With the added features in 2.7, I'm almost tempted to give it a 6 out of 5 if they can fix the glitches.

Plus points - This machine sounds lovely: Dirty, sweet, gritty, powerfull, complex swirling walls of sound. I dont think Viruses sound analogue, they sound very digital to me (which is a good thing), but it can produce some very nice emulations of analogue instruments if thats what you want. To my ears its a sort of cross between a PPG Wave / D50 / Prophet VS - if you dig past the presets that is - how many German trance or techno sounds does one need????? The wavetables; the reason I bought one - to replace my VFX - are very nice. They are very clear and scan perfectly, and are also very musical. I think the wavetables sound much more like a PPG Wave: Great! The filters are silky smooth and sound beautiful. I like the way a Virus morphs from a saw wave to a pulse wave without sounding inharmonic. The bases on this machine are the best ive ever heard - they will rattle the windows. FM is probably the best implementation ive ever seen. It's very easy to make a sound more gritty or metalic. I wish that manufacturers had steared clear of using the buzz words "Virtual Analogue" - they are digital synths - with very advanced waveform generation, filter and modulation matrix modules. In truth a Virus Ti is a digital wavetable synth with Substractive and FM synthesis. And it's the best. Full stop.

I initially used OS 1.0 on Windows XP & the results were less than desirable, but over time I find myself on OS 2.5.1.02 on a Mac Pro & the integration is not only rock solid but amazing! The ability to reach out & manipulate the main functions via the hardware knobs while having the software interface on screen for easy access to the deeper menu functions makes my work flow a breeze!

We all go patch-hunting from time to time in search of something to inspire us & the Ti makes tracking down what you want very easy. For one, the hardware & plug-in interface lets you effectively browse by category, banks, & user submitted banks a snap. Labeling your own patches by category can be done quickly, too. Another strong aspect of narrowing what you want is the ability to "lock" an aspect of what you like about a certain patch. Say you want the ADSR, delay, filter, & arp settings of a patch but don't really feel the sound... lock what you like! Each setting you lock will be carried over into the next patch you bring up. This may sound like a small feature but you have no idea of how much time it saves until you try it!

All these cool features would be meaningless if the unit didn't sound good & I can honestly say that I love the Virus sound! You can get raped with the filthiest grime or be enlightened by the most heavenly of pads. The range of this unit is incalculable.

I've been through a few synths... Alesis Adromeda A6, Micron, Fusion 6HD; Roland SH-32, V-Synth, JX-3P (w/ PG-200), MS2000B, Microkorg... yeah they were all alright, but my Virus KC & Ti's are the only ones I haven't sold. Am I a bit biased? Perhaps. Now I'm no audiophile, but there's something about the way the C & Ti sound that strikes me to the core. Once you tweak away the showroom aspect of the patches you'll find that the sound is rich, powerful, & has a definite impact. Be careful with this power as the sounds tend to dominate & over-viralification tends to muddy-up the mix fairly quickly despite surgical precision of the filters.

Did I say filters? Yes I did & they are juicy! The broad & narrow lengths really define the feel of each sound... especially when you automate them in your sequencer to create gradual motion. That being said, sometimes additional filters need to be applied in your DAW to tighten up the frequencies.

Fx... oh geez... While I try to keep most of the fx within my DAW for post alteration fine tuning, I can't help but use the Ti's fx because they are so good! Eleven distinctly different types of distortion, great chorus, phaser, delay, & reverbs really add top notch character to any given sound.

In summation: the Virus Ti helps me get exactly what I want to make my tracks sound great. When compared to Native Instruments, Rob Papen, & other top notch software plug-ins, not only myself but others have noticed the quality of the sounds afforded by this unit. Unless my entire body is riddled with a disease that is only curable by selling my Virus KC & Ti, I'll keep them in my arsenal because they complete me.

Things that it would be nice to have but which are missing include wavetable uploads from a computer and an option to use a sample input as the wavform source (such as found on the Radias).

This is a VA and it does its job superbly. It is capable of a very broad range of textures, including some neat wavetable effects.

It has the best non-fully weighted keyboard that I have played, with good velocity response and aftertouch. Surprisingly, quite a few of the built-in patches do not make good use of the keyboard dynamics, though this is easily changed by editing...

The ROM patches are a mixed bunch. Good if you are in to techno/trance music, but otherwise they seem to be more designed to show off the arpeggiator and synth engine rather than producing musically useful sounds.

The effects processing is excellent, with each effect intrinsically part of the individual voice structure.

Using 12Mbit/s USB for the audio data means that many computers struggle to run the integrated audio plug-in functions reliably as the bus is run close to its maximum supported speed.

Helpful and responsive - and a gradual progression of OS updates that both fix bugs and add new synthesis features :-). With OS2.5 we're nearly there folks. Very solid for me.

I love the sound and the keyboard, but would hope for a faster, more reliable USB link and better control panel in future versions...

It's not too difficult to use, but definitely not the easiest synth I've ever programmed, either. The limited number of knobs means there are A LOT of menus and a lot of button-pressing. It's really a shame that they didn't use the other half of the front panel for more knobs or sliders. Sliders are much better for envelopes, anyway! Some very commonly used parameters, like arp hold and osc 3 level, have to be accessed by holding the shift key--very user unfriendly, although the three assignable knobs under the diplay make up for that to a small extent. The display is fine, the wheels are great, and the internal power supply is great, all increasing the ease of use. The manual is very good, although a spiral binding would make it easier to lay it out flat so you can read it while using the synth with both hands. Tempo-related LEDs are white instead of red, so they're easy to pick out quickly. Plus they blink in a way that corresponds to the waveform--instant on and fade off for sawtooth, fade on and fade off for sine, etc. Very nice. The one other white LED lights up when you pass any knob through the value stored in the preset. That way you know exactly how to undo an edit you've made, even if it wasn't the most recent edit. This is a really great feature, and one that you'll soon wonder how you did without.

Some of the presets are amazing. Many of them are drowning in WAY too much reverb, and many of them are clearly designed to show off what the synth can do instead of actually being useful. But they're just presets--you should program your own sounds, of course. It's too bad that there are so many ROM banks, though, and so few RAM banks (but this situation is soon to change with the new OS2.7 thats coming out in the spring).It would be nice to be able to keep some of the presets, for instance, but to turn down the reverb on them or something like that. But the only way to do that is to use up one of the user memory slots. Bad design. Also not great is the fact that the rear jacks are below and inset from the main rear panel. This makes it more difficult than it should be to plug or unplug things, when a simple angled rear panel like that on the Jupiter 6/8 would have fixed that. The jacks are labeled along the top of the synth, so that helps a little. (But just a little.)

The number and complexity of the synthesis options makes this a synth programmer's dream, and the expressiveness makes it a true instrument. The polyphony is nominally around 80 voices if you don't use the third oscillator or the modelled analog filters. I do use those things, so I have less polyphony, but I don't know (or care) exactly how much. It's enough. No traditional expansion capabilities, although Access has a great track record of providing OS updates with new features, so I guess that counts. Effects are great (if overused on the presets), and it's great to not hear them burp as you change presets. Since they're fully multitimbral, the prevous sound keeps its effect and dies away, while the new sound uses its effects and is unaffected by those of the previous sound. Excellent.

Although the end-cheeks feel like real, solid wood (unlike most synths with "wood effect" end-cheeks), I'll actually come out of the closet as someone who hates wood end-cheeks. It's a marketing ploy capitalizing on our nostalgia and attempting to further the illusion that this is like a real analog synth. It's not. Wood is less sturdy then metal, it dings more easily, and it contributes to deforestation. I miss the more aesthetically honest black end-cheeks of the Virus C. That said, the shape of the end-cheeks is excellent for carrying this synth around safely.

No sequencer, pressure-sensitive keys, and the best-feeling non-piano-weighted keyboard out there. The keys are full-size (unlike most other synth's keys, which are a little smaller), and they have a firm, smooth, perfect semi-weighted action. They bottom out onto something with a little padding, so you don't feel like you're banging your fingers on a table top, but they're definitely not squishy or spongy. Who would ever want to play anything else? The V-Synth's keyboard sucks compared to this, for example--smaller keys, less resistance (so harder to play expressively), and they bottom out on something hard and unforgiving. Ugh. The Virus' keyboard is the same as the one in the Novation Supernova II, the E-mu E-Synth, and the Kawai K5000. It's a joy to play.

This synth mostly sounds very digital to me, but that's mostly a compliment because I love digital synthesis. I have to admit, though, that the analog emulations are surprisingly unconvincing. There's A LOT of aliasing in the upper two octaves or so, even when the oscillators are set to classic mode playing square or sawtooth waveforms, and even when the modelled analog filter is in use. I've never played earlier versions of the Virus, so I can't say how it compares. The filters usually sound very smooth and beautiful, but occasionally not--ROM D-71 "LikeSkin @," for instance, sounds steppy when you turn the filter cutoff knob. Changing the filter in this patch to the analog filter model does not help, but other sounds that use the non-analog-modeled filters don't sound steppy. I don't get it. Also, the main volume knob is steppy in the very low-volume range on some sounds, but not on others. "LikeSkin" and some other sounds have clear jumps between volume knob settings of 0, 1, 2, etc., but other sounds do not. Maybe there's an effect they all share that is more processor-intensive? I haven't investigated this further yet.

I was hoping this synth would fulfill both digital and analog roles in my setup, but I think I'm going to have to buy an Ion or Micron for the analog stuff. Before anyone accuses me of being dumb for buying something without first knowing what it sounds like, they should know that I don't live anywhere near a store that sells synthesizers. I have to buy stuff online, then return it if I don't like it. Last time I drove 3 hours to get to a Guitar Center, the room there was so loud that I would have missed these subtleties, and this Guitar Center no longer lets customers use headphones "for health reasons." So I wouldn't have noticed these aspects of the sound until I got home anyway.

Two of my all-time favorite synths, the PPG Wave 2.3 and the Sequential Prophet VS, exhibit digital artifacts too, so these flaws are not a deal-breaker to me, I'm just surprised that the analog emulation isn't better. That said, the bottom end of this synth is huge and can probably knock you off your feet, and when the filters are smooth, boy are they smooth and creamy and beautiful. The Virus' digital side is gorgeous and amazing. "LikeSkin" struck me as beautiful, and I wanted to see what spectral waves it used, but they're analog waves! Alternatively, some of the spectral waves or wavetables have an acoustic richness and complexity that is fantastic for a synthesizer. I often find myself thinking that this is the sound that ROMplers dream about but have never yet acheived. I don't have much to say about the HyperSaw waves because I haven't really been using this as a VA. Some of the sounds that use HyperSaws are huge and expansive, though.

The wavetables (the main reason I bought this synth) are great. I wanted wavetables that could scan SMOOTHLY between waves, no stepping. (I sold my Microwave IIXT because of its steppy wavetables and because I can't really afford both synths.) 95% of these wavetables scan very smoothly, but there is occasional steppiness if you listen very closely. I think it's subtle enough that it would be unnoticeable in a mix, so it's OK with me. Some of these wavetables suggest PPG and Waldorf sounds, and some are totally new. Some focus on a few timbres, and some have waveforms that are all over the map. Excellent! I REALLY hope Access adds user wavetables to a future OS update, because I really, REALLY would love to use that feature. Oh man...

Too soon to say, but it feels very well made. The software hung up once during an OS upgrade, but it was easily resolved and all else has been great.

I emailed them once while waiting for the synth to be released, so I wasn't even a customer yet, and they got back to me right away. I emailed them once since buying the synth with the same results. Very nice. Plus they're still releasing OS updates for previous Virus models! It's hard to imagine Roland or Korg doing that. Their Programming Analogue Synths tutorial book must have been a huge effort for them to produce, with little advertising value, but they did it anyway. And it's free. Right on!

With an improved, Ion-level analog emulation engine and with the whole panel full of real-time controls, I'd give this synth a 10. Without those features, it gets a 9. It's an incredible synth, though, and deserves a 10 if compared to a ROMpler or some other lesser synth. (With a 76-note keyboard, I'd give it a 12!) The main things I love are the overall sound, all the waveforms and modulation options, and the keyboard feel. The main things I don't love are the way the third oscillator is treated like an add-on, all the empty space on the front panel, and all the digital artifacts in the analog emulation. It's still an incredible synthesizer, though, and I look forward to years of happy programming on it.

I also own a Sequential Prophet VS Rack, a Roland XV-5050 for acoustic emulation, a CME UF8, and Kurtzmann upright piano. I'll probably be buying an Alesis Micron soon, or a rack version if they come out with one, and I dabble just a little bit with a few soft-synths: PPG Wave 2.v, Vector Sector, and Cameleon 5000 on a G5 iMac with a Firebox interface. I sold a Novation Supernova II and a Waldorf Microwave IIXT to buy this Virus TI, and even though it has more shortcomings than I expected, I still don't regret the switch.