Anyone with an Access Virus TI, please help!

Question

Hi people! i bought my virus ti and i'm trying to make it work in multi mode : (i'v got a IMac intel)
What i did, i created on Logic a new layer in the enviroment naming it virus Ti , then i created a new multi instrument and connected it to a instrument 1 where is placed my virus ti plug in. i thought this was the way to work with it , but then when i skipped through the 16 channels the sound is always the same ...so i guess its not working in this way.
I went to the access web site and i downloaded the tutorial song but they created on the arrange page an instrument channel with the virus plugged in and then they made a copy of that track times 16 just changing the midi channels 1 to 16 which is impossible cause if i open a new project and i try to make the same set up obviously after i make 16 same instrument , when i go to change the midi channels it change it globally to all of them!!!
hope u can help me thanx a lot

Answer 1

Hey there!
I don't know if you've sorted your problem (it's been a month, after all!)
I too had problems at the beginning with that "multichannel Instrument" business with the Virus TI. The way i got around it was by importing the Virus TI environment layer from the Access Logic tutorial session into my Autoload session (which opens by default when i start Logic as a template)
To do this:
-Make sure you have the Tutorial session on your hard drive
-open the environment
- go to: option>import environment>layer
This will open a browser which lets you select a Logic session (in this case the Access tutorial) from which to import an environment layer.
Once you have selected the Session, you can select the layer to import (in this case the "Virus TI" layer.
Once this is done, you should have that layer with the Virus TI plugin opened on Instrument Track 97 (not sure why they put it on 97, but it works, and i must say i haven't bothered to change it).
On the same layer, you should have 16 instrument channels, all assigned to "Inst 97: Virus TI", but each assigned to 16 MIDI channels.
By double clicking on each track, they should appear in the arrange page separately (but NOT in the Channel Mixer, where you'll only get 1 Inst track which controls the Virus's global volume/pan, as the Virus only has 4 USB bus outputs, of which only 2 are used by default, but more on this later...).
In the arrange page, you can now sequence and automate for each Virus channel separately.
Getting back to the Virus's USB outputs: The Virus is only a USB 1 device, which means it's audio bandwidth is rather limited (12Megs per second). Because of that, the Virus only provides 4 mono USB outputs, selectable as single or stereo outputs in the plugin's "common" page.
As i said, the Virus outputs everything on stereo output "USB1 L+R" by default, BUT, you can make any of the 16 channels output to the other Stereo output ("USB2 L+R") and create an Aux track in the environment, and assign that track's input to Inst 97> Virus TI 3-4 (you can also create mono Aux tracks, and route the Virus's outputs separately as mono tracks)
This is useful if you want to assign a plugin effect to a Virus sound, but i must say i never use it, as I find it better to just bounce all the parts separately before I mix a song, but hey! different strokes! so it's good to know.
One last thing, don't despair if you get hanging notes or tempo drifts from the TI. It will get more stable the more you use it until it's fully integrated in you DAW.
I know this sounds like nonsense, but it seems the computer needs to get used to running the TI.
Mine is now absolutely spot on, and doesn't give me any issues, but at the beginning i thought it was defective as it was so unstable.
Finally, make sure you download the latest drivers from Access, as they have improved the overall system a lot since version 1.0 of the TI plugin (now on version 2.5.1), and also download the sound banks on their website, they're all completely free, and add hundreds of really cool presets to an already really cool synth...
Hope that helped!
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