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Originally Posted by 12341234
Thanks for your feedback. I have indeed read many threads here and on other forums, watched every video I can find, all of which seem to be a mixed bag of people either loving or hating the Virus... some say it works flawlessly and the sound is bar none the best, some say its total rubbish with all sorts of glitches and VST's can match the quality etc. Personally, I have never hands on tried a Virus so I do not know for sure. What I have heard in a few pro studio demos are some really fantastic pads and filter morphing (+ just about everything else imaginable)... which is why I am now on the hunt for a Virus. As I said, I own or have tried all of the latest "top" suggested VST's such as the various U-He models (which are quite good for some sounds no doubt), Sylenth (again good for some), Nexus, Korg Legacy, Omnisphere/Trilogy, Arturia, Dune and so on... all are good for some things, but none good for all. - I have not tried Synthmaster though, IYO where does this VST really excel?)
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Synthmaster is semi-modular, which means it can cover a really wide spectrum of sounds (similar to Zebra2) at the expense of having a bit more learning involved to fully master it. These types of synths are just more flexible than most of what's available in the hardware world. So, technically they can excel in all areas. What fast-tracked my love for Synthmaster was listening to some of the Rob Lee patches (I think there are four sound banks available from him total), and he really has a grasp on the kinds of sounds I originally wanted out of the Virus. You can listen to demos of some of those patches as soundcloud files from the Synthmaster website.
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Originally Posted by 12341234
Because for the most part I am happy with my beats, bass and FX, the thing that I now always look for (in hardware and VST) is a filter section that can do really smooth, clean sweeps for this type of pad/pluck sound I'm after... it is the one part of my sound palatte that is lacking. With the VST's I mentioned the result is always some aliasing, distorted artifacts etc. as I said in the OP. And I'm not just talking about presets, I have tried programming each of those extensively. IMO without FX they sound very messy. - if you know of a VST I'm missing or one that you think is in fact capable of these "clean" pad/pluck filter sweeps, please by all means save me some headache and cash and tell me!!  I'll certainly give it a go. |
It may come down to what kinds of sounds you want to achieve, but while I do find that FX are a very important part of patch creation (for the types of sounds I want), I found this to be true of the Virus too, and of course sometimes FX are more processor intensive than the sound.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 12341234
The only synth that I have ever been able to hands on achieve this sound I am trying to create is with the Nord Lead 2x, which unfortunately, I had sell when I moved abroad. The reason I have not gone back to Nord is that I found it too limiting in the sounds I could create and the workflow a bit tedious...actually, very tedious. It could do a lot of sounds really good for sure, but it took a lot of programming to get there. To me it was great with some lead sounds and some pad/pluck sounds, FX and that is it. Price vs usage just doesn't justify buying another one. Spending a couple of hours everyday (Nord) trying to create a sound when something else (Virus!?) can dial it in in a matter of minutes and ITB, well, that to me is a better workflow.
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I find all hardware synths have a certain sound profile, limiting their use... their flexibility is often defined by what can be achieved from the surface controls... these controls are like gold for tweaking or live play, but don't really offer the kind of flexibility of some VSTs. I guess most VSTs, individually, probably also have a similar sound profile, the exceptions being ones like Zebra2 / Synthmaster where the possibilities are so varied that the human ear wouldn't be able to pick up the profile or limit, if there even is one.
And yes, price plays a big part in it all. Given unlimited funds, space and time, maybe I'd have lots of hardware boards and not mess with softsynths at all? It's hard to imagine getting the same workflow productivity as an all software environment, just based on my experience with hardware synths.
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Originally Posted by 12341234
The latency, TI, USB issues you spoke of, many say these are things of the past and have been fixed in recent OS updates? BTW I'm running a dedicated PC DAW -XP Pro SP2/Ableton Live 7 (latest update) if that makes any difference.
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Well I got my Virus right around the time they (Access) introduced a 64bit driver for Windows, and I'm not sure how far things have come since then. I came to the conclusion the lack of the Virus' capability to fully utilize the bandwidth available in USB 2.0 was part of the problem, so I just decided to sit tight and see what their next product line up would consist of (seems like that's ages ago, and no sign of progress). I keep an eye on this board and elsewhere and I have not seen much good said about their software integration or any major improvements being made. I think the consensus is Access makes great sounding hardware but has yet to get their act together on software. I have seen some folks with certain setups say they have very few issues, I just couldn't tell you what their specific set ups are.