Anyone have some deep, complex ambient pads to share?
 

Hey, folks,

Still learning the Virus ropes, and one thing I'm finding helpful is to go into patches I like and really try to figure out why they sound the way they do. My favorite patches are evolving, swirly ambient soundscapes. Does anyone have some they'd like to share? Thanks!:grin:

seconded!

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Search by category Pad in Virus Control or right in the hardware.

I've already been through all of those, I'm looking for more.

Go on access' site, 1000's of freebie patches on there :)

accessmusic.de

I know, I've already been through most of them. THanks.

Can you provide some example songs or artists to give us a better idea of what you are after? I have a lot of the Ultimate X Sounds TI sets, such as Pads Heaven, Atmospheric Sounds, Hybrid Sounds and Drone Sounds, but they aren't free to share. Might be able to recommend a particular set that's worth buying.

Cheers,

EG

Not off the top of my head... but have Astral Voyage and Pads Heaven, so those are kind of what I'm looking for, just wondering if anyone has any to share.

You might also want to check out NI's Absynth which is absolutely killer for the type of thing you are looking for. I personally don't think the virus is particularly suited to the long evolving pad type stuff. Just my 2c.

I have Absynth. Thanks.

So out of all the patches on the access site & all the soundbanks that Absynth comes with you still can't find what you are looking for???
I suggest learning to program the fuckers, Lol :rolleyes:

I didn't say I can't find what I'm looking for, I just said I'm looking for more.

I think granular synths are some of the best for pads. They can be done on any synth I guess but to me a kind of slow modulation of changing harmonics is what gives it the effect I think most folks mean when they speak of the swirl. A synth like Zebra does that really well because you can morph from one waveform to another.

The king of that is probably Padshop Pro, I highly recommend it if you're into pads.

Not what you're looking for I know. In terms of Virus soundsets I think the issue is a lot of them are paid thus folks can't freely trade them around.

Good to know.... I'm still just starting to dive into sound design, so that's some useful info.

Just to clarify, I wasn't expecting anyone to upload paid stuff.

Thanks.

If you have Pads Heaven Vol 1 (sounds like you do), if you could pick a sound that typifies the type of sound you like and tell me what you like about it, I can try to dissect it a little bit and talk about how its constructed.

One thing I'll mention about Zebra2 vs Padshop Pro -- they are very different instruments. Padshop Pro is more like, you load in samples then watch amazing things emerge almost automatically, they will sound great but you won't really care how they got there. Might not be what you're looking for.

Zebra2 is deeper and way more versatile, and great sounds will not happen automatically or randomly but you'll learn a lot more from it. The reason I thought of Zebra is the visual it gives you for morphing between waveforms but that's not the only way to get a swirly pad.

I often use Absynth for this kind of stuff (have no idea why the OP hates it). In fact, Absynth is the softsynth which I use the most alongside with Virus. But basically whenever I need a deep evolving pad and don't feel like building the sound from scratch, I'm searching for "pads" in the Virus Rom library (I also have various free stuff from the Access site) and usually find a preset that does the job as a starting point - just tweak the envelopes, add some mod assignments and a hefty amount of reverb and you can get a nice soundscape from basically anything.

The Art of Proper Reading seems to be a dying craft.

Which is exactly why the OP asked for more examples of long evolving sounds on the Virus... he wants to learn program the f***er.

"Have" and "Hate" are close, but not quite the same... :rolleyes:

I think the UXS sounds are great and also provide a good source to learn how to do complex patches. I'd suggest to check out the "Atmospheres Vol. 1 - 3". The only problem with them is that many of those patches max out the Virus TI resources and you have to find out ways to make those patches less power hungry.

There are a couple of great libraries available from the Access website (yes, I know, you know) for free which may not be obvious to contain pad sounds and which may be a source of inspiration. Away from my Virus looking at the available downloads, I remember to have found interesting patches in:

- The Unfinished Chiaroscuro Signature Set
- Icon Of Coil Signature Bank 2011
- Numb - 0714 Sound Set
- Tarekith Elemental soundset
- Icon Of Coil Sound Set

Naturally, it depends on what you're looking for.

Another great resource to learn Virus TI sound design are the Virus TI Boot Camp videos by Ben Crosland you find on Youtube. He explains some nifty tricks using less obvious techniques to get movements in sounds.

My personal experience to create moving/evolving sounds is:

- modulate the modulators!
- set an LFO to random or a complex waveform at a low rate and use that to additionally modulate OSC wave index, other LFOs speeds, filter cutoff, effect parameters
- modulate an LFO by itself
- use multiple source to modulate the same destination
- use the mod wheel and poly pressure as an additional source
- use the arpeggiator as a mod source

Sorry, not sure what happened to my eyes :roll:

I often do go in and look, I'll go into something I like and see what makes it sound the way it does.

I'll check out those other ones on the Access site. You're right in that you can't really tell what's in a lot of them. THanks for all the advice, everyone.

You may check out HGSounds Astronomy Patches, Ephilion Signature Sound Set, Rui Peixoto - AquaTIc sound set and 128 signature patches by Howard Scarr - there must be some good pads in these banks. aAll of them may be free dowloaded here

http://www.virus.info/page/render/la...l?id=1&cat=10#

are those all for the TI? are some of them backwards compatible with virus C?

The patches will work with any Virus but some will not sound the same if they use some of the features that are only available on the TI.

BTW, on http://www.virus.info/downloads if you select "Discontinued Products" and "Sounds an Patches", you'll get the list of patches that were made and will work for pre-TI models.