VAC has been in limbo. I have about 6 tracks, but doing vocals has really been tough on this new material. It’s Like I’m learning to sing again. Trying harmonies and all kinds of things. I feel like I must improve a lot on the vocals to make a better impact on the new lp. My living conditions are hampering me now. On top of that, because of how bad the economy is, I’ve had to get a full time job, physical stuff, and getting used to it is a little hard. I have even less time to work on things now. I think this lp wont see the light of day until next year. I know. It bumbs me out too. But if i put out what I have now, it wont be good enough. I have to work harder on it.

There might be some live shows before a new lp comes out. I might hit the road with Todd’s new band. VAC and TG. TG(he will announce the new name soon) is what we will call Todd’s band now. Let me say, todd just got his mastering done on his new lp. I had nothing to do with the song writing or anything on his project, I only gave him some advice. Its really good. The vocals are really great. The recordings are amazing. In terms of productions, I think its better than VAC. I would say that it sounds like a cross between, david bowie, nine inch nails, and the legendary pink dots. Its fucking cool. I think he will have a myspace soon. I’m going to try and help him shop the record around. I am going to promote the hell out of it to you guys. So even though vac is in la la land. Todd’s solo stuff is coming soon. Todd is a member of velvet acid christ since lust for blood. So he is tied to this project. We are still working together on VAC as well. Now that he is finished with his project, we will be finishing off the new vac together. As far as this blog goes, full time job + VAC means no time for video games, and movies. So no new anime, or video game reviews for a little while. I have the new metal gear, and from what I have played of it, its the best game ever. Go pick it up. I also really like the battle field bad company demo as well, i will buy that game as well. Fro has finally joined the VAC klan on PS3 network. So we are kicking it again old school, even though his lame ass moved to Iowa.

I will be doing a podcast again soon, probably later today. look for it.

Warning: I know that a lot of people do not have sensitive ears like I do, and won’t be able to tell the differences that I complained about on here. I’m not promoting myself with these reviews, these are for my fans, thats all. If your not a fan of my music, I could care less what you think. I’m not a music magazine, I will not suck corporate cock to get free shit or promotions like all the other online bs companies do, and real magazines. Don’t like what I say, DON’T FUCKING READ IT. Everything on this site is for my fans. Thats all.

Let me just start by saying. Whoa, The Virus TI Snow is great. I never expected this. I was wowed by the virus A back in the day. The virus b and C never really wowed me like the A did. The virus A had this gritty cutting in your face sound that the B and C never had let alone the TI. The TI sounds faint, distant and lackluster on anything it does. I think its a converter issue and a power issue(my theory, let me stress its mearly my idea of why, is that when a synth tries to do to much, it has an internal bus and task switching processing it has to do, and some how this creates internal audio jitter that screws up the sound and makes it sound cold sterile and distant, I notice this with vst plug ins as well, sure there are buffers and things that are supposed to negate this, but I have pretty good fireface 800 converters, and when I convert any of my analog hardware synths to digital audio they still sound good and full, but when I use a vst or au no matter what synth, the sound is just lack luster, faint and distant sounding). The virus TI by far was the worst of the virus family. It sounded like a plug in. When I sold the Virus C I bought a virus TI and was really unimpressed. It sounded worse, it had a buggy os, and there were all kinds of clicks and pops. I have owned all Virus models except the B. The regular TI sounds the worst in my book.

Now, I bought the TI snow. I thought maybe the presets were just better, so I decided to go and buy a regular TI again to see for sure. I ended up swapping the snow for the regular TI cause I got a good deal, thinking, the ti has more power and more out puts so its better right? WRONG. Same issue, the regular TI was faint, and buggy, even with the newest os update. I found some of the same patches on the snow and regular TI and compared them. The Snow is 100 times better, its loud, punchy, present, in your face, big for a digital synth. It does have a lot of bass. The snow sits better in the mix. Wait wait wait. This is only true when I play it with its own DAC. If I plug in the usb and do a AU instrument or VST, BLAH it sounds just like the crappy plug in synths I hate. So the audio over the total integration usb sounds faint and unpunchy , just like most soft synths. So, if I want it to sound punchy, loud and aggressive, I run it out its main analog outputs. This is the key. Otherwise it sounds like the rest of the digital stuff I don’t like very much.

The original virus A sounded pretty good as well, but now the snow seriously sounds better than all of the viruses I have used before. It’s not just the better presets. Granted, it’s still digital so its doesn’t sound as good when you play it up high, compared to a real analog. It still has a plastic type sound to it. I love the filters, the osc, and the fx. This really is a step up from the others. The presets finally show of the power of the TI. I’m betting because the TI Snow was not stretched on processing power, it does less and has less in it, so the main output sounds better, no idea why for sure exactly, above, I’m just guessing. What can the TI snow do? Everything, pads, strings, bass, leads, arps, fx. It does them all very well. Sure I think real analog is a bit better in fatness and resonance and tone fullness, but this virus really holds its own, It is my favorite digital synth now.

Sure the snow interface is not as good as the regular virus, but honestly, if you put it in expert mode, and hit the buttons, its easy to find anything and edit it, or even make your own presets. It’s laid out very well in that regard. Sure only 4 timbers. Who cares when you can track stuff any way. That is why the regular ti is no big deal to me. The polyphony on the snow is about 32 voices on simple voices, 20 poly with a moderately complex voices, and 10 to 14 for very complex voices like if using strange filters or the grain or formant oscillators. This synth is cool, and now that it sounds a lot fuller and better tone wise on the snow, the virus really is worth owning along side real analogs. It adds all that digital stuff the analogs cannot do. This does not replace analog, just adds to it nicely.

This synth is great, it has a ton of filter types, 2 multi-mode filters (HP, LP, BP, BS) and the Analog Filter (modelled after the MiniMoog™ cascade filter with 6-24 dB Slope and self-oscillation). And awesome oscillators, WaveTable Oscillators for a completely new array of sounds. The basic idea behind the technology, is to take the existing wavetables, and apply similar techniques as those used in some granular sampling and pitch-shifting algorithms to open up a whole new world of possibilities. In each case, the Simple mode offers fewer parameters, and a higher polyphony. The characteristics of the Grain Table and Formant Table oscillators are quite different to those of traditional “granular” sampling/synthesis techniques, which tend to be associated with other-worldly “clouds” of sound. In the Virus TI Snow, they have instead employed the technology to achieve a very musical result which should prove every bit as useful as the other oscillator types in all manner of musical projects. It kicks ass. The Snow shows it off a lot more than the regular TI did. There are no buggy pops and randomly clicky envelopes like in the regular TI. The snow is a lot tighter over all. If you fidget with the presets while playing wildly, I notice notes can hang sometimes and it can take a second for the new sound to kick in with all its fx. Oh well, I don’t care about that really so it doesn’t bug me. There are still a few bugs with the SNOW, but they will be ironed out I think. The regular TI is still buggy and pops and acts stupid even after all the updates. The snow does not suffer from those anomalies.

The way you scroll through the presets is like an old roland juno or jupiter, you have a bank, then 8 sounds per bank. I like this. I can still search by sound type by holding a few buttons and getting into the options so all that is still there as well. you get 512 rom, and 512 ram sounds. That is more than enough. I hate when “ITS TOO MUCH”, when it comes to presets. The total control is cool for editing sounds and organizing stuff, but I do not like how it sounds over usb. I still love the way the virus stuff sounds being run through an old mackie mixer. Oh, and the presets are actually good on this virus. Its pretty small, easy to cary around, because it comes with its own carrying case. This is a great sound module. I give this a 5 out of 5. A must have. Its affordable. Click Here To hear the snow demo I made.