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General discussion about Access Virus Discussion about Virus A, B, C and TI.

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  #1  
Old 13.05.2013, 08:37 PM
vinayanne vinayanne is offline
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Default New hardware?

Apologies if this has been asked recently (didn't readily find a thread on it)....but does anyone have a sense for whether we can expect new Virus hardware?

I'm reticent to buy one now, given how long the current hardware has been out. From a synthesis perspective, I'm not really wanting for any more. However, I would love to see one of the following:
1) Hardware becomes purely a controller (a la Maschine)
2) Radically improved connectivity/latency

Thanks!
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Old 13.05.2013, 11:26 PM
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My estimates for dates of successive hardware releases have been poor in the past, so I dare not guess further. Access-Music's business model changed with the introduction of the TI. Prior to that they released new hardware synths regularly (once every several years), but with the TI series they gave themselves much more room to add large successive software updates rather than requiring new hardware each time, which is why TI OS is currently version 5 yet the TI hardware has only been refreshed once since the original TI|1, and even then it was a relatively minor refresh rather than a substantially different hardware upgrade.

Timeline (hardware series):-
Virus A launched 1997
Virus B series launched 1999
Virus C series launched 2002
Virus TI|1 launched 2005
Virus Snow (TI|1) 2008... present.
Virus TI|2 launched 2009... present.

Since it was four years between the launches of TI|1 and TI|2, I originally thought TI|3 might come earlier this year (Winter NAMM 2013), but it wasn't to be. TI|3 may come next year, maybe the year after, even if there is a TI|3 at all. I have no clue. Nothing has been publicly stated.

However, we know that Christoph Kemper (aka Kemper Digital), the founder and primary coder for the Virus has been working on a series of high-end profiling amplifiers for guitarists the last two years or so, the first of which was released in January 2012 last year. Several new versions debuted at the 2013 NAMM show earlier this year, and he was working on a pitch-shifter for the Musikmesse that has just been and gone. So whether he will continue to work on the guitar side of things instead of synths for a while, and if so for how long, is unapparent.
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PS > And another thing! Will the Ti|3 have user customisable/importable wavetables? A ribbon-controller or XY-Pad might be nice, too, please! Thanks!
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Old 13.05.2013, 11:26 PM
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Every year around the time of the NAMM show, many of us cross our fingers hoping for a Virus-related announcement, but are disappointed year after year.

This should make a good thread for intertwining substantiated facts with pure speculation to come up with a compilation of conspiracy theories

I'll go ahead and start...

A Virus equivalent of Maschine would imply processing takes place on the host system (PC or Mac) rather than a dedicated hardware device, and thus the Virus would then become merely another soft-synth. This is one of those scenarios that consumers of the product would love but manufactures of the product would hate. Apple and the lessons learned from Steve Jobs before he passed have sent the message to many companies that the profit margin potential on hardware is greater than with software alone, and that more tightly integrated hardware and software, particularly closed and proprietary systems, quite frankly make more money at the end of the day. For this reason, I personally believe we are currently trending the other way, with soft synth vendors looking for ways to become hardware vendors; too much financial incentive not to.

From a sheer technical standpoint, some believe the filter processing (speed thereof?) of the Virus has not yet been matched by soft-synths. I'm not sure this is necessarily true, but if there is any truth to it, the characteristics of the filters could be a result of special processors on the DSPs used by the Virus (the Freescale 56321) which have dedicated parallel filter coprocessors (dubbed EFCOP). If there is any truth to this, it would mean that general purpose computing chips like the CPUs in most folks' computer would not be able to do filters and certain types of FX (think convolution reverb) with the same efficiency as the DSP in the Virus, so any advantage to the ears of VA on dedicated hardware would be lost. I have heard that the VST plug-in standard (still the most used) does not allow for extremely efficient parallelism...again my own personal experiences with modern VSTs and their CPU core usage would contradict this... but if true, it may add another hurdle to doing sound processing on a CPU versus a dedicated DSP.

As far as connectivity and latency improvments, this seems to be the biggest area of complaint and I believe the area that we are all hoping for the big breakthrough. The question is, why hasn't it been done to date, and why is a new product line needed to accomplish it? My UltraNova, which is similar in that the sound engine is on the synth, communicates optionally with a plug-in editor via audio over USB, has an option built-in audio interface, etc. seems to have little or no issues delivering on the expectations of USB integration, at about one fifth the cost of the Virus. Granted it is mono-timbral and on paper spec offers less voices, but for the cost, someone could buy five of the things to offset that issue.

Sometimes I wonder if the exhorbant price point of the Virus isn't part of what helps to sustain it's status. Back in the 70's, Harley Davidson was getting their lunch eaten by cheaper, higher quality Japanese motorcyles, they revamped their image by dramatically increasing their price. The name of the restaurant escapes me, but a struggling sandwich shop somewhere in Philadelphia decided to achieve notoriety by offering a cheesesteak sandwich that cost $100. In both cases, it turned out to be a brilliant marketing scam for them. I'm starting to wonder if Kemper is a similar minded evil genius.
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Old 14.05.2013, 01:21 AM
vinayanne vinayanne is offline
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Great perspectives (and thanks for your insight)!
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Old 15.05.2013, 03:53 AM
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Would be great if full High Speed USB 2 or USB 3 Bandwidth were utilized and call the new beast, "VIRUS OUTBREAK" ...just my two cents. I just find it really odd that USB 3 is not even utilized in newer audio interfaces .
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Old 15.05.2013, 04:49 AM
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I know there is always going to be a market for hardware but it is getting increasingly smaller as the generations that grew up with it are diminishing & the generations that came into music on software/PC's are the majority. They are the future customers & they are the one's that are going to decide whether hardware has much of a future or not. I'm guessing there going to say 'who needs it'...I'm pretty much there myself.
Vinyl sounds better than CD's, MP3's etc. but when was the last time anybody bought a new 12"? My Virus sounds better than pretty much all my VST's but the amount of software instruments I can get for the price of a single Snow makes it pretty much obsolete to the next generation.
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Old 15.05.2013, 07:29 PM
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Hmmm... Yeah, software is coming a long way. But... Even if you are to consider the Virus (or anything similar) just a plug-in with dedicated hardware controller, that still gives you a form of control you can't easily get with other software instruments - and yeah, the level of quality that goes into such a product is way beyond most software based stuff. So I think hardware will live long, but maybe we'll be seeing more products that give us the best of both worlds more and more. Integration is something most of us welcome. We need some new standards. There's vst, audio unit, rtas. A single multi-platform thing would be better and enable programmers to focus on what's important. A lot of confusion regarding usb or firewire, and thus, connections to. It's a shame that companies are pushing for their own solutions instead of thinking about what's useful for the users. Thunderbolt is Apple's new baby, for example. Who on its right mind would stand behind it? How can one be sure it's got a future? This is the other part of the problem. And this seem to be very important issues for the Virus. Since Access has to choose something that would work for the majority of users across all platforms, which isn't an easy task. Access or any company that wishes to do the same. We've also talked about how Novation and Korg have done something similar and with success.

I bet it all comes down to the programmer being busy with other stuff and I'm pretty sure Access will blow everyone's mind in the near future. At least more so then Clavia, for example.

Nowadays I think it's cool to have a bit of everything: software, hardware VA, analogue... It's cool times to be making music: so many options and so much good stuff out there!
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Old 15.05.2013, 09:18 PM
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Tweakhead, you hit the proverbial nailS on their head in what you wrote!! The midi standard might be 'old' and perhaps could in itself use an update but the point am making it was and IS still quite a ground breaking event to get all manufacturers to come on-board with an uniformed standard.

The very reason I dropped learning Pro Tools not very far into it was AVID's insistence on being exclusive from everyone and even REWIRE has its issues if AVID decides they do not wish to play nice with say Reaper, for instance as an easy example.
I understand the history and it unfortunately ALL comes down to Consumerism and Marketing; simply MONEY! Coming back to synths after military career/college/more military, it still baffles my mind how fraking *confusing* it is today to decide on a great Audio Interface without throwing ALOT of cash down throats of RME. I know nothing admittedly, about computer code and such but SURELY stable drivers should not be that hard to produce.
Then there's the vst/au/rtas, let alone all the variables in platforms/O.S., and think these things among many other variables leading down the greed path are going to allow hardware to prevail for some time.
I do not own anything by Apple but it seems the iPad is showing some awesome innovators writing synthesis apps for it. Wolfgang Palm is whom caught my attention in his Wavetable Synth App and you do not hear of these app makers producing versions of their apps for Android devices, et al, do you?
Anyway, I think another HUGE hurdle the "all software synth world" has to jump is ceasing making so many shitty midi controllers.
I too think Access will more than likely counter with something to blow away the potential competition that DSI Prophet 12 *may* give them. It could even be a departure from the Virus architecture and something so totally new it blows our minds!
As SSD hard drives are coming down in price it almost would make sense to utilize them for the software inside the hardware. Native Instruments have done what seems to make sense.
Anyway, it IS a wonderful time to be making music and playing with sound!
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Old 15.05.2013, 09:29 PM
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One thing about Thunderbolt, it's actually Intel's baby rather than Apple's, Apple was just the first to make it the sole interface to a piece of hardware (Thunderbolt display). I guess the reason we don't see music hardware folks jumping right on Thunderbolt is that for the most part there is nothing about streaming audio that would, in theory be improved by it. Everything from USB 2 on up should be able to handle streaming audio well enough. God knows my firewire audio interface does, the Ultranova works beautifully over USB, so assuming competent developers, there should be no reason the Virus can't utilize USB properly.

Also since Thunderbolt has not had a real reason to be needed on the PC yet, not all PCs have it. So, as an interface choice, a hardware manufacturer has to look at a market where the PC still has 90-ish percent of the consumer market compared to Macs (admittedly probably different numbers if we limited that to the consumer music production population but that's tougher to measure).

I looked briefly at Apollo interfaces (opted out of that one because of the high cost of the hardware itself and apparently to really utilize them you have to really modify your workflow to do things the UAD way using their methods and plugins), but decided not to because Thunderbolt was really only supported on Mac and I couldn't stomach paying so much for an audio interface that tethers me to any platform, particularly Apple with their track record.

What would be nice is if the Virus and any hardware synth that offers integration could find it in their heart to make the interface to computer a swappable option card. That of course has a dramatic effect on the cost to develop, test and produce, which would ultimately be passed on to the consumer whether they needed the option of more than one connectivity type, but it would sure provide some peace of mind (even if the placebo effect) on purchase of a hardware investment like a $3,000 synth.
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Old 15.05.2013, 11:34 PM
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Well there you all go on about connectivity but software doesn't need it in the physical sense & as for a few different plug in formats, compared to hardware it is nothing. I also believe that midi has also been updated by several people, yamaha & roland spring to mind but has never caught on.
I know a lot of people that are quite happy to produce using only there laptop & if all you are using are virtual instruments then it is quite feasible.
It is a good time to make music indeed!
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