friend just gave me his Virus B...

[funky shit]

Old hardware even if its VA pisses over any soft synth for raw basic sounds. Thats a fact

this.

also.. that was nice of him.

[#1thelark]

...and I don't really have any good way to hook it up.

I'm pretty much a soft-synth guy, with my only hardware being a midi controller and my APC40. But I'm really excited to have a true "hands on knobs" experience, if you know what I mean. But, I use an NI audio kontrol 1, which only has two inputs (one stereo together), both of which I generally use for guitar and mic inputs (my other, non-synthy hardware). it also only has one midi input which my controller runs into. sooooo. seems If i want to play with the virus, I have to disconnect everything else I've got going, and that's not really going to work for me.

what do you recommend....small mixer? different audio card? frankly i'm not sure how much i'm willing to spend/change just to have this hardware synth available to me (even with a good setup it still presents workflow issues in terms of rendering, etc...) but for the moment I'm all ears, I want to get PSYCHED about this thing but need a good way to set it all up efficiently.

help?

thanks,
-M

Have a look at the top of the Virus B: it has 3 stereo outs and 1 stereo in. That means you can route your Mic and Guitar into the Virus B and use it as a vocoder and then thru the outputs into your Audio Kontrol 1. I havent used mine for years, but you should get some decent sounds out of it.
I bet you could also somehow get the signal from your guitar or mic thru the virus into the soundcard without any changes ... Just have a look at the manual.

[Emissary]

Thats a face I'd like to punch

I concur, and the fact that he's holding a virus that his mate just "gave" to him makes it doubly worse SMACK SMACK SMACK

[divonic]

For MIDI you could buy a USB/MIDI interface There are no limits (as far as I know) to the number of midi ins and outs you can add. I currentlly have 5 midi outs and 4 midi ins in my set-up. (each with 16 channels which is way more than I need). A 1 in / 1 out interface will cost up to about $30 a 2 in / 2 out will cost about $50.

Or get a USB midi Controller and bypass the MIDI I/O on your card for that and then use them for the Virus.

As for the audio there is a way in OSX to set up your audio so that you can use both the onboard audio I/O and your external soundcard. I don't know how to do it off the top of my head but my band mate uses it with his imac to monitor (headphone) via the headphone out on the imac and have the main outs going out thru his 2in 2 out audio interface. basically you create a virtural audio interface that Ableton sees as the summation of all your I/O onboard and external.

[divonic]

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1215

try this.

[mholloway]

cool, thanks for all the ideas guys. will see what I can do. and uh...no hitting.

-M

[rockspin]

thats a funny pic.

[Tympanic]

this synth is TOTALLY OVERRATED!

[leedsquietman]

I'd look at getting an audio interface with more I/O than the Audio Kontrol 1. Sooner or later almost everyone runs into this problem when they only have a couple of I/O and you never know what tomorrow brings. If you suddenly hook up with other musicians and form a band, or even hook up with one other person who asks you to record them, having less than 4 I/O always ends up as a bind. Try and get something which as at least 8 I/O and I find it better to go for something that has 8 XLR/combi jacks than 2 XLRS and the rest balanced TRS (like RME favour with their FF400 and Fireface UC). This depends on what you're recording and doesn't preclude you from doing demo work for bands with drums (so long as they are willing to record to a click or programmed drums first and then overdub the real drums later, if they get lippy about the number of mics, because they read in Sound On Sound that so and so had 12 drums mics on their kit, remind them that Ringo Starr was mostly recorded with ONE mic (a mono overhead, especially early on, and eventually got to a kick drum and stereo overheads by the time Sgt. Pepper was released, with the drums on Abbey Road being the only ones that have any kind of noticeable stereo effect) and that 'When The Levee Breaks' by Led Zeppelin, one of the most recognizable and sampled drum loops of all time, was recorded with just 2 mics (stereo overheads, ambient miced - 8 mics can get you kick, snare, 2x overheads, 2x room ambience and leave you with 2 extra choices, such as one behind kit, or on a floor tom, or wherever else)

I know that my Alesis IO14 (which has the same Cirrus Logic converters as the Audio Kontrol 1) suits me fine as a solo musician, but has precluded some work I could have had from local bands, especially those wanting real drums. Although it has 4 XLR/combi jacks with 2 of those having High Z option for DI electric guitars, and can accept other *better if you got them* preamps using the insert jacks, without adding extra I/O via the ADAT (which I refuse to do unless someone's gonna sell me something better than a Behringer ADA8000 for super cheap), it just makes more sense eventually to save up and buy an interface with more I/O, this is why I pretty much limit myself to solo singer songrwriter's.

[swishniak]

I'd look at getting an audio interface with more I/O than the Audio Kontrol ...

yeah +1.

mixers are for the birds.

[ze2be]

this synth is TOTALLY OVERRATED!

depends. For psychedelia it rocks! Because there is direct access to 2 lfos, its super fast to make radical sound scape changes. If you like forest (progressive) psy-trance masters Derango, this is their main instrument. A Waldorf Q would be even better, but those are expensive and difficult to get. + They are huge in size. Virus B is also great for DubStep and DnB.

[Tympanic]

yepp, the q would be tha way to go ! Best VA out there in my eyes - the kb version of course.

....but "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth."

[exper]

I say ditch the NI interface and get an Alesis Multimix 8 USB2.0

It gives you 10 inputs and 2 outs, built in effects and plenty of routing. I use it at home and its great. Never an problems on a Macbook 2.4

[cotdagoo]

apparently i need new friends

i got a m-audio uno from a friend to connect my laptop to a djm800 for midi without dragging my soundcard with me to gigs. you could plug it in through midi and use the midi keyboard you have for about $20-$30 http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Uno.html

though i guess you'd still want a way to get the sounds out of it. maybe you should just send it my way

[starving student]

I say ditch the NI interface and get an Alesis Multimix 8 USB2.0

It gives you 10 inputs and 2 outs, built in effects and plenty of routing. I use it at home and its great. Never an problems on a Macbook 2.4

how plenty is the routing with only 2 outs, and how good are the efx/latency?