Just some background -- I'm currently in the process of literally re-doing my hobby studio from the ground up. I don't currently own a Virus, but I did once and gave up and sent it back. I'm close to pulling the trigger on another one if it makes sense, but the current state of USB makes me nervous. I'm a PC guy first and a Mac guy second. I didn't have a Mac when I first tried the Ti2. After I sent the unit back, I realized there were some other devices I had (GPS and radar detector) that were also finicky about USB port.
One thing I have done differently since my encounter with the Virus is install a separate USB3 card into the PC that is becoming the backbone of my setup. I don't have a Virus at the moment to test whether it will solve the issues I had, but I can say that using one of the ports on the card with a known good cable unconditionally solved all other USB issues I was having on that PC. Now, I was going to suggest adding one of these cards, then I saw that you're dealing with an iMac and Macbook Pro and felt slightly gutted to even embark on that response. The Mac that I currently own is a higher end (i7) Mac Mini, and Logic Pro works beautifully on it with softsynths (like I said, never connected the Virus to it since I didnt have the mini back then), but that little aluminum lunchbox is never going to get a USB upgrade by my hands -- in fact it currently has a Thunderbolt port that's not even being used. One of these days I may get a chance to connect a Virus to it to see how it goes, but it sounds like your Apple hardware is just as recent so I don't think my results should be any better.
There have been a few observations I've made about consensus here from folks who have used the TI aspect of the Virus a lot more than myself. One of those is that lately, it seems that the Virus software has the best success rate with Cubase on Windows. Sucks to be the other 70% of folks who use a different DAW or a Mac, but that's the consensus. The other observation is that the folks who are still not off-put by the persnickety-ness of the integration seem to be willing to bounce down the output from the Virus, adjust for latency and whatnot. In other words I don't think softsynth-like workflow is commonplace.
Are you sure that every aspect of your environment (hardware platform, OS version, DAW type and version etc) mirrored Jorg's during your troubleshooting call with him? If not then it would be great to know what he used. It wouldn't surprise me if an Access employee has whittled down his setup to exclude anything that could possibly interfere with the Virus.... what's disturbing about Access as a company is that if they really have been able to achieve reliable integration, they have not been forthcoming with providing the details of the environments they've achieved it with. If nothing else they should be able to baseline the OS version and provide an image of Access setup materials that guarantees the same success, considering all things equal (same hardware, etc). I hold myself to that same standard with regard to the software I provide to my clients. To my knowledge Access has never even come close to stepping up to that level of accountability. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
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