should I trade my virus indigo B for a snow?

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
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nowtime
Posts: 1567
Joined: Thu Jan 11, 2007 7:24 pm
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should I trade my virus indigo B for a snow?

Post by nowtime » Sat Apr 25, 2009 5:44 am

http://www.sequencer.de/pix/access/Virus_Indigo.jpg

http://cachepe.zzounds.com/media/qualit ... 2b4a01.jpg

I am wanting to downsize my footprint. Hate to give up all those wonderful knobs but what's a man to do? These 2 units are similar in value. It looks like there's 5 knobs for realtime expression on the Snow and I assume the pitch and mod will work easily from a controller.

But does it sound better?

I googled some videos and the old indigos sounded better than the TI in all of them (probably a fluke). Is there a better small-footprint synth I could get - perhaps a Blofield? The Dave Smith Evolver was the best sounding but it is monophonic and that will not do. Should I trade in my beloved Indigo and get the Snow? Wondering also if the downloadable patches are as extensive for Snow as for the fullblown TI.
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aisling
Posts: 2640
Joined: Fri Mar 10, 2006 8:58 am
Location: 50 miles north of SF

Re: should I trade my virus indigo B for a snow?

Post by aisling » Sat Apr 25, 2009 8:37 am

what about the virus c? I always loved that unit.
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Live, Reason, Moog sub phatty, Moog sub 37, Ozone 6, guitars, Pedals, proper ergonomic sitting posture, french pressed coffee with a pinch of cardamon.

mkelly
Posts: 595
Joined: Sat Feb 24, 2007 2:32 pm
Location: Belfast

Re: should I trade my virus indigo B for a snow?

Post by mkelly » Sat Apr 25, 2009 4:57 pm

nowtime wrote:I am wanting to downsize my footprint. Hate to give up all those wonderful knobs but what's a man to do? These 2 units are similar in value. It looks like there's 5 knobs for realtime expression on the Snow and I assume the pitch and mod will work easily from a controller.

But does it sound better?

I googled some videos and the old indigos sounded better than the TI in all of them (probably a fluke). Is there a better small-footprint synth I could get - perhaps a Blofield? The Dave Smith Evolver was the best sounding but it is monophonic and that will not do. Should I trade in my beloved Indigo and get the Snow? Wondering also if the downloadable patches are as extensive for Snow as for the fullblown TI.
I "downsized" from a Virus Classic (B) to the Snow quite recently. I get way more studio use of out it now with the Virus Control plugin - I know some people love knob tweaking in the studio, but I seem to prefer mousing about when creating sounds.

Performance wise, as you say, there are 5 real-time performance knobs. The 3 soft-knobs can control just about anything, and there's the cutoff and resonance controls. Also, you can press the shift key which gives knob access to Part Volume, Transpose, Panorama, Filter Envelope and Amp Envelope - maybe not so handy live if you're keeping one hand on the keyboard. :-)

You do mention controlling pitch and mod from a controller, in which case you are still free to set up other controls for the Virus parameters. Between a decent controller and the soft knobs/cutoff/resonance, you can control just about everything you want.

As far as I know, the TI patches work flawlessly on the Snow, you're just limited in terms of polyphony. As to the Indigo sounding better than the TIs - i really dunno - could be a subjective thing in which case you would be as well getting the same patches onto both synths right in front of you. I've compared and contrasted my Classic and Snow with the same patches - they sounded fairly similar to me, but when I started tweaking with the Snow's extra features they ended up sounding way better there :-)

Hope that helps,

Mo
Live 7, Logic Studio 8, Mac Pro 8-core/2.26/6GB, OS X 10.5.6, Saffire Pro 40, Alesis M1 Active 520s, Remote SL 37, Virus TI Snow, Nord Rack 2, Zebra 2, Sylenth1

Deadbeat
Posts: 96
Joined: Mon Dec 17, 2001 5:28 pm
Location: Berlin
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Re: should I trade my virus indigo B for a snow?

Post by Deadbeat » Sat Apr 25, 2009 7:41 pm

kind of off topic but if anyone in the Berlin area wants a Virus KB I'll sell it cheap or trade for something cool...

nowtime
Posts: 1567
Joined: Thu Jan 11, 2007 7:24 pm
Location: Homefree

Re: should I trade my virus indigo B for a snow?

Post by nowtime » Sun Apr 26, 2009 5:34 pm

Thanks for your informative response mkelly.

Any other Snow users around care to chime in?
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Geebag
Posts: 288
Joined: Tue Jan 29, 2008 6:56 pm

Re: should I trade my virus indigo B for a snow?

Post by Geebag » Sun Apr 26, 2009 6:04 pm

Yea you should
Image

bodhi71
Posts: 626
Joined: Sun Feb 24, 2008 3:07 pm

Re: should I trade my virus indigo B for a snow?

Post by bodhi71 » Mon Apr 27, 2009 1:41 am

I'll trade you an Evolver desktop for you're Virus :P

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