Access virus c youtube

Oscillator detune affected by keyfollow is not linear - the higher up the keyboard you play, the less osc 2 and 3 is detuned internally which provides somewhat more musical results.

The huge amount of possible destinations — virtually every parameter of the synth, including all FX — not just in the modmatrix , but in the LFO section as well. There are only a very few parameters you can not modulate in this beast, but the downside is the limited number of modulation matrix destination slots in the B 6 and C models 9 , which has finally been put in the TI right Together with the aforementioned 29 hardwired modulations destinations the basically fixed architecture Virus unequivocally deserves the 'semi-modular' attribute Randomness adds a significant fascination to sound in form of unpredictability and available in the Virus architecture at multiple points :.

Well tuned envelopes with super fast snappy attack. According to the old Virus A catalog laying here, it takes 22 microseconds!!! This attack is perfect for great plucks and meaty basses, despite the fact that its attack is fixed linear. The release phase is exponential and fades out very smoothly into silence without artifacts at its longest settings: around 47 seconds.

The Sustain Time is also a Virus specialty: the usually steady sustain level can rise or fall over time. The Punch: it adds a tiny snap to the start of the attack phase, to emphasize the attack similarly like an enveloper shaper would do. The Analog Boost parameter adds some character - it actually very mildly bends the waveforms, transforming the sound more vintage-like - see its effect in the video above. All four low-pass, high-pass, band-stop, band-pass classic Virus filters are non-self-oscillating 2 and 4 pole filters , so it is possible to get 6 pole by cascading the two filters.

The response of any single filters is very smooth, however they may become unstable when e. The nature of the classic low-pass filter somewhat invites users to make cool, dark sounds like in Virus Dark Cinematics. Lighter patches requires a different approach. This mid Frequency, Q and Gain can be fully modulated from the matrix.

The low-pass and high-pass distortion modes became redundant after the arrival of this new EQ but kept for compatibility reasons and this is one more chance for filter modulation anyway. Global distortion provides a very wide range of cool grungy sound especially when played polyphonically with the Digital, Rectifier and SampleRate Reducer plus mixed with voice-level distortion too. The really amazing effect section : These are not the usual grainy sounding effects found on some other synths from this era.

The effects are the same first class as the rest of the components and stay very usable even at extreme parameters settings. Delays are surprisingly versatile even with a few controls, the pattern delays instantly generate the dramatic grooves for any sound. The sound of the Phaser was a distinctive mark of the Virus from the early days, can sound very subtle vintage or strongly resonates for special effect.

Chorus is a stereo widening and multiplication effect, quite essential as it helps you to get stereo widening without the need of switching Unison on. Believe me, it does matter when it halves or divides several times the polyphony available In my experience all these effect parameters being modulated by envelopes, LFO, etc.

Despite of the popular misbelief, Virus can sound very analogue if you need that, just listen to the amazing Jarre-inspired analoguesque patches of Virus wizard Per Kristian Risvik presets are downloadable on his website , all created on a single Virus kb click the link to play - it is all about programming experience:. The more you can go into details the more you'll understand it so you can get much more out of it that's fits to your style. Even some small modifications of the Init patch often took me to a direction that gave me a unique and inspiring patch.

Does it sound stupid to learn a synth up to the microscopic level? It depends In an upcoming article I'll show you some useful tips how to use the Virus a bit smarter.

Using too many software instruments can easily feel you dizzy because of the multitude of choices. Moreover, the 'perfect quality without character' is often sounds compromised for the ear: it is clean, shiny, bright What if you could use just one synth, knowing it inside-out and be sure that it always delivers the character people are used to and like to hear?

For me this could be the Virus above all. Viruses are probably the most complex and versatile digital synths on the market excluding the workstation category, like Yamaha Montage , they are nasty creatures with incredible charisma. If you want to go deeper, the initial learning curve may be steeper, but if you are serious about synthesis and synthesizer sound design, any Virus model will always be a first-class and reliable choice on the long term.

I wish Access would keep updating the lineage and giving us more polyphony and features — Virus synths are endlessly useful, and have a nice quick workflow. The Virus TI line of synthesizers includes 4 different variations: two keyboard models and two desktop versions.

The great news is that all of these instruments produce the same award-winning sound. In this way, we offer you a choice of formats without compromising the most important aspect of any instrument: how well it performs musically. This synthesizer will make any desktop proud! The TI Desktop features an all-metal enclosure with a wooden strip on the front. Loads of knobs and buttons give direct access to the most important sound shaping parameters. This range of instant access hands-on control will delight those who don't like menu diving.

Like all other Virus TI synthesizers, a stereo analogue input offers the power to process external signals through the Virus' sound engine. An optional 19" rack mounting kit is available for purchase. Its compact form factor makes the TI Snow an ideal choice for traveling musicians. It's footprint is not larger than an issue of Mix Magazine. The patch select buttons make searching for the right sound a breeze and allow you to access any of the internal patches with four or fewer button clicks.

The wooden side panels offer a great "grip" and make transportation a more enjoyable task. With over onboard sounds you will never run out of ideas while jamming. Designed as the ideal companion to any DJ or project studio, this key model is not only compact but also stunningly beautiful. The side panels are a mix of wood and pure aluminium, while the white LEDs add class and style. The wavetables step very obviously while scanning, and lack the smooth changes between closely related tables available in some PPG-type instruments.

But more coarse timbral stepping effects can still sound interesting. For example, routing the velocity values of MIDI Note On messages to Wave Sel is a quick and effective way to add timbral control to sequences and bass lines. It's not so useful for manual control, unless you have the exquisitely toned and sensitive fingers of a top classical pianist, with a controller keyboard to match!

For a more extreme effect, you can use the velocity values of MIDI Note Off messages to add extra stepped changes within each note, so that the timbre changes when you release a key. A worthy challenge is to create evolving Wavestation-like pads. Because the wave selection is stepped rather than continuous, you can't do this by modulating Wave Sel.

But if you set the three oscillators to different fixed digital wave shapes you can then use the LFOs or the envelopes to crossfade between them — not as complex an effect, but one that can still sound good with careful fine-tuning. At the virtual analogue end of the Shape control's travel you can create some very punchy effects in the time-honoured analogue way by patching an LFO or envelope to control pulse width.

This routing sounds particularly good on the Virus, and no owner should be without at least a couple of patches that do this. You can also mute an oscillator to match a beat by sending its pulse width to the percent extreme with an LFO. Use a square LFO waveform to switch it on and off, or other waveforms to fade it. A less extreme effect is to detune the oscillators by a small amount and use this technique to add movement as the oscillators fade in and out, changing pulse width as they do so.

Modulating Shape offers fewer possibilities than modulating Wave Sel — which means you're usually best off ignoring the fact that Shape is one of the default destinations available on LFO2. But it can be interesting to crossfade between digital and analogue wave shapes using the envelopes, perhaps creating a sharp percussive digital 'donk' at the start of a note, and ending with an analogue tail.

This can work well if you leave Wave Sel fixed. Trying to sync Shape modulation with Wave Sel changes can easily get unwieldy, and it takes a rare level of persistence and adventurousness to create listenable patches that rely on both effects.

But as we'll see below, the LFOs have a few tricks that make Shape modulation more useful than it would be otherwise. Although Access have done their best to confuse everyone about the different Virus models, the most basic developments and modifications are very straightforward, and the architecture has remained similar throughout. The main changes are extra polyphony in later variants from 12 voices in the original Virus A to 24 in the Virus B and Classic, to 32 in the Virus C series and Indigo 2 and some extra modulation slots.

The new Classic, which is more or less a Virus B reincarnated at a lower price, is even redder. Perhaps the biggest update to the Virus C is the addition of a Moog-style filter mode. It's traditional to hype all things Moog-like, but in this instance the new filter more than lives up to expectations. There have also been some minor panel changes on the Virus C, with some new knobs and switches for LFO and oscillator control, but the outline remains familiar — anyone who has used one Virus should have no trouble adapting to a different one.

The keyboard variants simply add a keyboard, whereas the XL variant, which put a Virus C inside a 1U rack, was not a success and has now been discontinued. The Virus has also always been available as a plug-in.

Individual polyphony is limited to 20 voices, but with an appropriate license it's possible to run multiple copies for a maximum polyphony of voices in a Pro Tools system.

Architecturally these variants are very similar to the hardware models. The virtual control panels are rather plainer, but this doesn't affect the sound. Oscillator two is just like oscillator one, but with extra Semitone and Detune settings.

Also available are FM and Sync options. Sync works as you'd expect. One handy tip is that oscillator one has its own Semitone setting buried inside the oscillator Edit menus. Using this, you can tune it down a couple of octaves. Now when you select Sync, oscillator two can provide some very rich and broad static timbres depending on the relative pitch offset. Mix in the output of the sub-oscillator, and you have a very impressive sub-bass.

You can create all the usual ripping sync effects by modulating the frequency of oscillator two with either an LFO or one of the envelopes. Generating clearly-pitched FM tones using the Virus's FM Amount control can be tricky, as it sometimes lacks adequate resolution, so you sometimes also need to use the Detune control to find the sweet spot. The FM feature is more complex than Sync, with more sources to choose from. As with Sync, the destination is always oscillator two, but the source can be oscillator one's wave, noise, or an external input.

Oscillator one's Tri, Pos Tri, and Shape which uses the digital output controlled by Wave Sel options speak for themselves, and the best way to hear the differences between them is to try them. Each has a different sweet spot, where the FM Amount setting aligns all the overtones in a way that eliminates beating and produces rich and reedy timbres instead of clangy ones.

Sometimes the FM Amount resolution is too coarse to find this sweet spot exactly, and when that happens you can use oscillator two's Detune control to compensate. If you want clangy effects or ones with lots of beating, you can create them using the Semitone, Detune, or FM Amount knobs in any combination.

Note that you can also control FM Amount using the envelopes. This can sound a tad too abstract, in a Dr Who kind of a way, for pads, but it can add a hint of extra punch and slap to bass sounds and leads. An unusually interesting source for FM is the noise setting. This adds a kind of filtered noise effect around the pitch of oscillator two, and is good for grungy, dirty, quasi-distorted noises.

Small FM Amount settings add an interesting hint of this. At large settings the sound falls apart into something that sounds like distortion of extreme nastiness. The sound responds to the Noise Color setting also in the oscillator Edit menu , and negative settings have much more low-end rumble.

If you detune oscillators one and two as low as they go, you get stepped transients which can trigger classic random analogue blips if fed to the filters with the Resonance knob turned up. Turning on Sync and dialling in extreme modulation of oscillator one with plenty of noise on oscillator two creates huge sheet-like ripping sounds. In between there's a range of timbral possibilities which is ideal for grungified distorted solo sounds. The FM section also includes two external stereo inputs.

You can mix either of the two stereo inputs to mono sums, or select any of the four inputs separately, and then feed them into this section. Vocals work surprisingly well here, assuming you like industrial music — delicate processing for ballads is not this feature's strong point!

Hiding out of sight in the oscillator section are oscillator three and the sub-oscillator. The latter is a very simple low-end fattener, one octave down from oscillator one, with either square or triangle waveforms.

A panel knob in the oscillator mixer section lets you set the level. Oscillator three will either follow oscillator two's settings if Slave is selected, or can be used as a spare extra waveform. FM and Sync don't affect oscillator three, so you can use oscillator two for richness and distortion while filling out the body of the sound with oscillators one and three.

Note that using oscillator three cuts down polyphony by around a third — there aren't many situations where it makes a life-and-death difference to the size of the sound, so for patches you plan to use multitimbrally its use is perhaps best considered an optional extra.

The basic details of the Virus's various filter modes and patches are described comprehensively in the manual, and there's no need to repeat them here. Eliminating Muddiness: Too many patches based on low-pass filters can make the low end of your mix sound muddy.

A static high-pass filter in series with a low-pass filter can remove some of the obesity, adding clarity to pads, leads, and even bass lines. Just set filter two to work as a high-pass filter, and put it in series after filter one. Then move the cutoff of filter two upwards until you get rid of the low-end bloat.

Aside from some dance styles and music with ultrasonic effects, most music benefits from having the low end tidied up. This can help preserve detail and avoid synth mush, especially when blending a lot of analogue-like patches.

It can even allow you to maximise the apparent level, because faithfully reproducing deep sub-bass frequencies takes a lot of dynamic range for little subjective impact.

It can even be worth tidying up the low end when you don't have the oscillators tuned low. This is because the envelopes on the Virus are fast enough to produce near-DC clicks, pops, and thuds. Sometimes you want to leave these in because they add extra punch to sounds, but when you don't a high-pass filter is a good way to get rid of them.