"1) it certainly can have a wide range of sounds but for the price of a Virus Ti you can buy MANY soft synth who use many different type of synthesis and each will do his own time quite well...
Still good point for the virus is being able to use all those type of sound with always the same interface and hardware controler..."
I think the thing is, you can probably generate most of the sounds you can obtain from any one of those soft synths in a Virus. Sure, there are some things that I wish the Virus could do, but I am surprised by its capabilities every time I sit down to design a sound.
Frankly, if the Virus can't do it, it probably can only be done by another hardware synth. Go grab a decent second-hand analogue synth and you will probably get the 'other sounds' you need.
"4) YES but in exchange you cant use individual effect plugins for each part... by using virus ti, you have all the 16 parts assigned directly to only ONE track of your sequencer... so if you want to use external effect plugins it will affect all track of the virus... wich off course is not usable...
By using softsynth, each instance use a different track on your sequencer and so you can use any HIGH QUALITY plugins you want for each... and i bet many Audio unit or vst plug ins revern or others sound better than virus one..."
Not strictly true. There is the ability to route audio down one of three USB *stereo* channels with TI. You can then treat these channels individually in your DAW... Okay okay, you can't really do much with three audio channels. But, you *can* divide the six channels into mono signals to get six channels in total. I am unsure on if you can also pipe parts down the standard audio outs in addition to this, but I believe that is possible and would increase your available outputs.
Besides, maybe we might get a few more audio ports with future OS updates. Unlikely, because USB is only so fast... But, you never know. As you agreed the onboard effects are pretty nice anyway. Each part can have any of these effects applied individually. It seems that they may be able to extend the types of effects with OS upgrades! Who knows maybe one day we will be able to pipe sound from the TI's audio interface into those effects too...
"5) true... but what if you need 17 part ?
you can open as many Sylenth instance as you want... 32 if you want.... "
You must have a pretty awesome laptop to run 32 instances of Sylenth?
"6) dont forget the latency you get when playing the virus Ti inside your sequencer, the fact that all the 16 part are not available as "one per track" in your sequencer is a problem too, not being able to freeze Virus ti track or to Bounce it faster than real time is a problem."
Sure, you may have latency, but only when you are jamming with a keyboard or something. Besides, you can put the virus into "LIVE" mode for a particular part, and it will compensate for any latency. Otherwise, there isn't any latency during playback - everything stays in sync. At least thats what I have noticed with my Virus TI desktop when it is the audio interface also...
And in terms of bouncing tracks... What's the big deal with that? Think about all the analogue hardware people who have to do that anyway. While you are at it, think about all those people who have slow laptops like me who can't run all those HIGH QUALITY CPU hogging software plugins.
"I love the virus, but its very subjective and i dont understand why a soft synth would never be capable of doing same as a virus. After all a virus is same as a soft synth, dsp and program... then yes like peoples sade, converted and other things play a part in final quality... wich is maybe why the virus sound slightly better than sylenth... then again.... the virus is 20 times more expensive ... ( at least where iam)"
Perhaps, but I can also take my Virus out of my laptop, hook it up to a drum machine, midi sequencer, keyboard, and jam on it live. Can you do that with your VST's/AU's?
Alternatively, I can plug my Virus into my laptop and instantly, I have a fairly good sounding sound card which can play 16 parts of my song with virtually no CPU usage required. That was the 'killer feature' for me mate!
"so for the price of a virus Ti, it would be possible to buy Sylenth+ very good plugins (reverb, delay etc) + very good soundcard with good converter.... and then... everything is possible, Virus is top of my list, but Sylenth is very surprising..."
Yeah, not denying that its surprising how good some software sounds. The routing capabilities are probably superior too. But, the virus is extremely capable of covering most, if not all, of what software can produce sonically. Being able to tweak the hardware instead of fiddling with controller maps, or even worse, mouse and keyboard, takes sound design to another level. Im not sure if it was worth every penny I paid, but I am pretty sure that I wouldn't have the knowledge of creating sounds like I do now.
Each to their own, but I couldn't be happier with where I am going now that I have some hardware, and that hardware is a Virus.