Hey all, I have tried the soft synths mentioned here extensively and I own Zebra2. I recently bought the TI Desktop for $1800 AU (AU is worth less than US dollars)
I also use Thor in Reason which is an excellent synth and have extensively tested out NIs Massive.
- Raw oscillators: Sylenth1 or Thor are the best in this department, the Virus oscs (without analog boost) have barely any bass and the highs are all not sharp. The hypersaw is about the same if not better in Sylenth and Thor. The wavetables are about as good on Thor / Massive (actually they are better on Massive) and the graintables I can't compare since not many synths have them. Ultimately, the Virus oscs are nothing to go nuts over, but I think that they are partly responsible for the "virus sound"
- Filters: The Virus filters take the cake here (Thor is a close second). The analog mode in particular is fat as all hell and really screams with the resonance up, reminds me of an old Roland analog I owned. The Zebra2 / Massive / z3ta filters are entirely different to the Virus and ultimately worse for my taste. Sylenth's filter is nice but it's not quite as good, especially when you compare analog mode.
- Saturation: This is where the Virus beats all softsynths hands down for me. I have never heard such awesome sounding saturation which still sounds so musical as you drive it. The rate reducer and rectifier for instance are brilliant and really give a edgy yet musical tone to any sound. Thor and Sylenth are decent in this department even though Sylenth does not have polyphonic saturation. Thor's actually sounds great but gets very clicky as you up it so you have to up the attack to stop the popping
- FM / Ringmod / Hardsync: Once again, here is where the Virus shines. The FM algorithms provided are insane! I just love them. Most synths mentioned don't perform FM in the way the Virus does so it's hard to compare. Same with ringmod, it is extremely usable and gives so much power / bite to a sound. The hard sync is awesome too, but about as good as most softsynths mentioned here.
- Effects: Well, the phaser is something very special (Sylenth1 nailed this too) but the rest are all pretty normal. The reverb has a certain quality about it which works well on really small room sounds, yet it opens up nicely for big tails. Unfortunately there is no modulation on the verb so I still use ArtsAcoustic which sounds way better anyway.
- Misc: The Virus has a punch knob which although very simple, really really works. The sounds in Sylenth really lack that initial pointy attack, they sound much flatter when you compare to the Virus, same with Zebra2. Thor is the only soft synth that comes close to matching this punchiness for me.
Overall, I love the Virus, it certainly has a huge character when used in a mix. But, it is not the only synth you will ever need, Sylenth1, Zebra, z3ta or Thor compliment it extremely well. I still love Thor for really direct bassy sounds, Zebra for huge soundscapes and pads, Sylenth I never really was a fan of since it can only produce a smaller palette of sounds (no hard sync, no easy to use PWM, only standard waveforms, no FM, no ringmod) and z3ta for other stuff.
I would actually have bought z3ta had they allowed us to set a default quality setting, it's sooooo annoying having to change the quality everytime you start / load a patch.
I use Cubase 4 on WinXP at the moment and the Virus TI 2.7.5 has caused me 0 problems so far. You get 3 output channels. You can use one of them as a send (which I send to artsacoustic) and I usually use the 3rd channel sidechaining to the kick for pumping sidechain sounds.
I think that there really is no softsynth that sounds quite like a Virus, but the software equivalents are just as good, they just sound different. I'm still pretty happy with my purchase, it's a really well built unit
Cheers
