Virus C or Powercore? Help!
 

Hi!
I have now decided to buy myself a virus and I have got two nice offers on both the virus C and the poco. The question now is which one. This dilemma has just grown stronger.
I have never owned an outboard gear before so I bet it will feel a bit strange that the sounds you are working on aren?t saved in your project.

The things that speak for the poco is that it will be like working with a VST. Everything is integrated. The things that speak against it is the question regarding the soundquality and just the feel for having some hardware with knobs and buttons you can fiddle on.

I now ask you, when you are sitting there with a project and fiddling away on your virus C, you decide to take a break. How do you do with the sound you are working on? Do you overwrite another sound on a soundbank in your virus or do you export the sound as a midifile in your project?
I don?t know how it works but that is defintely the thing that speaks for the poco when it comes to presets.

If you are working on a sound (as long as it's just one) in the C and then you turn the thing off, it will retain the edited sound in the edit buffer without saving. I have to admit though, I always save the sounds to another slot anyways, so if that actually works I do not know.

I say go for the C. It's nice to be able to play music without switching on the computer.

I had the same question to myself, it is really difficult to say. I have a Virus C Rack XL at the moment. Maybe it would be better for me if i have chosen the powercore, because the virus is limited to 32 voices and you dont get any plugins. I start Cubase SX and Sounddiver, i dont work with buffer setups. You have to overwrite your current patches, if you dont like the onboard patches or work in multimode (many patches have more unison voices as you like to see and many of them have stereo spread). So i reprogram the patches , turn down stereo spread and some unison voices for multimode. After the demo is ok and my buddy says go for the final mix, i also have to reprogram the single patches to get the unison voices back (because im recording the single patches!) Thats annoying, and i dont do sysex dumps in a song

In Powercore you should have total recall, a soundfinder, you can use up to 64 voices if you have the unlimited license (with 4 powercores 256 voices). BUT the powercore is similar to Virus Model B ! You should have a good soundcard, otherwise virus powercore wont sound like the "real one "! If you dont need the minimoog filters so badly and equalizer, it might be the choice for you. And powercore offers excellent plugins of course.

Ahhh thanks for the tips. I have now basicly set up my mind on buying a poco virus. However there is one thing in the marketing of this virus that kinda ticks me off.

With the virus C you get 16 parts that shares 64 voices if I?m not misstaken, and as I understand you can use one singlesound with those 64 voices.

Now with the poco you have to add 4 instances of the virus plugin if you got the unlimted license to reach all those voices. So you can never ad one instance that uses 16 multis and 64 voices.
You will "only" be able to have 16 voices tops with one instance. I guess that is enough but still, I think that the marketingslogan for the unlimted license is a bit wrong.

The offer I have been given is a bit updated now. It?s a Powercore Element + Powercore virus + unlimited license for around 550?. Which I really hope is a nice price.

Yea that is not a bad price...

A couple of things though. The virus C is 32 voice only, not 64. And yes it can use all 32 voices to one instance or patch.

As you say, the virus powercore advertising is slightly misleading. Even with the multi-user licence you can never have more than 16 poly per sound/patch. Now 16 poly sounds a lot, but it really is not, and the virus in its current versions EATS poly when using unison and other oscs etc.

A nice pad or string patch is ruined when played anything more than a triad chord (3 notes together) as it can totally use up all 16 and sometimes more!! This is really anal as you will get the note vanishing sound as all the poly is used and needs to be cut in order to play the next set of notes.

This is one of the reasons I sold my virus powercore, its far to limiting to do anything BIG with.

Some people will say you can layer instances of the same sound as you will have the multi-licence. This is true, but its a really shitty work around and I couldnt think of anything more annoying and pain in the arse in trying to do it like this as it will never be like having more poly in the same instance at all.

Dont even get me started on the global reverb and delay, suffice to say as soon as the TI was announced mine was up on ebay and sold. I cant wait for some 80 poly loving, non affected by unison and some independant reverb/delays :)

But yea, thats a pretty good price for the combo you're getting....one thing Ill mention tho. Apparently the powercore element (basically the pci version) has been unofficially discontinued (may be officially announced at next weeks musikmesse with a new powercore product coming along) so thats something to think about to.

ten

Ahhh yeah I heard it?s been discontinued which is a shame. However, it?s successor will probably cost alot more in the beginning and my funds are limited. If I didn?t have limited funds I would be preordering my virus Ti right now.
Strangely enough, the dude who offered me to buy the powercore offered me the Ti desktop for around 1225? which is ....extremly tempting in a nonrealistic way.
I hate compromising like this but I really have no choice :(
My cash is also going for monitors and a new computer.

That the Powercore eats up so many voices is quite disturbing actually but layering two instances is not something I would have such a problem with I think.

well , speaking for myself i am waiting until the the ti desktop is out (as many of the users here) . The price for that ti desktop seems too high. At thomann it will cost 1666 Euros = 1168 ? . http://www.thomann.de/thoiw2_artikel-176593.html .

On the other side a new powercore would be quite interesting (takes up a virus ti maybe ? 8) )

virus ofcurse :D


after i got a virus b, i never use any softsynths :)