The differences occur because every virus mutates over time.

 

It's now a modern synth classic: the Access Virus. For more than 20 years, the virtual analog synthesizer has been part of the standard equipment of many studios, and everyone has heard it on some production.

The father of the virus is Christoph Kemper. As a teenager, the Recklinghausen native was hooked on a gift in the form of a Sinclair ZX Spektrum, an '80s minicomputer with extremely limited capabilities. He began to deal with computer programming and later studied electrical engineering in Bochum. After playing keyboards in rock bands for a while, Kemper started designing DSP-based effects and filters in the '90s.

His goal was to build a digital filter that behaves like an analog filter, even with fast modulations - that was new territory at the time. It also achieved this thanks to the newly released Motorola 56,000 series DSPs. Its digital filter is formative for the sound character of the virus.

Beginnings
When the Nord Lead came onto the market in 1995, Kemper decided to also build a virtual synthesizer. He teamed up with Guido Kirsch, who founded the company Access. At that time, Access built SysEx programmers for synthesizers that, in the style of the 80s, were given fewer control elements, such as for the Oberheim Matrix 1000 Expander or the Waldorf Microwave. However, Kemper and Kirsch later parted ways.

The Virus A was presented at the Frankfurt Music Fair in 1997 and was very well received, especially in the electronics scene. In the beginning, the virus was gratefully accepted, especially in the trance/hard trance scene, because you could produce the typical, radiant sounds very well with it; the internal effects section was also very useful. The virus, which was constantly being improved, quickly spread to other genres of music as well. The solid hardware and sound made it a worldwide live and studio standard.

Access Virus 2
The rack version of the Access Virus
viral effect
When trying to describe the synth's viral effect, it's almost easier to list those artists who haven't used the virus yet. Almost everything that has rank and name has been infected by the synth. The list includes names like Depeche Mode, Dr. Dre, Duane Buford (Ministry), Glen Ballard (Aerosmith, Christina Aguilera, Anastacia, Shakira, Backstreet Boys), Junior Vazquez, Matt Fink (Prince), Neptunes, Nine Inch Nails, No Doubt, Faithless, Fatboy Slim, Future Sound of London, Die Fantastischen Vier, Gary Numan, Massive Attack, Rickey Pageot (Madonna), Pet Shop Boys, DJ Sasha, Skinny Puppy and Thomas Dolby; even synth grandmaster Klaus Schulze was not above embellishing his studio rack wall with several virus expanders.

www.soundandrecording.de/equipment/love-the-machines-access-virus-virtuell-analoger-synthesizer/

 

Last edited: Jan 20, 2022

Anybody managed to get the Virus B rom to work? i have C running fine and can get quite a few instances out of it, but there does seem to be a bug with certain presets causing 100% CPU load and it's nothing to do with voice count either. on the other hand, i get 100% CPU load just trying to run any Virus B rom

If anybody knows of one that works that would be great. i have tried the "T"version and version "4v9" and the first one causes 100% CPU load, and the latter crashes any DAW i run it in

 

Hello, change the name of the extension BIN to bin in minúsculas and test of new.

 

That is very odd, VB 4.9 works very well on my PC, especially compared to 6.5 and 6.6

Is your CPU core still running at the same ghz when you were testing the B ROM?

 

Last edited: Jan 20, 2022

If we could easily import Virus B/C presets into Viper, then we'll take lots of time to properly compare them, hint hint.

 

I've just tried Virus [C] Rack XL ROM from emurom website and it uses a couple of percent less CPU and works flawlessly. I don't know what version of firmware is that, though. It would be interesting to know that. I'll try to see if there's something in the .bin file with Hexedit.

Edit: Virus C Rack XL ROM is v6.5.0b and Virus C ROM is also v6.5.0b. I found out with Hexedit, address 0003A something. So v6.5 definitely works better.

Thank you so much for mentioning the emurom website! Those couple of % less of the CPU is really nice!

 

Last edited: Jan 20, 2022

For me the best is Virus Classic

 

Yes, The Virus Classic or Virus B ROM should be selected for better performance, unless you need a sound that requires 32 voice polyphony compared to the 24 voices of B/VC.

Edit - when benchmarking, I am getting lower MIPS for Virus Classic compared to C 6.5 for IndiArp and Impact, so it seems 6.5 is better optimised, but has higher potential CPU usage overall due to higher polyphony.

 

Last edited: Jan 21, 2022

That's out of the question. You can only approximate the characteristics of a software filter as you know its basic model, or trying to reverse engineer it over most of its states (which are many), or taking out the code from the original rom and then reassemble it. I assume Adam Szabo did the reverse engineering by ear, and for the sonic characteristics of the Virus he did a very good job, I think. I would like to see Polyphonic Aftertouch or MPE (Qunexus, Seaboard, Hydra) in the Viper, but otherwise I am happy (as a legit owner) with it.

 

Someone had to make that joke. Now let's just move on
I can already see a "Viper vs dspEmu: does it null?" coming.
You know it's gonna happen

 

as far as I can interpret texts, at least for the developer, this topic is definitely not out of the question (since he insists on punctuating where the difference between synthesizers is). Reinforcing that I'm being unbiased, this is based on my own ears. I must say, a lot of respect to the developer, since the Viper is an interesting synthesizer

 

They dont need to be code signed, you need to remove the quarantine attribute from all three.

 

Very interesting @Psychoacoustic. Virus B, Classic, and C have identical specs according to VintageSynth, the difference seems to be only in polyphony - 24 against 32. Since I'm a mono freak, except for an occasional synth string or pad, I could use B or VC version without any problems.

VintageSynth website is such a great source of info for hardware freaks like me. That's where I get ideas for exploring E-bay. Things I drool over are FS1r, Virus C, MicroQ and Q, Microwave II, JP-8000, AN1x, MS2000 and some older samplers which I already bought, though I'd still like Casio FZ-1, DSS-1, Emulator III, and Prophet 2000 or 3000 but they're so hard to find and expensive. For now I can cross Virus C from the list. Niiiice.

@Ayahuasca , I wonder which ROM you find most preferable for using with the current emulator? Do you test with all ROMs?

 

Last edited: Jan 21, 2022

Is it just me who believes this, but this emulator is probably one of the top biggest audio revolutions/inventions since a long long time...
Besides Melodyne, and its DNA note separation thing... I don't see any thing else, that is so epic.... so unthinkable... so incredible...so insane....
Just like Melodyne, I put this emulator in the 'impossible- can't be done' category.

How many times people had to reply to some posts and requests with "no, you understand...it is impossible to emulate the Uad plugins on a computer. Or a to powercore dsp card. Or any hardware device. It's not feasible, you see ...? "


I'm a happy&proud virus c and virus ti owner. A few months ago, I came across that weird post, saying a guy was trying to emulate a known dsp, and it could lead to some synth emulations. I honestly was like... OK... if one day, even 20 years from now, one single sound can be output from a vst virus emulator, I will cut my dick in half. Impossible !"

Well... I guess I can go grab a cardboard cutter...
A few hours ago, I went to their website, grabbed the vst3 version + a rom, opened vshhost... loaded a folder with a few hundreds of virus c soundbanks, clicked on a sound, on the patch browser tab...
...clicked on a few notes...
And fuk me ! That thing really works !

With 1 single instance, with a preset with some effects, and 3 or 4 notes, vsthost only indicated 1.5% cpu (5950x). 2 instances, it went to 1.7%

I tried to save the session, on vsthost... but when I closed/ open the vsthost, and tried to load the vsthost preset, the 2 virus c instances were fine, but it didn't load the virus presets. Need to try it on cubase.

Regarding cubase, I was saving a few bucks, for an eventual cubase 12 upgrade.
But now, after trying this emulator, I'm going to donate between 20 and 40 bucks to the dev.... and I really hope that all those who are going to test, and even use this emulator, IF YOU CAN, please try to donate a few coins... 10 euros/$.... or even 5.... IF YOU CAN, and have a PayPal, please, do it.
It is the best way to show our love to this 'crazy' genius.... and hopefully... not only he will keep improving this emulator (the recent change log, it says 'dsp code speed improved by 10 to 20%').... but he also could start emulating many other cool synths...
Clavia Nordlead 3, anyone ?
Shit, how many times have I dreamed about this synth... how many times have I heard the vengeance soundbank demo... there was that incredible pad preset, that I've played hundreds of times... unfortunately, that beast was far toooo expensive.
And today, there is a tiny possibility, that one day, a vst emulator might exist...

BTW, from the list of synths that use the 563xx dsp, which one(s) would you like to see being 100% emulated ?

Another thing, the current emulator, it can only load the virus c bios ? Or can it load other virus models ?
Also, I read some of you guys have experimented with several C bios, and had different results...?

I still don't believe this thing works !

Again, donate , if you can.

If you don't believe that a working vst emulator for a hardware synth called Virus C isn't worth you 20 or 10 bucks... then... I don't know!

 

Wow this thing is coming along great! Its got its own GUI now, awesome! I always wanted a Virus but found a Nord Lead for 800 bucks and pulled the trigger.

 

6.5 runs a little faster than 6.6 yes, every little helps I guess!

 

What a great reply and thank you for the kind words, I had to forward this one onto the team, its great to see people enjoying our work!

In regards to the Nord Lead 3, it has 6 DSPs whereas the Virus B/C (the only ROMs that the EMU can run at the moment) only have 1 DSP,
but we do have plans for synths with multiple DSPs in the future, our plan is to assign each DSP to its own CPU core iirc so stay tuned

 

I was surprised how some mono bass [love legato basses generally] patches consumed only 6-7% of the CPU with v6.5! Then some 3 note strings about 9-10% even with twin unison turned on [twin is the most useful for me to get richer chorus like tone]. It hits 14.5-15% only with full 32 voices on. Since it is 16 part multitimbral, I need only one instance per project anyway [additional VST outputs would be helpful ;)], so I'm more than fine with that. I can run Diva and Hive along with it, and I use hardware samplers and many FX too.

Virus C is loads of fun. I especially like the VA bass and pad sounds I can get from it. They sit so well in the mix even without any external processing, which I do anyway - it's part of my mixing process [DBX compressor, Drawmer compressor and gate, Soundtracs console, Yamaha FX, Boss and Akai pedals].

FX on Virus C sound pretty good and oddly they don't consume much of the CPU. Very interesting. Weird, I still haven't tried the vocoder! I'm a fan of vocoders.

 

Last edited: Jan 22, 2022

Daaamn.
I thank you so much guys.

Just downloaded this ROM and the newest version 1.24 from the discord server.
Now even the heaviest third party patches play smooth on my old i5 3570k.
With Chords and arpeggiator midi inserts.

I thank you so much guys.
Donation will be made next month. ^^