Virus C - Basic thoughts

[Rusty]

Hello

I have some basic thoughts about using the Virus C properly (Mine is a Virus Indigo 2 Redback) If anyone have any answer to a question, I would be very happy to know the solution!

-How do I save my own patches on my computer? Do I need a program like SoundDiver to do this? Or is there some way I can record the patch in Cubase for example?

-Some sounds on my virus sounds distorted when playing on it, is this a due to bad soundcard? (M-Audio Audiophile 24/96)

-What is the optimal Patchvolume? Sometimes when patches have 127 as Patchvolume, a distorted sound appear on these sounds.

- How do you work with it in a DAW like Cubase?
In Cubase Im starting record a midiloop, then I add an Audio Track,
then I choose "Single" both for Midiloop and the Audiotrack, then I leave the Audiotrack selected. Then I record the loop in the Audio Track. When the recording is done within the loopmarkers, I hit the * symbol on the numpad to stop the recording. I don´t think this is the best way?

-To remember what the sounds name in the Virus are named as, Im giving every Audio Track the corresponding names of the same sound. This must be a good way?

-Sometimes I want to add a delay or a reverb on a sound with the builtin effects in the virus. The problem with this is that if a recorded sound should loop many times in a track, the delaying/reverb effect adds a clicking sound each time the sound itself loops at a new bar. (The sound itself is cut in the beginning and the end of the bar, and copied) To get around this, Im always adding the delay/reverb using VST effects, so the delay/reverb smoothly runs through the sound, without any clicks and noises. Correct?

-I´ve read the Access Virus programming tutorial book, trying to learn how to design my own sounds, but the book doesn´t contain information explaining all of the sounds. Where can I find more tutorials, or step by step setups that looks like this one:

Kickdrum:

- Punch intensity 127
- osc bal -64
- osc1 sine wave
- osc phase init 127
- filters lp
- cutoff 14
- cutoff 2 -6
- reso 121
- env amount 94
- env att sustain realease 0
- env decay 7
- amp att sustain realease 0
- amp decay 30


/Rusty

[Timo]

Hi Rusty. :) Welcome to the forum.

-How do I save my own patches on my computer? Do I need a program like SoundDiver to do this? Or is there some way I can record the patch in Cubase for example?

Sounddiver works well. I'm a bit of a technophobe in the Cubase/Logic area so I hope someone else may be able to advise you.

-Some sounds on my virus sounds distorted when playing on it, is this a due to bad soundcard? (M-Audio Audiophile 24/96)

Could be lots of things. First make sure the levels going into your soundcard are not too high. Usually your software will give you a realtime meter that shows the levels coming in, and I'm sure you already know it's very important not to go above 0dB otherwise it 'clips' (flattens) the waveform and sounds dreadful. Aim for -12dB or so to give yourself headroom.

Also check the distortion and/or saturation effects on the Virus to ensure that those settings are as you wish.

Otherwise, check the levels within your patch on the Virus itself. Turn the overall patch level or the oscillator volumes down. Distortion can also occur when you have multiple voices in unison as all the oscillators are summed together and take the levels higher.

Sometimes, although you can't see any visible distortion on the waveforms, you may have high-frequencies that are severly distorting. A good meter to use for this would be a phase-scope, such as the one in Wavelab 5 (although I'm sure there are VST plugins out there that do the same thing), which shows stereophonic audio in the form of so-called free-flowing "lissajou" figures:

http://i14.tinypic.com/6kka9u9.png

If it shows a clipped type 'diamond', like above, as opposed to smooth and free-flowing 'strings' then it's suffering from some form of distortion. (Quite severe in the case of the example picture above).

The phase-scope really is a useful meter to have, in addition to the usual oscilloscope waveforms. Unfortunately the phase-scope is useless when the audio source used is in mono (one channel), though, as it primarily shows the panoramic spread and frequencies of stereophonic audio in two dimensions. A mono signal would just show up as a one-dimensional line down the middle, so is useless in that regard.

-What is the optimal Patchvolume? Sometimes when patches have 127 as Patchvolume, a distorted sound appear on these sounds.

The optimal patch volume/level really does depend on the patch itself and how it's constructed. I usually set the level to be 100 instead of 127 in order to give myself some headroom. As mentioned, doing stuff like adding unison increases the levels causing the waveforms to distort.

- How do you work with it in a DAW like Cubase?

Hope a fellow Cubase user may chime in here.

-To remember what the sounds name in the Virus are named as, Im giving every Audio Track the corresponding names of the same sound. This must be a good way?

Sounds good! Whatever works. I usually end up with about 10 patches with all the same name after I tweak them a bit and save them to new patch positions and it's chaotic.

-Sometimes I want to add a delay or a reverb on a sound with the builtin effects in the virus. The problem with this is that if a recorded sound should loop many times in a track, the delaying/reverb effect adds a clicking sound each time the sound itself loops at a new bar. (The sound itself is cut in the beginning and the end of the bar, and copied) To get around this, Im always adding the delay/reverb using VST effects, so the delay/reverb smoothly runs through the sound, without any clicks and noises. Correct?

Really not sure about this one. The Virus shouldn't add a click on a new bar, when it doesn't know a new bar has been started. It just adds reverb/delay to anything that's given to it. Isn't this an issue with your sequencer? Or some sort of timing (midi) problem if you have them both sync'd up together (like you're altering the reverb/delay values via midi)?

Actually, doesn't the audio input of the Virus use some kind of (noise) gate? Maybe increasing the amp attack slightly will stop the pops.

-I´ve read the Access Virus programming tutorial book, trying to learn how to design my own sounds, but the book doesn´t contain information explaining all of the sounds. Where can I find more tutorials, or step by step setups that looks like this one....

Best thing I can suggest is to take a look at Sounddiver, load up a patch that you wish to learn about and proceed to slowly deconstruct it in reverse order and see how the patch was built. You could do something such as in this order: Null all the effects (take off the reverb/delay, chorus, phaser, distortion), deconstruct the filter EG (nulling it wide open afterwards), followed by the Amp EG. Then the modulation matrix, and LFOs. You should be left with the oscillators to disassemble. Turn off the unison, and take out the sub, the third oscillator, and then look at Osc1 and Osc2, see what settings and pitches they each use, and how they interact.
You can disassemble patches in any order you want, as many aspects are interchangable, such as the mod matrix, LFOs, filters and amp, so it depends on the patch.

[AlexHall74]

Rusty wrote:
-How do I save my own patches on my computer? Do I need a program like SoundDiver to do this? Or is there some way I can record the patch in Cubase for example?

Check out the Rekon VST patch editor/librarian at:

http://www.rekonaudio.com/VES_Virus.php

Welcome to the forum, Rusty!

:)

-Alex

[Logic Circuit]

Hi,

You can do a patch dump into Cubase or Logic.

It records the patch info into a MIDI track so when the sequencer runs over the patch dump it changes the settings to how they were when you did the patch dump.

I'm sorry for the brief answer but I have just had a Tonsilectomy and Uvulaectomy and I'm finding it hard to concentrate.

Cheers,

Dave.

[Timo]

I'm sorry for the brief answer but I have just had a Tonsilectomy and Uvulaectomy and I'm finding it hard to concentrate.

Ouch! Take it easy Dave. You should be alright in time for Christmas. ;)

[Khazul]

-What is the optimal Patchvolume? Sometimes when patches have 127 as Patchvolume, a distorted sound appear on these sounds.


Where it sounds right and at a similar perceived level to other decent sounding comparable patches.

Start at 90-100 or so, if no unison and not much reso or fx, then you could find your self needing to max the level and even use other hacks (with phaser and/or careful EQ boosting for eg) to get the level up. Conversely loads of fx, reso, 8 x unision etc, and you could find the level needs to be as low as 60 or so.

[Rusty]

Timo – Thank you very much for your help!

AlexHall74 – Have you tried Sounddiver, if so, do you prefer Sounddiver or Rekon VST editor?

Logic Circuit – I´ll try your tip. Thanks

Khazul - Thank you.




Now, to my main problem:


I´ve noted that many of the sounds of my Virus sounds distorted when the sounds are sent from the Virus to my computer. It´s very noticeable when I play chords, it seems that the sounds are getting much more advanced at that point, and maybe my audiophile soundcard is too weak to handle these signals?

When Im listening to sounds from the Virus with my headphones connected to it, all sounds are flawless, no distortion. So, it must be something wrong with my soundcard settings I guess?



Im uploading a short example of two distorted sounds from the Virus.

http://hem.bredband.net/b467197/example_distortion.mp3




As you can the the tops of the sounds are chopped off! It doesn´t matter how low I set the IN volume in the mixer wich is currently set to -12db.


http://hem.bredband.net/b467197/cubase_rec01.jpg







Have a look at the settings for my soundcard (Audiophile 2496) As you can see, the IN levels of the mixer are set to -12db.


http://hem.bredband.net/b467197/2496_1.jpg



http://hem.bredband.net/b467197/2496_2.jpg



http://hem.bredband.net/b467197/2496_3.jpg