Quote:
Originally Posted by MBTC
In that case, you might be thrilled with it. On the Virus (and I suspect most modern synths), the notion of parts / voices / polyphony is kind of a misnomer at least in terms of paper specs of a synth. On the Virus Ti you'll see a little meter that tells you the "complexity" of the sound (i.e. how processor hungry it is), so things like polyphony will vary based on which sound you chose. I've told this story before, but when I had a Ti2, I remember loading a factory patch called D50 bells or something similar, that did infact sound like a Roland D50, but I think I was able to get at most 5 simultaneous notes out of it, and to the best of my knowledge that was taking the juice off the entire board. All of this surprised me because I never thought of "bells", or FM synthesis in particular as being processor heavy.
That said though, if one part for you is usually 1 osc and 1 filter and no effects, theres a good chance you'll be happy with the results, and that a lot of what I've said wouldn't apply to your case, however part of the real selling points of the modern Virus are the DAW integration, USB, etc.. so if you just want the raw Virus sound you might want to just pick up an older model used. I don't think any of them have sequencers built in? I always thought that was a primary requirement for a standalone workstation.
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Thats actually very surprising about the bells using up all the power. I knew how the polyphony was worked out but still I thought it had much more power than that. Actually I had considered using a sampler-sequencer to drive the Virus, which would mean that if I wanted to use any particularly hungry sounds I could sample them.
Part of the reason I wanted a TI was the dedicated effects per channel.
If that's the way it is though with the polyphony I wonder how successful I will be in the end. Maybe I should look into those older Novation synths, though the K-station I tried I thought sounded okay, but not as good as the Virus.
Its not like I can just endlessly try different gear which is why I am asking around about this. I wonder if my dream of a super-hardware groove box is just that!
I figure, 4 or 5 parts monophonic percussion probably just involving 1 osc each. 3 or 4 monophonic single or 2 osc lines, delay, reverb, some compression and a few pads. I think it sounds like it may choke once the pads are added.
But my reasoning is if I have to do any bouncing down I may as well get an Analog synth, which although does less, does that letter better (for me). I either like raw analog sounds or if I use something like the virus I like more processed or complex sounds.