Pops and clicks

[Demokid]

Hi,

I'm a new member. I just bought a used Virus Kc in perfect condition. I have the same problem with clicking/popping noise from both headphone/outputs. I have it both in Single/Multimode. It sometimes sounds like a sort of noise gate.
The tone is faded out and after ca one second I can hear a click noise then silence. Sometimes with the synth is in idle I hear the same clicks. I'm running OS 6.5.
This is a major problem for me since I'm going to use it as my live keyboard.

Kind regards
Demokid

[cynep]

I posted a rather long-winded rant about this problem on virusti forum a while ago, only to have some rather fanboyish and overzealous board members along with Ben Crossland tell me that the problem was me in no uncertain terms. I was especially disapointed with Ben's blatant denial that problem exists, where as evidence is very clear.

So, yes - I've also experienced it on EVERY TI MK1 - desktop, keyboard, keybard (again), polar and Snow (though on snow, it seemed a lot more well-behaved for some reason, perhaps it's the hard limit of 4 patches and optimized patches).

The last TI I owned - Polar - had even worse problems. Pressing two adjacent keys in a multi arrangement would force stuck keys, I never even used Virus Control because it made playing the synth impossible. Zips, cracks, pops, stuck notes, tons of problems. I even had a system board swapped out in my last polar and still came back with most of them. I finally gave up and dumped it.

On TI 2 I haven't noticed it, which leads me to believe that perhaps the whole reason why TI2 exists is simliar to Windows 7 - it's a bug fix to irreprable problems. Seems like original hardware was crappy, so Virus axed it and released Virus 2 to stop flooding the market with buggy hardware that was bound to tarnish the brand. Smart move, if this is in fact so.

But to address original poster - in my experience with TI2 for the last 24 hours, I'm happy to report that previously noted artifacts seem to be addressed in new hardware, as long as you don't choke the synth with obscene patches. I had 4 "level 5" patches running nicely in a multi without much nonsense.

But... I did notice that ARP was out of sync with the rest on one of the patches. It may be either patch itself, apr pattern or perhaps OS. So far, TI2 seems to be at least better in that area. I won't say it's gone until I've spent enough time with it.

Personally, I'd suggest dumping the original TI while you can and prices are still high.

[ShortBus]

Is a less than 5 bar patch even worth wrighting? I understand polyphany taxing the virus but like you ive also seen note stealing and pops and clicks only using 3-4 timbres some being monophonic, and dont get me wrong I love the virus more than anything but 80 voices at 16 parts is a little of a stretch. If it fixed the problem I would trade my ti 1 plus 500 bucks for a ti2 to Access, (just hinting around).

[umdesch4]

I noticed this problem just last night with a Snow running in Sonar...playing back a 4 part multi sequence and attempting to record it via USB. It was at 4 bar complexity, and not chopping any notes, but I was getting all kinds of clicks and pops.

Then I discovered something interesting. Instead of recording the audio in Sonar, on a lark I fired up Adobe Audition, set my record source to "TI Snow USB", hit record, flipped back to Sonar and played back the sequence. For some strange reason, I suddenly ended up with a clean playback/recording without any artifacts.

I'm suspicious that this has more to do with the USB communication, than something wrong with the audio data being generated in the unit itself.

[Numina]

Hi - I started this thread awhile ago and just checked back... wow, looks like this is indeed a common problem.

I also should say I use my TI in stand alone mode - I only connect the USB port for software updates. So I can say with confidence that the USB connection doesn't have anything to do with these issues.

This evening I sat down and planned to dig deep into the TI and make some new sounds but right off the bat the pads I was working on started popping/clicking. The resource bar was at 3 to 4 and I'd only be playing 4 or 5 notes at a time and the clicks/pops are all over it. I stopped working on it.

I love my TI too, but it's now just plain frustrating. I'm not an expert, but it seems like there ought to be a way to correct this with a software update.

Multi-mode is pretty much useless for me, so all I can do is work in single mode and pray the pops/clicks don't come up during recording.

At least we're all in the same boat.

J.

[Numina]

To be fair, I felt it necessary to follow up here on my pop & click rant and mention some surprising results... After having owned my TI1 for some time now I decided it was time to splurge on a TI|2 Polar as I may be using this for gigging some time soon and wanted not only a smaller synth but a TI with more power.

I spent this morning loading up my old singles and multis and lo and behold I have the SAME EXACT issues as before - i.e. pops and clicks! So, the good news is I do not own a faulty or defective TI1. I am thankful for this. The disappointing news is that I apparently eat up way too much processing power in multimode - it seems to be related to heavy use of reverb although I can't say for sure. I will say that the pops and clicks are less frequent in the TI|2 but not only do I still have these issues, I've had the unit lock up on me already and do some crazy light shows when testing the the Multi-Channel mode setting (the same issues I've experienced on my TI1). So, I guess this is just the way these synths are. Hope I did not offend anyone at Access with my rant - it's still a pain, but I can live with it because IMO the Virus TI is, hands down, the ultimate in atmospheric pads and I couldn't live without it.

Bottom line is, for those of you who do experience pops and clicks, particularly in multimode and using a lot of effect, you likely do NOT have a defective unit. Rather the TI is just limited by the sheer amount of processing going on in complex programs.

I would much prefer running into voice stealing / cutoff notes rather than harsh pops and clicks, but this is just something we're going to have to live with.

J.