The Unofficial Access Virus & Virus TI Forum - since 2002

This is going to be a bit of a story, but here it goes...

I'm 20 years old and have tried to compose music since I was 15 or so. One day, I too, was looking for a VST or THE synth that made that fantastic "trancelead" sound (now known as the Supersaw), even though it may be "old" I am still in love with it :P Of course I ventured into the depths of the Internet and I soon found out that the Roland JP-8000 ultimately was the synth I should be looking for, but no one was willing to sell that one at the time. I continued my search for alternatives and ended up with the fact that I really wanted the real deal, no VST lookalikes, just a normal hardware synthesizer that I could program my own sounds with. I began looking for a used Virus C, but I soon realized it still was a little too pricey for my economy back then.

My first synth ever got to be a secondhand Virus A about 2 years ago, I loved it then and I still am in love with it while I use it especially for basses.

One more year flew past me while learning the synth and having great fun with it, and during that time I found myself getting hooked on shopping synths, preferable any Viruses to be precise... I had that year managed to purchase (all secondhandly of course): The Virus PoCo with multiple DSPs license, Virus C (Indigo 2) and incredibly enough, a JP-8000! It really is great fun to hook up all the synths either by layering them and jamming or just using them to a point where they complement eachother really nice in a sequenced kind of project.

Utimately, I realized I may have been was a bit old-fashioned regarding my synth choices and began to look at the TI, which was and still is very expensive! Then the Virus TI Snow came along at half the price tag, carrying with it... the Hypersaw... Damn, I thought, I'm living with my parents and I'm earning quite a bit anyway. Why not, it's just a small box that makes interesting sounds and could be hooked up to the computer to make interestings sounds even faster for around 900€, right? :D

So now I sit here with a Virus TI Snow (OS 3.0beta) and all the other synths I previously bought. I have to say that the Virus series is definitely unique synths. I mean, there are tons of features (still counting!), but it's still managable to program once you've got to know them (even the Snow, which basically is to be programmed through the menus!). The TI concept really makes sound designing a breeze, I even took backups of the older Viruses and easily saved them on my computer via the MIDI interface of the TI Snow. I'm still amazed of having the backwards compatibility that the newer Viruses offers while simply improving my old patches!

Again, I'm only 20 years old so my experience with other synths is not that influenced yet. As I try to see the strenghts in every single one of them, I don't have the heart (or the need) to sell them just yet so therefore I am the proud owner of these:

- Virus A
- Virus PowerCore
- Virus C (Indigo 2)
- Virus TI Snow
(- Roland JP-8000) <-- As it was the main reason for why I began looking for the Access Virus I think it deserves to be mentioned in the list. My main initiative was to make/clone/emulate known sounds, but after I got to know the synths better by each day, amazing inspirations arised to make my own styled sounds... Layering either synth together really is a rewarding technique.

Too long? I'm sorry about that, I just felt I needed to express my feelings for these beasts, which definitely works for more than just trance sounds :P