Two Virus TIs, One DAW, Total Integration

[AndrewM]

Well, I am one of the lucky ones. Virus control (midi/audio) works great on my PC... And I intend to use both as such.

[MBTC]

Originally Posted by AndrewM

Well, I am one of the lucky ones. Virus control (midi/audio) works great on my PC... And I intend to use both as such.

To be fair, I may not have had the Virus optimally configured before when I was having issues, because both the Virus and a USB hub with some other things attached to it were plugged into the same USB card. I was experiencing latency issues, some popping sounds, but most importantly MIDI timing was just too unpredictable. It was usable maybe for pads but something like a tight bassline or percussive sounds were out of the question.

So now, I have the Virus on it's own dedicated USB card with 3/4" cable taking the output to the interface. The UltraNova has USB plugged into one of the built-in USB ports on the PC instead of the card. They did not seem to want to co-exist on the same USB card at all. Then the audio from the UltraNova goes to the audio interface via SPDIF.

As I was typing this message, I did a subjective test switching the outs on the plugin over to USB L+R versus using the way I have it set up by default (above) with using OUT L+R. I can immediately feel about another 10-20ms of latency when hitting a key when using the USB outs. The USB L+R is ultimately getting the audio back into the PC at USB 1.1 throughput and latency, while the OUT L+R solution is getting it to the PC at Firewire 800 speeds. Via Firewire, the response between hitting a key and the resulting sound feels about as tight as a soft synth.

Your mileage may vary of course, but I have a feeling that if you are happy with the USB 1.1 experience now, plugging a second Virus into the same PC over USB would at minimum diminish the experience by increasing the latency or affecting timing in some way, so if you do go this route I would definitely tread carefully into those waters (maybe getting a deal on a used unit, which is what I did).

The above setup I've described is different in the sense that instead of treating the plug-in like a soft-synth (single instrument track in Cubase 8 pro), I need at least one extra audio track to capture the output from the interface outs, but in a way that's a good thing because it simplifies bouncing the audio.

I don't see why two Virus units wouldn't work with this kind of setup, but I'm a bit skeptical about two of them both sending audio over USB. Not that it wouldn't work for some people, whatever issues folks have with USB audio today would be effectively doubled.

Another thing to consider is that folks with laptops or Apple hardware, (anything other than a desktop PC or Mac Pro) may not even have the option of adding dedicated USB cards. I don't think I would ever be happy with the latency and timing if I didn't have the flexibility to set things up as described above.

[AndrewM]

I just pulled the trigger on a used ti2 desktop... wasn't expecting to go this route but I'm going to try both and see what happens. If it doesn't work I'll sell my snow and be happy with my upgrade.

[MBTC]

Originally Posted by AndrewM

I just pulled the trigger on a used ti2 desktop... wasn't expecting to go this route but I'm going to try both and see what happens. If it doesn't work I'll sell my snow and be happy with my upgrade.

Hope it works -- let us know how it goes.