In big need of help: Virus Control / Logic Express trouble

[fantom_x]

Hello, fellas

I recently bought a masterpiece of art called Virus Ti keyboard and it’s God’s greatest creation to play and tweak until I connect it to my Mac mini by means of USB and try to make it work (Virus Control, to be more specific), I mean, when I try to make this goddamn Logic Express recognize my Ti in order to be able to save some patches that I downloaded from the net (and that I think are nice) into my Ti keyboard with the help of VC. Please help me, because I’m a real newbie and I’m gonna ask you some real basic (and perhaps stupid) questions. I read the owner’s book from cover to cover (the manual that the Ti came with), the Apple Logic tutorial, I connected my Ti to my Mac mini in order to download the latest OS (2.5.1) – I did it. One of my problems is that I bought the 7.0.0 version of the LE some time ago, and I only managed to upgrade it to version 7.0.1. I downloaded all the upgrade packages I could find on the net (7.1.1, 7.2.1, 7.2.3), but even in 7.1.1’s case, when I tried to unpack it and install the upgrade, the installer sent a message like “no eligible version of LE has been found on your hard disk” – something like that. I don’t wanna turn back to those nasty PC’s, I gave up those windowze machines a long time ago, ‘cause Macs are much more stable, much more reliable, much nicer and much easier to use. Moreover, so far I ‘ve been a Roland Fantom X6 user ( which I traded to buy a Ti, after saving some more money) – but that is a digital, sample-based workstation, it’s a completely different machine and my experience in VA synths is virtually non-existent. My questions are:

1) Is there any way out there in which I could avoid using a software sequencer but still be able to use VC ? (So far, I have never seen VC on my monitor)

2) I also have a M-Audio FireWire Audiophile soundcard that works well with my Mac mini and it has 1 MIDI IN and 1 MIDI OUT. Is it possible to connect the MIDI OUT of this soundcard to the MIDI IN of the Ti keyboard and do something like SYSEX / MIDI-DUMP in order to save those downloaded patches directly on the Ti keyboard without using VC (and LE, if that cannot be avoided…) ? (Not that I’ve ever used VC so far…)

3) If questions 1 and 2 have both negative answers, please tell me the necessary steps to configure LE and start VC. I know that the Ti can also be used as a soundcard, but after connecting it to the Mac mini and starting the LE host, I went to LE’s preferences ⇒ Audio ⇒ Drivers (CoreAudio / Enabled)⇒ in the dropdown menu, the LE doesn’t even recognize the Ti (and I heard it should have) – or, at least, not in this version of LE. When I connect my soundcard to Mac mini (by means of FireWire), the LE “sees” it, I even connected both the M-Audio soundcard and the Ti (by means of USB) to Mac mini in the same time, no hardware conflicts between the Ti’s own soundcard and the M-Audio one, but still the LE doesn’t recognize the Ti. In the dropdown menu, I only had 2 choices: Mac mini’s internal soundcard and the M-Audio one. I know it sounds pathetic, but if that little toy called GarageBand could open the VC, I would send the LE directly to trash.

4) Suppose that eventually the problem from question 3 is solved, how do I start the VC ? I’m not interested in using the LE’s sequencer but mainly in using the VC…

5) In your knowledge, are Ableton Live and / or Cakewalk Sonar and / or Steinberg Cubase any better / easier to use / more stable ? What do you think ? Would you advice me to buy another software sequencer and give up LE ? Would those be easier to configure and “recognize” the VC plug-in?

6) Even when I try to open the Virus Ti tutorial song, I can hear no sound….

Thanx guys for your help