Virus C battles the Alesis Andromeda A6

[anykeystudio]

Hi, this is my first impression and comparison between the two beasts. I has bean written quite a lot in this subject and off course this is my personal opinion.

I started off only playing the Andy for one week to get some decent sounds. The factory presets are terrible, even worse than the Virus factor presets. I wasn?t that impressed the first days, but saw the potentials in the synth. The fourth day, the Wooow factor of the Andy swept me of my feat.

After a week with the A6 it was time to test it against my Virus C. Woow again, the Virus sound good to. No wonder I have spent 2 year of tweaking it and I had an arsenal of favorite sounds.
The pads in the C are not as ?airy? as the A6 ones. In the A6 I could get instant OB8 pads and JP8-6 pads (I had the JP6 for many years). It?s not as easy to get this type of sounds out off the Virus. Especially in the high region on the keyboard. Where the analog sound was focused and sweet compared to the digital one.

Time to test the Saw bass. Set both machines to single saw and no filter, no mod, no env. etc. Here it was harder to hear the differences. So I made recorded a bass melody in my MPC2000XL. So I could compare between the two sounds by muting on and off. The A6 is punchier and have more treble/top and fells a bit more alive. When applying filter its hard to make comparison, because the analog filter behave different from the digital one. But when I used the Moog filter in the Virus, the sound got more muddier and lost some brilliance.

Conclusion; the analog A6 are more like a Swiss army knife, it have more bottom/top-end. It?s more alive and you can get very got acid lines that the Virus can match.
But if you?re not a sound addict and can live without the last 10% to get the perfect sound. The Virus is the perfect deal. But if you realy need the analog sound, well?then the Andromeda is the bitch for you.

Greeting Glenn.

P.S Someone want to buy a Virus C desktop model by the way ?

[Hollowcell]

Thanks for the thought-out review there Glen!

Hey, I have a few questions regarding the Andromeda:

How is the incomming midi-clock syncing? Do the LFOs sync up to external midi clock as well as the Virus?

Also, I remember reading a little about the bugs concerning midi implementation, eg; not all knobs sending midi and assorted other glitches.

Have all these been fixed?

Please feel free to post some samples too if you would like.

[anykeystudio]

Yes the 3 LFO?s and the S/H source sync perfect to the midi clock. As well as the arp. and the internal sequencer. Add that the seq have 4 output (except pitch, duration, vel. etc) that you can address any where in the mod.matrix. This is where powerful and synced to midi clock.

But she won?t send CC for every knob though. But you have 8 free assignable receiver for midi C.C that you can put anywhere in the mod.matrix. Plus that you have the ribbon, pitch/mod-wheel that always send midi. But the Virus is better on this, yes.

No bugs in the O.S I am running 1.40.12 (the latest one), so far.
There is a 1.40.13 beta out there, but I don?t think it gone add much extra functions.

[hatembr]

can u post some audio files plz so we hear the difference ?

[Hollowcell]

Originally Posted by anykeystudio

Yes the 3 LFO’s and the S/H source sync perfect to the midi clock. As well as the arp. and the internal sequencer. Add that the seq have 4 output (except pitch, duration, vel. etc) that you can address any where in the mod.matrix. This is where powerful and synced to midi clock.

Thanks for this, I was wondering about the Andromeda and sync, and this answers it perfectly.

But she won’t send CC for every knob though. But you have 8 free assignable receiver for midi C.C that you can put anywhere in the mod.matrix. Plus that you have the ribbon, pitch/mod-wheel that always send midi. But the Virus is better on this, yes.

No bugs in the O.S I am running 1.40.12 (the latest one), so far.
There is a 1.40.13 beta out there, but I don’t think it gone add much extra functions.

I asked this more out of interest to see how their updates were comming along.

It's a pitty that it doesn't transmit CC accross the board, but none of the analogue gear here in Japan (that I have been playing with recently) does either - that doesn't make me love it any less.

Compare warm fuzzy bass off my CS-10 with the Virus and the CS wins hands down, but compare hard synced leads and the Virus takes the prize. It's nice to have unique sound sources is what it boils down to i guess.

As Hatembr asked, how about posting some samples somewhere?

[anykeystudio]

Yes, I will try to post some sounds in the future. At the moment I trying to fill my A6 with sound that I like, this is fun but takes time.
Meanwhile there are some sounds on this site;

http://www.code404.com/a6/audio/

Look at what Trent Reznor use in the studio, click on the small images on the page. To me it looks like a Andromeda and a lots of Modular stuff. This will be nice sound demo on the A6? enjoy

http://www.nin.com/current/index.html

/Glenn

[Hollowcell]

Thanks for the links mate!