Regarding the DSP power.

Here the power provided by some recents intel Core :

- Q6600 is around 29 000 MFLOPS
- QX6700, 32 000 MFLOPS
- QX6800, 36 000 MFLOPS

The SonicCore Xite-1 provides 29 988 MFLOPS dedicated to Audio
John Bowen Solaris provides 14 400 MFLOPS
Arturia Origin provides 7 200 MFLOPS

I do not know what an Access Virus TI provide ...

I found the DSP chip inside the Virus TI: Freescale DSPB56367PV150 (2 pieces).

This one provide 2 x 150 = 300 MIPS but I have no MFLOPS figures (I guess the Freescale DSP use fixed point instead of floating units).

And the newly introduced Xite-1D provide 9 600 MFLOPS ...

http://sonic-core.net/joomla.sonicco...id=124&lang=us

It's not one or the other you can use both.

Yes of course.
My feeling is that hardware stuff tends to be less computer dependent (obviously) and also have longer lifecycle ... all give them a chance to be more future proof.
On the soft plug-in side, you are OS dependent and newer version often cost money (different to the Access Virus OS update policy). Soft synth are also suffering from a non dedicated hardware platform (i.e. computer) so the same computation power cannot be used at its best.

On the other side there is not really anything left that can compete with a computer when you look at sampling or sequencing.

So you are right, the best is to combine both world ...

I see things a different way. Hardware is a tangible, manufactured good, and the only element of it that is future proof is the fact that some features are software upgradable. Soft-synths take that level of upgradability and flexibility to a greater dimension.

Well if you look at the products by OpenLabs, they integrate the hardware with what is in essence a dedicated/optimized operating system or very close to it, but at the end of the day it is a dedicated PC / MIDI controller that runs VSTs.

I also have somewhat the opposite opinion about OS dependency and cost with regard to newer versions. I've found that most of my purchased plug-ins provide updates at no cost, and the cost of the plug-in itself is so low (relative to hardware) that it seems very disadvantageous to hardware to allow the topic of cost to even arise. Also as far as I know, in most cases of my purchased instruments I can switch to the Mac version if I wanted without extra cost.

If you look at NI Komplete set of plugs, the upgrade from one version (looks like any) to the last is not free but you have to pay less (175€) for an upgrade rather than buying the full version (466 €).

Same for Reason 5 update (98 €) compared to full version (298 €) ...

This is just fair as one could have to pay for extra features (and extra work from the plug-in "manufacturer").

I just felt the Access upgrade policy to be clever as with free upgrade you can get new features and upgrade your Virus as long as the DSP can bear it.

The idea behind this is that as hardware is often more expensive than software, this is just a kind of compensation and could prevent people from waiting before buying that the last upgrade is out (which could be neverending).

Still reselling software is not that easy, especially if it is not up-to-date. Maybe it is easier with hardware as long as this hardware has proven to be future proof ...

Hardware is more responsive than software when you are interacting directly with the hardware itself (live on stage, in studio etc). However when you get closer to what you want to produce, I find hardware MIDI delays/latency etc to be an issue, which makes it much less responsive if thats the right word.

As far as Komplete and Reason... I'm not sure about those since I have used neither. I could name three VSTs that could all be purchased together for probably under $600 US that will solve almost any synth need, polyphony only limited by the CPU you have, no latency, there would be no upgrade cost beyond that, and you would get both PC and Mac for same price. I'm not sure the same value situation exists in the hardware synth world.

So which one ?

You mean which VST do I like best right now? If I could only keep three, it would probably be:

Dune http://synapse-audio.com/dune.php
Zebra2
Sylenth1

In that order, but that depends on what kind of music you want to make.

If nothing else, spend 10 mins or so with the Dune demo. Programming it will feel right at home after the Virus.