I’ve only ever had mk 1’s they are basically the same apart from cosmetic differences & apparently the 25% extra processing is from changing motherboard pathways rather than changing processors. On the earlier versions odd channels use 1 processor & even use the other whereas they are totally pooled on the 2. Tbh I’ve never run out of processing power in what I do, but rarely use more than 5-6 channels, but I’m in the habit of balancing out the processing load with patches that are intensive.
I’d say go for it, I’ve never felt a need for a mk 2 even though the chassis is a bit nicer, I don’t think access provide rack ears for them. Mine gets racked occasionally so it’s a very useful feature.
Thats about when I got my TI2 Keyboard, but I kept it until I traded it for a TI1 desktop last year. Didn’t realize that the website was already effectively abandoned by 2015.
I’m trying to imagine how that could possibly be a PCB design issue and not firmware, and am coming up blank. All of the audio flows through a digital bus before going out through the analog outs, USB or digital out. It should be possible for a firmware update to change update the TI1 voice allocation to match the TI2 style.
Regardless, I went from a TI2 Keyboard to a TI1 Desktop and have absolutely zero complaints. If I didn’t have a Virus, I’d take whichever was available at a reasonable price: TI1 or TI2. Desktop would be my first choice, a TI2 Darkstar or TI1 Polar second. I loved the 61-key keybed, but not enough to justify the amount of space it takes up in my studio. Perfect for people who are in love with the Fatar keybed though.
From my understanding they are overclocking the processors to get more out so if there’s an external clock source then it’d need to be changed.
Also assumes there’s no heat dissipation/power differences between the two but it’s also possible they upgraded the heat sink to deal with the higher temperature load.
Well, I’ve known for a decade about the odd/even load balancing, but someone on Elektronauts, maybe even this thread said about the performance increase being about motherboard redesign, so I don’t know anything beyond that & took it at face value, but I’m pretty sure they share the exact same processors.
As for overclocking, I don’t know, the reason it was brought up was because I was talking about the manual load balancing between odd/even channels to get the most of it. They said that was unnecessary on 2’s because of the board redesign.
It might have been on this thread so whoever it was can chime in
“Overclocking” has always been a consumer/gamer thing. No one in their right mind is building embedded systems and running the clock above spec, much more common is to underclock embedded parts if you don’t need all of the performance offered. IIRC, the TI2 uses a slightly newer DSPs than the TI1 which are capable of higher clock speeds. The Access sales literature implied that this was the source of the additional performance, but I’m inclined to believe that the voice allocation scheduler redesign really did it. If so, that would explain why real-world experience shows little difference between the TI1 and TI2.
It would be interesting to have a TI1 and TI2 desktop at the same time and build out a series of patches to benchmark them with, and then run the tests.
From a cost perspective, a person who is even slightly budget conscious should be as happy to obtain a TI1 as a TI2. The differences are minor.
Interesting. I will try out the Aura plugin today on my new M1 Macbook to see if that works so I can make use of more powerful hardware and the latest version of Logic Pro for my DAW. Had issues last night loading banks of sound packs with old macos and used Windows 10 to do so. Once I use the Virus without computer it is wonderful! Hardware rock solid, nice keyboard, great sound. It has that sound like my Oberheim has massive sound. Even though I did get the Virus TI software working on two old macos computers it was not stable and kept crashing or hang in the DAW no matter what I tried back and forth with fellow Virus experts and Kemper Access support team.
So I’m back in Virusville. I had the Ti2 keys a couple of months ago and while lovely was REALLY big… traded it off but after getting an ear for the more experimental sounds it can make, I’ve been keeping an eye out for a Desktop or Snow. Late last night the latter popped up on Reverb for cheap ($600!) and couldn’t pass it up.
I’m enjoying my virus ti2 a lot more now that I loaded a bunch of presets and use it without a computer. Sending the output to a mixer recorder is more fun and productive for me then I edit the stems later. I’m finding the virus, OT, Rytm and OB X8 go well together.
It doesn’t work & likely never will, there is a commercial editor that provides a 3rd party driver to make it work which I haven’t tried personally, but others in this thread use it.
The reason the official driver doesn’t work is because access used a 3rd party system that has never been updated to 64-bit & Access also don’t seem to have any interest in addressing the problem. The last few MacOS versions are 64-bit only.
How long has it been? They were very courteous and prompt with me.
Yep, and the Aura Plugins one works flawlessly over USB or DIN MIDI (for me) and is worth every penny to fully integrate the Virus into a DAW. That said, I only really use it as a patch librarian, but being able to stick dozens of software LFOs onto Virus parameters for endlessly morphing sounds is pretty intriguing.
They replied back fairly quickly when I had problems getting my account setup.
Hasn’t worked since Catalina and there doesn’t appear to be any development on the product line. You can find the Catalina compatibility as the last item in the news on their website.
That also was about 10 years after release which was a pretty good run for updates in a product and it’s rare for something to continue to get updates beyond that.
It was just before Christmas - I have an intel mac (2017) so it may be related to this.
Everything set up correctly and the stupid thing is even though USB audio doesn’t work, I can get some analog bleed fed through the USB circuitry (very low gain, related to analog input gain) OVER USB!
I’m not really fussed because I run the virus and analog out through my Xpressor compressor to capture some punchy baselines which works very well and then MIDI has a full USB bandwidth
im not even sure how similar they are on paper. I would really like a Kyra, which i imagine is closer to a modern virus, but that’s in a similar price bracket
i’ve never owned an access synth, but i’ve owned 2 hydras for very short periods and never fully fell in love with them. i just wonder how the virus, especially the ti2 holds up against modern fully digital va synths. I actually just saw one on juno uk for like $1440 (b-stock) and considered it briefly before i placed the order for my M. also strongly considered the Kura. the kyra may have the best demo sound i’ve heard in a youtube synth video
on the other hand, im not sure i ever heard a virus demo that blew me away or even just appealed to me at all. im sure i would like it though, so i dont know what thats about. maybe its like the octatrack where you get mostly techno jams due to the target demographic. i did really like the dsp emulation plugin of the virus c though, that sounds great
the FX on the Hydra are very average compared to the virus.
The Hydra does better at wavetables because you can build your own from the single cycles whereas the Virus has fixed wavetables.
Personally I think out of all WT synths I’ve had the HS has the least harsh WT sound which is common with WTs.
The Virus has its own very distinctive filter which I love, the Hydra has a few really nice sounding filter models & you can tell they are high quality models.
The HS is mono-Timbral vs 16 channel, which is probably the biggest win for the virus.
HS has a very nice method of editing via the buttons, it’s a stroke of genius really, but I’m very used to the Virus & think it’s a great well designed interface too. HS does win that one though.
The virus has some interesting Oscillator Modes, although the HS has the Mutators, both equal on that one I think, they are sufficiently different.
the HS has the step LFOs which are really good, you can use them to sequence pitches & along with saw LFO pulses is an interesting way to build a sequence, you could target the Oscillators individually using 2 LFOS etc…. The equivalent on the TI is the ARP which is a really really good sequencer, however you need Virus Control plug-in to edit the user pattern.
if I had to choose just one, the TI is the most useful, it’s a Swiss Army knife of synths & I often make use of using a channel as an external FX unit which is the crowning feature for me, the FX section is sublime.
