Just don’t find any good demos to get impressed by it…
I’m a fairly new owner of a peak, it sounds great to me certainly not disappointed, I chose it over a prophet rev 2 after listening in the shop because more options and flexible and
The wavetables… hearing in in person at a shop might be better than YouTube demos…
Never heard a virus TI I’m sure that’s good also
Ok, I will bite.
I have owned two Virus TI Polars. One which I stupidly sold and another which I will never sell. I have owned a lot of gear, but the Polar is the closest thing I have ever gotten to owning a “flagship.” It has resided in storage as I patiently wait for my young children to get old enough to not break everything so I can set it back up. Here are the reasons that I love it.
The build quality is outstanding. It is heavy, it has a ton of knobs, and the LEDS are usually telling you something useful. It looks gorgeous and demands that you play it.
The sound. I love it. It can be nasty, pretty, harsh, boring, exciting, bassy, weird … almost whatever you want. And that’s just the synth engine. Add on the effects, and you have another several years of exploring to do. Why? Because the effects can be modulated, just like the synth engine. One detail I love is that the wavetable interpolation is variable. Most wavetables synths (I’ve checked) don’t have the ability to morph smoothly from one wave to another, then change the level of smoothness to something jagged that catches deliciously on delays.
The depth. I don’t think I will ever be done exploring this synth. It is way more likely that I will become bored with it, and want to move on to something shiny and new “just because,” than that I will actually fully rinse this synth.
Multi-timbral. You can easily make entire tracks, albums using just the TI.
Individual audio outs.
This is a one basket kind of egg. But as long as you’re ok with that, or supplement your sound with less expensive software instruments, it might be for you.
I have zero experience with a Summit, Peak, Crest or Base. But I love my Virus TI.
EDIT: Points also for being the only synth that I can not touch for more than a year, come back to it, and have it feel like home, like the last time I switched it on was a week ago!
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Sorry if my post was misleading … it was very generally speaking. I own a Virus TI2, but have seen a couple of videos and reviews of the PEAK only. IMO both synths are very different. There are posts above, which describe the differences pretty well.
I would say both can do very similar sounds in some areas, but they have both territories the other can’t follow. IMO the “virtual analogue” stuff should be similar. But comparing the pure technical features of one single voice, we find quite some differences …
- oscillators: both 3, but both don’t compare well w.r.t. their different modes
- filter: PEAK: 1 state variable vs Virus: 2 multi-mode
- envelopes: PEAK: 2 vs Virus: 4
- LFOs: PEAK: 2 vs Virus: 3 making use of 68 waveshapes and wave-shaping
- modulation: PEAK: 16 slots with 2 destinations each vs Virus: 6 slots with 3 destinations each, but the Virus has additionally a couple of ready to go “standard modulation connections”, which don’t eat up slots in the mod-matrix.
Just this may give an idea, how differently the tools for sound design are.
At the end it is … as always … very subjective, which sound character we like better.
From this I would say, both should do the job very well. Maybe the Virus has some more tricks up its sleeve, and I love to have so many different FX options, but this … again … is my subjective opinion.
There are great videos explaining the PEAK … maybe you know them already …
This said … I would not give away my Virus for a PEAK … and as for programming … as @papertiger said … the interface is very logic and easy to use.
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I’ve got a Virus B (Indigo) and Peak. I find the Virus a bit “dated” to use, obviously anything with a knob is fine but once you have to go in to the menus, it’s quite painful on the small two line screen. This is probably somewhat better on the Ti though.
The Peak has more stuff accessible with knobs and the menus are easier/quicker to use IMO. Also the effects on it are great, especially the reverb is lovely, though again I haven’t used the Virus Ti so can’t compare there.
Another key difference of course is that the Peak has analogue filters. I won’t pretend to be an expert on the real world differences but they sound great and can get into really nasty territory if you want them to!
On the other hand the Virus is more flexible due to multi-timbrality, maybe the oscillators have more options?
Personally I didn’t really use the Virus much and have put it away for now to save space, it sounds good considering it’s age but I think the Peak sounds better, more “alive” and really easy to take it into wild places with FM etc. It’s also really enjoyable and easy to use, and very hands on.
However, I did get my Peak really cheap so that may weigh into my judgement, and if I saw a bargain on a Ti I’d still be tempted as the Virus is a classic for a reason!
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Couple of corrections here. Peak has 3 envelopes. But a button changes the controls between mod env 1 and 2. Peak also has some on the pannel mod destinations.
Peak has 2 “polyfonic” lfo’s. So they are pr voice. And 2 mono lfo’s where added in an update.
I love the Peak. And it hold its own against most polys ive compared it to. It is very flexible and can sound as cold and digital as you want, and warm and big if you want. A friend called it a “lifetime” synth. You can always come up with something new and cool with it.
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Yes … sorry didn’t read correctly about the envelopes … that makes an important difference 
I’ve always felt that even the greatest VA’s out there, still don’t have the presence of a partly or entirely analog synth. They just reside in frequencies the VA’s struggle to reach. It especially comes across as you start working on the mix, I feel.
However, the most prominent VA I’ve played is the Nord Lead 4 and it’s A1 sibling. I’ve actually never experienced a Virus for real.
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I will give u one more clue.
I don t have yet Peak, but I had Hydrasynth, whose main sound I didn t enjoy a lot… feeling it too sterile…
This video tells me Peak is close to Hydra. Am I wrong?
Also I am trying to understand before purchase where from so much love for Peak and Summit compared to other poly synths (including Virus Ti).
By no means I try to put down Novation …just trying to understand…and if the qualities are real I should purchase too. 
I think you are not wrong, because the guy says it at the very beginning of the video that he will try to get both synths to sound as close as possible. He says this somewhere in the first minute 
But does this tell us that both are quite similar? I think not.
Funny enough … he talks about warmth of a synth … and maybe I missed something … but he seemed not to have tried something complex on both machines. To me the sounds felt a little standard and sterile.
IMO “warmth” of a sound in contrary to “sterile” is best described as the existence or the lack of fluctuations, which are typical for sounds of a natural environment. With a digital, or better arlgorithmical sound machine it’s quite easy to generate sterile sounds.
With its many modulation sources and destinations it should be easy to get “warm” sounds from the PEAK. Sometimes it takes only a tiny modulation here and there (intensity, pitch, waveshape, filter cutoff, resonance). Often those modulations are very hard to identify, but are instantly missed, if turned off. We have to invest some time and work to get there.
I’ve heard people say that the PEAK can be everything between “warm” and “cold” and judging from a couple of audio-examples, I tend to believe them.
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I wish i could directly test Peak… just not possible.
Any warm demos of it?
(Just not ambient drones… just basic leads , chords, pads)
Hey what sort of demos are you looking for?
[Confused if you’re okay with basic leads/chords/pads or looking for something different]
just basic leads chord pads
This guy’s showing you how it is -
It’s essentially R Beny’s that’s to blame I sometimes consider the Summit over the Prophet 12. Not quite there yet, tho.
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Interesting! Some anecdotes and vague ideas in response:
I went through a purchase process recently that came down to Rev2 vs Summit, and I went for the Rev2. The Summit seemed to have more diverse range of sounds, and more exciting bass noises; the Rev2 seemed to have more pleasing pad/chords/keys and more ear-catching arp type sounds. The Summit appeared to need more menu diving to get the best out of it, judging by workflow videos. It’s certainly got a lot of hands-on controls, but all the videos I saw seemed to show users doing some menu work to get the interesting stuff going. The Rev2 maybe isn’t quite so interesting (it doesn’t do noise or scrunch so well), but most of it seemed to be hands on. Now that I have the Rev2, I do more menu diving than I expected, and the screen and menu controls suck; but I LOVE its leads, pads, piano-like sounds; the modulation and controls make even simple waveforms into “instruments”, and the basses are much better than expected. The Summit (or a Peak) remain on my wish-list for when I want/need another poly, and have money spare.
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Dont think either are a bad choice the peak brought more to my current set up as already have a couple analog synths, I would like to get a rev 2 also 
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I’m leaning toward the Prophet 10 Module because of the revs switch, fullness and number of voices but am not thrilled it lacks the LFO and other DAW/MIDI-syncing features of the Prophet 6. I’m stalled between those two modules right now, which is good, because I should wait until there’s a sale.
But this thread is making me want to try out the multi-timbral and apparently throaty Virus Ti.
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Does anyone buy a Hydrasynth for its “warmth”? The sound design options, multi-stage complexity and contrast it brings to rooms filled with basic analog synths is partly the point. Comparing a Peak and a Hydrasynth seems arbitrary and perhaps even ridiculous.
Fifteen years ago, I used to get called into sessions to fill up areas of the mix. Digital synths, analog synths and samples stacked like osmotic layer cake because they occupied different strata of the sound.
You’d buy a Hydrasynth, Digitone or Argon8 to contrast with your analog synths and drum machines, not to mimic them.
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I have to disagree with this.
If there’s a comparison to made between the Peak and the Hydrasynth (and the handful of DSI synths that have also been mentioned in this thread), it’s that they are all modulation-heavy synths that speak to the sound designer.
I’m a working musician and producer. Be it in the studio or on the road, I have to contend with space and weight constraints, and work within a reasonable but nevertheless limited budget. As such, I don’t collect synths, but rather tend to favour instruments that are versatile and otherwise capable of delivering on a multitude of fronts.
To that end, at least in recent history anyway, the two main contenders (in my opinion) have indeed been the Peak and the Hydrasynth. They simply tick the most boxes, pound for dollar, and do so with a relatively high degree of integrity: i.e. they’re tactile, robust, well-designed, feature-rich, and able to produce a vast and useful palette of sounds.
Cheers!
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If big, spacey pads is something you want to achieve, I always would give a proper VA Synth a closer look. Often, the key to pads is many, many voices. Like playing 4 note chords, spread over 2 - 3 octaves, with long release times overlapping into the following chords. The Virus is very capable of doing this.
In my perception, VA Synth have gone a bit out of fashion due to the extensive amount of analog synth available at the moment (if you are okay with buying used, you can make a real steal on some 2000s VA flagships, like the Novation Supernova).
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