Virus B V Ti Polar

[niperooney]

Hi

I do some Dance music production work with a bloke who has a Virus B desktop. I only have Logic's standard set of soft synths, but between us we produce some really nice sounding stuff. Would I gain a great deal by buying a TI Polar or have we got most bases covered with the gear we've got? Is there a vast (ie £1500 worth!) of difference between the two synths?

I have no easy way of auditioning the TI, hence my questions.

Many thanks
Jules

[Timo]

Hey Jules :)

Compared to the TI, the Virus B is missing these aspects:-

Oscillators:
• Hypersaw (upto 9 detuned saw/squares using one-note of poly)
• Wavetables (I think at release the TI had 72 wavetable PCMs to choose from but more may have been added since then.)
• Wavetable PWM
• Graintables
• Formants

Polyphony
• Up to 80 voices (as opposed to 24 of the Virus B)

Filters:
• Moog 1/2/3/4/5/6 poles
• 3 band (inc. parametric Mid) EQ per part

Modulation
• 6 slots (each 1 source + 3 destinations = 6 sources + 18 destinations in total) as opposed to the Virus B's 3 slots (with 3 sources and 6 destinations in total).

Arpeggiator
• User programmable

Total Integration
• Virus Control
• 3 stereo USB outputs (at 16-bit 44.1KHz only)
• USB MIDI
• Searchable categories/sounds
• "Section locking" (ability to mix/match different parts of a patch with other patches).

Misc
• 17+ ROM banks (compared to 8 of the Virus B)
• 3 user-definable "soft knobs" (compared the Virus B's 2)

Outputs
• 6 x Balanced 24-bit 192KHz audio outputs on 1/4" TRS jacks (as opposed to the Virus B's Unbalanced 18-bit audio outputs on 1/4" TS jacks)
• 1 pair of S/PDIF input and output on RCA jacks

It's entirely a personal decision as to whether the differences would be worth the extra outlay, but hopefully the above may help either way. To sum up, the biggest audible differences would be in the new oscillators, and the Moog filters. The rest is effectively an increased feature set and for better workflow.