I had a Ti2 desktop briefly. Dealing with latency, only 3 USB outs, polyphony limitations and such prompted me to send it back (mostly latency). In order to justify the price it would have needed to integrate into my workflow pretty much as a VST would, and I just could not get it to that level of productivity.
I do have Sylenth, Zebra2, and a new inexpensive one called Oresus that I think are capable of competing with the Ti2 in many ways. One of the reasons I wanted the Virus in the first place was really to offload rich hypersaw leads, get them off my CPU, to free up the PC to do other tasks. This is quite a fast PC, Core i7-965 Extreme Edition, but in even the best VST a dense hypersaw with lots of polyphony and reverb can end up eating up 35% or so of total CPU, so I wanted more elbow room.
I did feel that the sounds from the Virus cut through the mix a little better than the average softsynth. I also think most hardware filters respond better in some situations when compared to most VSTs. However I also think that the gap between the two has narrowed a great deal in recent years, and I've heard others say (and I do believe) that by the time the mix is all said and done you will not be able to tell which of the sounds came from hardware vs. software.
So to be honest, yes I think that if I demo individual sounds, Sylenth probably sounds as good as a Virus.. the big benefit for me was having a separate module that takes a huge chunk of the processing requirement of fat hypersaws with long reverb tail off my CPU, but all the latency issues just sent me running back to VSTs and RMA'ing the Virus, until at least I have reason to believe they have fixed their buggy software. Great synth but they need to get total integration working flawlessly in all popular hosts if they want to stay in business, because some VSTs are getting REALLY good.
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