Virus TI2 pricing....

[Totty]

Originally Posted by LivePsy

Totty, if I can assume you currently have a Polar and it works then why do you want a TI2? Gear lust is a fine thing and I have been as guilty as anyone, but the TI2 line is a hardware overhaul without any feature difference. Probably more about lower production cost, changes on the motherboard because of component supplies, improved reliability from things learnt from the TI1, updated looks...

Say you buy a 2.2GHz dual core laptop and 2 months later it comes out in 2.6GHz and also a higher price. Your 2.2GHz laptop doesn't need to be replaced. Say you bought a TB-303 in '82 then complained that they hadn't implemented FM: 10 years later it was prized more than any synth in that decade's current production.

The TI1 is not obsolete,
B

Hi LivePsy,

Of course, I agree, technology depreciated the second you pay for it, and then it only gets worse. Only yesterday did I bring my Roland XV5080 down from the loft and have a blast, it's still great, despite the age and value.

I am extremely grateful to Access for being mature about it and releasing OS3 to everyone, what a great gesture. I cannot think of another company that would do this. I'm just trying to work out what the future is of the TI2 if I did sell my existing Polar. What I'm saying is that I can't see enough benefit. Saying that, I'm sure i'm not Access's primary market. Yes I have GAS at the mo, who wouldn't with a new synth out and all. I would buy a TI2 if I felt that there wouldn't be a major overhaul in a year - but I guess that's the nature of the beast!

On the computer, thats why I sunk loads of cash in my MacPro 8 core. No it won't be the best for much longer, but it's so powerful, I'm hoping it'll last a good 4-5 years.

All the best

Michael

[LivePsy]

I bought a Santa Rosa macbook pro 2 weeks before the refreshed MBP with faster CPU, larger HDD and $100 cheaper came out, so I'm familiar with obsolesence. But the fact remains its very capable and I love it.

I bought a V-Synth at a fairly good price about 2 years before they were discontinued, and hate it but after reading up on a Nord Wave am going to force myself to be creative with the V-Synth. We're always looking for something new but not going to the effort to build a patch from scratch, find out how a particular sound works, and try the same patch on a different synth. Its hours and hours of time wasting, but its learning about sounds and how to get them from the gear we have, not the gear we want.

B

[Totty]

Totally, I'm with you mate.

I am very grateful for what I have, and I know that I am guilty of"chasing the rainbow". The amazing thing is, years ago I had so much less, but my creativity was so much higher. Production was lower, but my ideas were far more focussed with less gear.

But I'm still interested in new gear

[HVX]

Stateside, Sweetwater sound has posted their pricing…

Virus TI2 Keyboard = $2,865.97
Virus TI2 Polar = $2,865.97
Virus TI2 Module = $2,090.97

That's a little less than their price on the previous TI. I think the Kb/Polar were going for $2,975.97, and the Module was $2,165.97. So that's a $110 and $75 difference, respectively.

[Splat!]

Originally Posted by Totty

Totally, I'm with you mate.

I am very grateful for what I have, and I know that I am guilty of"chasing the rainbow". The amazing thing is, years ago I had so much less, but my creativity was so much higher. Production was lower, but my ideas were far more focussed with less gear.

But I'm still interested in new gear

I totally agree with you. Other than improving sound quality, most of my recent investments have merely killed my ideas and effort. I love my Virus and V-synth GT to bits and pieces, but creativity seems to be fading away
But, maybe thats just me...
________
teen videos

[Monobeat]

I used to be a Reason prodigy, I could make that beast so anything and people loved my music to pieces. New songs made every week for years.... then I switched to hardware. Only now after 4 years of getting in the groove with hardware, have I started to find my new flow. It's tough... but highly rewarding in the end... after so much struggle with, "What the hell happened to me?"

[LivePsy]

Mono, how do you cope in hardware not being able to pull out your 29th compressor like you can in Reason? More seriously, how do you get hardware to sound so 'pro' without the sidechaining and eqing you can do in software? I'm leaning towards hardware, but its tough to ignore so much control in software.

B

[Ceri JC]

Originally Posted by LivePsy

Mono, how do you cope in hardware not being able to pull out your 29th compressor like you can in Reason? More seriously, how do you get hardware to sound so 'pro' without the sidechaining and eqing you can do in software? I'm leaning towards hardware, but its tough to ignore so much control in software.

B

This is the main thing I miss when working with hardware. Not the being able to save a whole track (including all patches/settings) as a self contained file, or work on dozens of different tracks at the same time, or even the portability, all of which seem to be common things pros cite as the reason for moving from hardware to software. Unless you're super rich, even if if you have a fairly well equipped studio, you probably don't have several of the same bit of equipment. I like the SH-101, but if I want two different sounds out of it, I can't just open another instance, I need to get one just right, record all the takes of all the different notes on it, record and save that, then change to the other part. If I then want to go back and tweak the first sound, or change the melody on it a bit, I can't. Don't even get me started on recording chords this way.

Same goes for FX units. Say I want to use an RE-201 for a bit of reverb on a snare, some tiny delay on a hh and a big long booming echo on a chord. This means recording all 3 parts seperately and takes about half an hour before I'm happy with it. And as described, I can't then go back and tweak any of the previous parts, if I don't like them, or they don't fit with the new bits, I have to redo them from scratch. Doing the same thing in software takes me under a minute and I can keep altering it after I've done it indefinately.

This means it's vastly slower to work with hardware, the way I make music. At the moment, I am trying to overcome this to some degree by "sketching" tracks in software, then recreating them on hardware for better sound quality and more of an ability to play/improvise around the tracks. I am also going to look at a new mixers with lots of fx send/returns and a switched patch panel to at least increase the speed of this sort of routing (even if it'll never be as fast as software).

One great advantage I've found though is that I finish tracks a lot quicker; when you're forced to either abandon the track or press on with it as it is, with something less than perfect, you often opt for the later. In software, you can just keep on going back and tweaking it indefinately and get a bit caught up in perfectionism that doesn't really matter/come across when you listen to the track a week later.

I was talking to a mate about this a few weeks back and he pointed out that to a certain extent, we'd been spoilt. I started with software (albeit in the early days, when it was quite crude) so always took its strong points for granted. The people who started with hardware and were used to working with old "one patch at a time" synths must have really been blown away once software got good.