went fine, and I can control all parameters with VQ from the computer. All the other knobs and buttons seem to be absolutely fine, audio output is fine, and I have to assume that all MIDI/SYSEX transfer is working fine too.

Thanks in advance!