(a long-winded) Hello from Ontario, Canada

[lotus-eater]

Hi everyone. I've been considering a virus ti for a long time, and the release of the TI2 has prompted me to join your lovely forum and learn as much as I can about it before making the leap.

I got into electronic music production about five years ago, and I've finally started to hone in on my sound in the past year and a half. Right now I'm mainly producing a melodic take on Electro (Suction Records being a big influence). The production is pretty basic, as I really try to get everything sounding as funky as possible inside the machines themselves -- not a huge fan of the squash the eff out of everything style that's so prevalent in EM these days.

anyway

I recently performed a liveset in my hometown, and learned a lot about the practicality of electronic music performance.

Right now I'm using an MDUW w/MBase01, Studio Electronics ATC-X, and Evolver. A pretty minimal setup, but I've always been a fan of using just hardware and no more than a couple synths. I play the main riffs and basslines by hand for the duration of my set, and I feel like it adds a lot to the energy of the performance.

As small as that setup is (add in a controller keyboard, mixer, computer and interface for dj-ing, and sometimes the PA), it's still a lot for one person to haul around.

I think the Virus has the potential to simplify things greatly for me. Besides being a wicked synth that I'm sure could easily take the evolver out of the equation, it's also an audio interface and lush controller.

I spent an hour with the TI2 at a music store (obviously not the best place to get an impression of its capabilities) and I loved the feel of the board, both the keys (very important to me) and the knobs. Quickly trying to reproduce some of my patches on the synth I got the impression that it would definitely be capable of getting the ideas across, but I would have to go fairly deep into the instrument to evoke the incredibly up-front bass tones of my ATC-X, which that machine wants to serve up the moment you turn it on. Maybe OS3's character models will help in this regard.

I'm really eager to see access get OS3 straightened out (seems everyone's having major issues with it), and add 64-bit support.

So yeah, I'll be bugging y'all to help me better understand a few of the capabilities of this synth over the coming weeks and months, and will of course chime in when I can offer some advice in the non-virus-specific threads.

Cheers