Two Virus TIs, One DAW, Total Integration

[AndrewM]

This hasn't been talked about much or I just could find the right threads... Anyone use two virus TIs with total integration at the same time? I'm thinking about picking up a second snow to expand my outputs and overall recall in project files. Success story's or failures?

[MBTC]

Funny, I'm interested in this exact same question. I sort of snuck it into a non-dedicated thread, in post #5 of this thread (http://infekted.org/virus/showthread.php?t=33976), but I knew it might not get a lot of attention there, so I'm glad you created a new thread for the discussion.

To elaborate a bit, I think we're both talking about using two instances of Virus Control at once. In my case I guess you could say I'm only interested in "Partial Integration" since I completely gave up on trying to use the audio streaming over USB feature, I've got the outs going straight into the interface via 3/4" cable, and the USB pipeline is strictly for MIDI communication between the Snow and the plugin.

[AndrewM]

I'm really surprised that no one has any experience with this...!

[MBTC]

From the thread below, and a few other threads I saw there, it seems the official word is that two units are supported but they would need to be a Snow + Desktop/Polar/KB (there is a Snow plugin and a normal plugin). Based on that, sounds like you can't have two snows or two of any other type of TI?

http://www.virus.info/forum/index.php/Thread/5657-Is-it-possible-to-run-a-Virus-TI-Snow-and-a-Virus-TI2-Desktop-at-the-same-time-t/?61c1d84c

Would love to hear the official, possible configurations.

[AndrewM]

Thanks for that MBTC. I did hear back from Access as well... This is what I was told if anyone else is interested in this topic.

The Virus TI software does support more than one TI on a system, but this obviously is highly dependent on the USB system of the computer system used. A 2nd TI (Snow) will simply use a 2nd plugin instance and therefore offer again the same amount of outputs.

[MBTC]

I assume if USB is used only for MIDI, it shouldn't be a problem one way or another? At least I think that's what he means by highly dependent on the USB of the system.

[Berni]

I assume if USB is used only for MIDI, it shouldn't be a problem one way or another? At least I think that's what he means by highly dependent on the USB of the system.

what he means is your lucky to get one TI working nether mind 2 on the old USB connection. It's not just a midi connection. If you wanted to go the midi route you would probably not use VC at all...but on a snow, not much fun.

[MBTC]

what he means is your lucky to get one TI working nether mind 2 on the old USB connection. It's not just a midi connection. If you wanted to go the midi route you would probably not use VC at all...but on a snow, not much fun.

What else is transferred via USB if you don't use the default USB out option? It became clear to me that I was never going to be happy with the amount of lag/clicks/stutters using the USB audio out of the plugin, so I just route the audio straight to my interface.

Problem solved, latency problems gone. The plug-in then works just as it would within the DAW to edit sounds, change patches or whatever.

So I assume nothing more than MIDI data is being transferred over USB at that point. What else? Certainly not audio.

[AndrewM]

Well, I am one of the lucky ones. Virus control (midi/audio) works great on my PC... And I intend to use both as such.

[MBTC]

Well, I am one of the lucky ones. Virus control (midi/audio) works great on my PC... And I intend to use both as such.

To be fair, I may not have had the Virus optimally configured before when I was having issues, because both the Virus and a USB hub with some other things attached to it were plugged into the same USB card. I was experiencing latency issues, some popping sounds, but most importantly MIDI timing was just too unpredictable. It was usable maybe for pads but something like a tight bassline or percussive sounds were out of the question.

So now, I have the Virus on it's own dedicated USB card with 3/4" cable taking the output to the interface. The UltraNova has USB plugged into one of the built-in USB ports on the PC instead of the card. They did not seem to want to co-exist on the same USB card at all. Then the audio from the UltraNova goes to the audio interface via SPDIF.

As I was typing this message, I did a subjective test switching the outs on the plugin over to USB L+R versus using the way I have it set up by default (above) with using OUT L+R. I can immediately feel about another 10-20ms of latency when hitting a key when using the USB outs. The USB L+R is ultimately getting the audio back into the PC at USB 1.1 throughput and latency, while the OUT L+R solution is getting it to the PC at Firewire 800 speeds. Via Firewire, the response between hitting a key and the resulting sound feels about as tight as a soft synth.

Your mileage may vary of course, but I have a feeling that if you are happy with the USB 1.1 experience now, plugging a second Virus into the same PC over USB would at minimum diminish the experience by increasing the latency or affecting timing in some way, so if you do go this route I would definitely tread carefully into those waters (maybe getting a deal on a used unit, which is what I did).

The above setup I've described is different in the sense that instead of treating the plug-in like a soft-synth (single instrument track in Cubase 8 pro), I need at least one extra audio track to capture the output from the interface outs, but in a way that's a good thing because it simplifies bouncing the audio.

I don't see why two Virus units wouldn't work with this kind of setup, but I'm a bit skeptical about two of them both sending audio over USB. Not that it wouldn't work for some people, whatever issues folks have with USB audio today would be effectively doubled.

Another thing to consider is that folks with laptops or Apple hardware, (anything other than a desktop PC or Mac Pro) may not even have the option of adding dedicated USB cards. I don't think I would ever be happy with the latency and timing if I didn't have the flexibility to set things up as described above.

[AndrewM]

I just pulled the trigger on a used ti2 desktop... :o wasn't expecting to go this route but I'm going to try both and see what happens. If it doesn't work I'll sell my snow and be happy with my upgrade.

[MBTC]

I just pulled the trigger on a used ti2 desktop... :o wasn't expecting to go this route but I'm going to try both and see what happens. If it doesn't work I'll sell my snow and be happy with my upgrade.

Hope it works -- let us know how it goes.

[AndrewM]

Yes. I'll let you know... Probably have a report by next weekend.

[AndrewM]

I received my TI2 desktop this afternoon and successfully have both my snow and desktop running simultaneously in Cubase 8.05 on a crappy 5 year old Windows 7 PC with Virus Control via USB (audio & midi). I've layered a couple parts on both units while using other VSTs and not experiencing any sync issues. Feeling pretty good about this right now...

[MBTC]

Good to hear its working. You're probably breaking records with 2 Viruses over USB working without any issue.

BTW the PC I use for music is about 5 years old too, but has a decent motherboard, CPU and RAM in it. Just a few days ago I cloned the existing HD and replaced it with a 1TB SSD (about $350). Fantastic upgrade, everything is blazing fast. The Virus of course isn't particularly HD intensive, but you feel the benefits of this upgrade in everything you do musically, loading Cubase projects or things involving sample libraries (Maschine, Komplete etc). And thankfully I didn't have to reinstall everything, because getting everything set up how I like it would have taken months. 5-7 years is around the time to consider replacement of aging HDs anyway.