Buying either Snow or Desktop TI - Noob Questions
 

My first post here so please be gentle ;)

I have been on the fence with the whole Virus thing for a while now and after trying every VST I could get my hands on, I just cant seem to find anything suitable for what I am looking to do. Mainly pads, plucks, chord progressions etc. in the various House genres (Electro/Prog/Trance etc.) is what I am speaking of. I've yet to find a VST that can do really clean filter sweeps through the whole range... all of em seem to have dirty aliasing, distortion artifacts etc. (Sylenth, Omnisphere, Dune, Diva etc. just dont cut it for me). But with the Virus, from user demos I have heard the exact sounds I am after, so I decided that a Virus is a must for me. Now I need some help deciding which model - Snow or Destop TI? I've already got killer beats, bass and FX covered with VST's and analog hardware synths, so everything else a Virus can do is just a bonus. I should also add that most of my work with the virus will be done inside my DAW (Ableton) -no midi keyboard, so the TI aspect is a must.

My main question is (and I have searched everywhere for weeks trying to find an answer to this) in relation to playing chords... with the Snow using typical House music pad like patches (I hate to use this example, but for ease of description think mau5 like chord pluck sounds), a little delay and verb, some basic cutoff/res/adsr tweaking/automation, how many notes are realistically possible? 3-7 at the same time no problems at all? Or is the Snow with the limited polyphony/4 parts not really capable of this and the Desktop is needed for this type of work?

I would really appreciate it if someone here could describe some realistic scenarios of use, the limitations and what to expect with the Snow.

Cheers!

Snow is a Virus C? I think. Shouldn't have polyphony issues at all. My B will do big chords easily. I think B has 24 voice poly(?) So a Snow, or C, should have even more. No clue on using a DAW though, I'm strictly hardware.

Snow is a half DSP TI. OR TI is a double DSP snow.
If you want thick chords say with unison of at least 3 voices then you will hit the wall with 3 to 4 parts playing chords on TI. I would think a snow would voice out with much less parts.

As far as I know all Virus models prior to TI don't offer the DAW like plug-in editor, rather it would be dedicated audio/midi cable connection and editing within the hardware unit itself like most other hardware synths. While I've heard some fantastic sounding demo's of the older models, the TI/USB plug-in aspect is very appealing to me and the Snow would be the entry level unit -am I wrong?).

On paper the Snow looks like it could do everything and more than what I am asking, but my question is to actual owner/users that are working with it daily and know its limitations to chime in and give me some feedback on realistic usage - specifically chord work and the amount of notes possible as I described in the OP. No one has answered yet, so maybe its too dumb of a question for the pros around here :oops: Not trying to waste anyone's time, just need some clear user feedback before I pull the trigger on a Snow.

Right, I get the half DSP difference between the Snow and Desktop and the 4 part vs 16 part (or patches) bit... but using one or two (or even four) simple patches with minimal delay/reverb/unison, C/R and ADSR tweaking to create a sound, when it comes to this style of chord and the amount of notes, wondering just how limited the Snow is? I mean I wouldn't be using uber complex patches (at least not the ones I create) with loads and loads of FX drenching the sound.. or trying to layer bass, lead, pads, FX etc. all in one go... I'm after simple, but big clean House style pad chord sounds.

With the Snow I'm kind of expecting that once I'm happy with a sound or part in the mix, if I want to use the Virus for other parts, I'll save the patch and midi and bounce to audio for further mix editing if necessary, freeing up the Virus to focus on something else. I certainly don't expect to do full on songs all inclusive with the snow (or the Desktop for that matter), at least not without bouncing parts to audio all along the way. -does this seem like a normal workflow for the Snow or have I got it all wrong?)...

Unfortunately, there are no shops in my area to test drive units so I'm relying on demos and user advice to make my decision.

If you activate 3 oscillators, sub oscillators and a bunch of effects, I think you can easily get 10 notes of polyphony out of the Virus TI Snow.

If you just plan to use a single Program (not 4 Parts) you can have your chords even with the most complex Programs. Even by using the 4 Parts you can get enough polyphony, just making wise usage of the DSP Resources.

Consider the Desktop if you really need to use several ultra complex Programs or you need to use more than 4 Parts on Multi mode.

Right on, thanks for the info.

I assumed that fairly basic individual basses, leads, FX would be no problem at all with the Snow... just concerned with trying to do big (4-8 note) chord pad/pluck type sounding progressions might cause problems. Seems not. If I'm working on a part by part basis in a song, 4 different parts or patches on the Snow to create one sound seems like more than enough.. I mean how many patches actually use 5-16 different parts in a sound? is that common? Wondering if any Snow users run into problems with soundsets available for Virus?

I run a TI Snow daily on my projects.. usually three of the four parts. You can get a lot of use out a Snow as long as you know how to optimize your patches. I rarely, as in almost never, run out of juice or get drop outs.

The Richard Divine soundsets are the heaviest consumption wise and they play back fine. You can get some pretty massive sounds with the virus without stacking 8 unison parts on it as well. :)

I wanted to reply to your original question, but I've already written so many of my experiences with the Virus (I had a Ti2 Desktop unit once before but I've returned to all-software for the time being) in various threads on this forum (and when I wrote them, some things were much fresher in my mind), that my best offering is to ask that you take some time to read over what I and others have written about the issues with total integration and USB over the past few years. I say that because the TI aspect and DAW integration seems important to you, as it was to me, and that was the biggest letdown aspect of the Virus to me. Also, it seems like you like pluck/pad type trance sounds, which as you know are resource intensive, and IMO this is not a strong point of even the Ti2 which is twice as powerful as the Snow. I came to the conclusion that the total processing power of the Virus made it seem like my own CPU was about 10 times more powerful. How much other Virus users agree or disagree can really come down to other things like what types of sounds they are using, the music they are producing, how much realtime control they are willing to give up by bouncing down tracks etc.

Personally the difficulty of getting the thing working consistently and dealing with latency in the DAW was not worth it, thus I went back to VSTs. Some of the VSTs I use (Zebra, Synthmaster, Dune etc) actually seem to do plucks and leads better than the Virus to my ears. I think most of the folks that are happy with their Viruses are not very dependent on the TI aspect.. maybe I'm wrong about that.

Great info. just what I was looking for, thanks!

I almost got a Snow last night but somebody beat me to it with the "buy it now" option on ebay :sad: Now I think it is basically down to which ever model comes up first and at the right price... I've seen a few Snow's go for as much as Desktop models in the past few months and there aren't many available at the moment.

If I get tired of waiting and decide to go ahead and buy new, considering that the Snow will play all of these soundsets, wondering, for someone who wants to work ITB as much as possible, does anyone who has owned a Snow and then upgraded to the Desktop model think its really worth the extra coin/regret it?