Seems to me or all Viruses are packed full of problems?

[Timo]

My Korg (Japanese) clips and distorts to hell if the levels aren't manually set up properly.

Originally Posted by fsx

... and it still has some problems, like hard-clipping some instruments while keeping the volume to 127 (seems to clip the internal A/D D/A)

With digital, regardless of how much headroom a person is given, people still want to turn it up beyond it!

Unfortunately that's not how it works, and you need to recondition your perceptions of working with digital, otherwise no headroom will ever be enough.

Imagine you're in a room. There's a wall in front of you, and you run up to it, headbutting it trying to go beyond it. That's someone trying to exceed 16-bit.

Now imagine a scientific boffin has removed that wall and has given you a new wall about 15 yards away. You say "yay!", and despite having all this extra room to bounce around in you instead turn up the level and run up to the wall and repeatedly headbutt it in an attempt to go beyond it. That's someone trying to exceed 24-bit.

Now imagine a scientific boffin now removes this wall and instead gives you a new wall about 30yards away. You say "yay!", and despite having all this massive, massive space to bounce around in you instead turn up the level and run up to the wall and repeatedly headbutt it in an attempt to go beyond it...

Where will it end?

Learn to use the signal within the barriers you're given, not beyond it. You don't always have to use the last 10% of the available headroom. This might have been the case when using 8-bits as the noise floor was high, but this was reduced substantially when using 16-bits, but with 24-bit the noise-floor is literally insignificant! So explore and use all the space within it.

If you use loads of unison, etc. where the patch needs more headroom as the overall sound level increases, you should turn down the overall patch level accordingly. That's perfectly normal! It will not hurt the signal! The Virus uses 24-bit for calculations and has 24-bit D/A. You have tons of room for all the signal. You just need to learn to use it.

I generally tend to keep my patch levels at 90-100, and only consciously turn them up beyond that when needing a 'level boost' for very quiet patches.

If any patches clip, turn the internal patch level down. If you find the rest of the signal is now too quiet for you, you either need to program your patch to be less dynamic in the first place, or you can use a compressor or limiter after it if desired.

Originally Posted by fsx

and the WARN mode working only in MULTI while editing patches.

That's because editing Multis on the earlier Viruses actually overwrite the Single patches that are being referenced. There is no extra memory in Multi mode for storing tweaked patches within them. So if you tweak a patch in Multi mode, that same patch will also be permanently changed in Single mode.

I'm not sure about your noise/hiss query, you might have to go into more detail with that for us.

[damn, did it really take me that long to write]

[aetheria]

Just my experience here - for a while when the TI was new the OS seemed to have some problems and people were having different issues with things like clicks and pops. Things got a lot better over time though.

I bought a used KB model and can tell you one thing - a lot of the issues I had had with it disappeared immediately when I dismantled it and thoroughly cleaned it. I sprayed every knob thoroughly with contact cleaner, sprayed the inside thoroughly with compressed air, put it back together, and it has worked great.

It seems that gunk that gets into the knobs can cause havok somehow with the circuitry - that at least is what was happening in my case.

One nice thing about the way the Virus is built is that it is extremely easy to take apart.

Beyond all that, I just want to say that the sounds that this instrument is capable of creating are absolutely mind-blowing and I have never heard anything in my life like it. Even if I could only play one sustained chord on my Virus, if that was the only use for it, it would still be eminently worth it to me because that sound is beyond comparison to any other synthesizer I have ever heard.