Access Music Virus Rack

Not that easy to use, and the manual is a joke.
The Emagic soundriver is good but unreliable.
Presets sound are great.

Features are god especial reverb and vocorder/input filters.
No expansion possible.

Sounds fantastic with great effects.
Works the best with dance and ambient music.
Cant't play "real" instrumens very vell, but plays
analog songs like a dream

rock solid

It's a great toy, but I don't use it that often. Many sounds are
mad or funny but not great for music. Basically there are about 15-20
sound in different variation. I like my Yamaha Motif Rack better, but
when I goes mad then its the virus that rock, and some off my best song are using the virus as the lead instrument.

It's a rack with 5 knobs and few buttons so it's not so easy to work with as with desktop or keyboard version. But relatively speking it's quite easy to handel. All the menus are at your reach with just few button pushes. There are no sub-menues. I like the handling of it.
The presets are unbelievable and there's all kinds of sounds there. So you can have a good look of the possibilities of the machine.
The only bad point is that the manual is not so good. It lacks many things like parameter change values for example.

The polyphony is 16 and that is enough for me. The effects sound fabulous. There could be a possibility to use reverb and delay simultaniously thou (but that would cost more). The MIDI capabilities are great. It has everything you need in a tiny little box.

Sounds are the best thing in the machine. Fat and warm basses, thick and clear leads, awsom pads, weird and moving sfx and organic sounds, unbelievable ambient soundscapes and great for drums also. It does everything if you produce dance music. And with the onboard effects you can make it sound godlike. The sounds react for my playing better than anything I have used.

It hasn't crashed a single time.

Can't really say but I've heard only good things about them.

10. There's nothing else to say.

OS Version 2.0 Very easy to use. I don't really program my own sounds, but I do use the front panel knobs to tweak the presets to better suit me. It took a lot of messing around to get the sounddriver to run on windows 2000 and so far it just dosn't seem to be worth the trouble. Maybe If I were in to programming sounds from scratch then I would care about it more. Besides emagic is a Mac company anyway.

16 Voice with 16 Part multi-timbral. 4 outputs and ton's of patch storage. Access claims that they will soon sell an upgrade to turn it into a rack XL. Only down points: As far as I can tell so far only way to use a drum map is in multi mode. (not to big of a deal for me because I have another synth that has some cool drum kits.)
and I hate the fact that it has an external line lump power supply. Now I have a big heavy black lump of plastic crap that has to sit at the bottom of my rack.

Amazing, Powerfull and Warm. There is not much else you can say. I don't have any experience with a complete analog synth to compare this too, but this synth sounds every bit as good as my Korg DW-8000 (Digital/Analog Hybrid).

Well I doubt it will ever leave my study but is seems to be built very well. The knobs are smooth and the audio signal is very clean.

They have an o.k. web site, but thats all the custumer support I have needed so far. I bought this used so I don't know how much support they would be willing to give anyway.

If it were lost or stolen I would cry for days then I would go buy the rack XL and Move On. It's a great synth in a single rack space. I have this, an E-MU Audity 2000, a Korg Wavestation, a Korg DW-8000 and the Vsampler Software Synth and I am finally very happy with the set up I own.

I am running OS 2.0 (Just released October 2002!)

First let me say that it has been a joy to use and is the center of my present studio. The presets are great for inspiration for laying down a basic idea quickly but offer enough flexibility to be tweaked for personal preference of sounds.

Patch manipulation is easy on the front of the unit. I have experimented with Sound Diver but haven't gotten results that were immediate enough. I prefer to spend more time on the song writing and less time banging my head into my computer out of frustration with Sound Diver. But this review is not about Sound Diver, it's about the Access Virus Rack Classic! The manual is clear and concise and after a few minutes searching for the information, it gets put back into the file for reference. All and all easy to use but advanced if you need it to be. I give it full marks for it's flexibility depending on what you use it for and how in depth you want to take it.

The Polyphony is set @ 16 -- In my opinion plenty for a single box at this price range.

As far as the FX are concerned, it covers the basics:
Reverb/Delay/Groove-delay
Chorus/Flanger

Are the ones I use the most. Recently the OS update has added RetroPhaser and Ringmodulator at no cost to me!

I believe this box also has some expansion capabilities to be upgraded to the RACK XL in the future but I have yet to hear anything about it. As is, I'd say this product was self sufficient and didn't really need any upgrades other than OS upgrades which have been easy and free to do.

One more feature worthy of mention is the LFO LED lights. These things flash/strobe/dim in cadence with the LFO settings allowing a quick and easy visual reference on how the sounds are being constructed.

I've heard a lot of Synths and some are flat and soft. This baby is warm and full. Telling someone this synth is only good for one genre of music is wrong. There should be no boundaries to what someone can do sonically. Now that is said ... the typical use for this synth is Dance, Techno, Electronic, and anything requiring synthetic sounds. What you can do with it is totally up to your own creativity. Who knows what fusions will exist in the future.

Dependable. No problems. I would use it on a gig without a backup. But then again, at such a great price you could easily afford to pick up a second one.

I bought this thing and it originally had only 512 presets. Low and behold, Access Music updated the OS and gave me the ability to have 1024 presets (by deleting the demo song). Do these people support their products or what? I'm still in shock that they haven't gone the way that so many companies go - Discontinue the product and make an almost identical product with just a few new features. This is not the case with this box or this company. Recently, they have upgraded this box's OS (Now at 2.0!) one more time to give me even more FX and features not included when I first bought it!

They are supporting their products constantly! I will remain a faithful customer forever!

If this one was lost I would buy another one in a drum beat. For the price, you can't beat the quaility and the quantity of sonic power. Just starting out and need a full blown sound quality workhorse but cheap rack synth? This is your beast.

simple

I use external fx.
But virus is packed with good things like reveb,delay,etc...
Planty of poly for me 16 voices.
If you want more pick up a virus b.

I love it.
This is my baby.
I use it all the time in my music.
Very rich sounding VA.
Pads and leads are the best.
If you make trance or any other type of electronica
buy it and you will be hapy with your purchase trust me.

No problems so far.

I will buy it again and again.
I have Plenty of gear and this is my best VA in my set up.
I compared it to my Novation and it's just much better sound wise
and in programming your own sounds.
this is a keeper.

software version 4.5
The presets sounds are awesome
editing is quit easy , due to matrix principle
who needs a manual ?

16 voice polyphony, i use a yamaha sy77 as the remote keyboard
there are effects built in , but i use a TCelectronic M-one.
expansions ? i don't really know.
full midi implementation
i use computers for sequencing not the module

i don't like standard sounds, the virus has no standard sounds !
Suitable most for Dance, Techno, Trance .
The onboard effects aren't bad, but i use additional effect units.
It reacts to my playing.
The reaction overall is quit fast !

Of course, it's a A-Brand with magnificent service !
without problems.

I had a small problem which they perfectly solved !!!!

I would right away buy a new one !!!, the price is fair.
I play synths for over 20 years.
My gear is :
Yamaha SY77, AN1x, RM1x, TG500, MU90R
Roland JP8000, SC55
Korg MS2000R, Wavestation, Prophecy, Z1, M3R
Clavia NordLead II
Access Virus B Rack
I only love my Virus.
I've compared him with the NordLead II, and the NLII is now unemployed! (however the comparison is not quit honest, because the nordlead's appregiator is not as good as the virus one.
Personally I think It's the best synth that I ever owned.

I?m still new to this module so it seems ok to get around.
The software version is 1.01 and I had no problems updating it.

It's laid out really good on the panel with a up & down button to select main parameters which includes Osc, filter, Envelope, LFO, EFX, Edit, Arpeggiator.

It is a bit of a pain when in Multi/Single Mode from which you have to press both Multi & Single buttons at the same time to access sounds used in a Multi setup for sequencing, as every time you have to tweak a parameter you have to press both Multi/Single buttons again
Which can get rather repetitive.

Performing a Sys-ex Data transfer is also easy for all setups single or multi no moans there

Polyphony is 16 notes and multi let's me have 16 channels.

The effects section only let's you choose between Reverb/Delay in multi mode that you need both really but can only have one or the other. It does let you have independent settings for the chorus, Analog Boost, as far as I can see at this point.

The effects are nice and work very well with the sounds or as a external effects processor that includes 2 Audio inputs.

The arpeggiator is good and I only wish I could program it instead on using just presets.

This is the important bit so here we go!

The sounds are fantastic! The basses are phat as hell and the leads are deep sharp and clear. For trance producers out there the sound set downloaded from the Access site cosmic Dream set has all the saw trance leads bass Fx that will have you playing these sounds for ages.

Iv never heard such a good set of presets that are so useable as are.
I like to make my own sounds but found it hard to improve on the sound. Iv done a pair of speaker in due to the cut-off and hi Resonance creating such low subs. Its nice to have quality sounds in both the Single and multi set-ups instead of just quality sounds produced by performance modes found in digital synths.

Dont know yet?

Very helpfull ,indeed they gave me so much infomation on the site and via Email.

If it where stolen I would get the Virus b as it does have a much better spec, but if I could only afford a Rack then that would be just fine with me.

The sounds are great easy to use and will inspire you to produce more interesting music and sounds.

If any one needs more info email me anytime.

os version 1.0, mostly trance related presets, since its a rack
it doest take some time to get into editing patches, manual has
an OK tutorial on it. after about 15 min you will be making sounds
on it. (probably sooner). It comes with the OEM Sound Diver which
doesnt work well at all for me so I dont know if this would make
it easier to edit.

16 polyphony, 16 multi part, chorus, delay, reverb. I beleive
chorus is per part, delay and reverb there is only one per all
(I could be wrong). 2 osc + sub osc, 2 filters per voice: LP, HP, BANDPASS BANDSTOP, Access says they will have a hardware upgrade
in the future to offer all virus b features.

Sounds great! I used to use softsynths but after having this I
will not be going back anymore. I can get almost any sound out of
this if I spend enough time programming it. I mostly make drum and
bass and it does suit my needs fine.

It has not crashed on me yet, hopefully will not in the future.
of course the sound diver program they bundle withit doesnt work
for me but thats beside the point really...The hardware has worked
smoothlesly so far.

Access' website has good information, I bought the synth partly
because of the extensive information on the site.

This was overall the most expensive piece of hardware I have
purchased but it is definitly worth it. I dont regret buying
it all. My experiance with it so far has been excellent. I
love playing it!

THE OS VERSION IS THE 1.0
EASY TO USE
THERE IS WITH THE RACK A OEM SOUNDIVER
THE MANUAL IS OK

16 NOTES OF POLYPHONY
EFFECTS ARE DELAY, CHORUS, VOCODER, ARP
THE STEREO INPUT CAN BE BOOST AND THERE IS A CORRECTION IF YOU CONNECT DIRECTLY A TURNTABLE

SOUNDS ARE FABULOUS
A REALLY GOOD ENGINE FOR TECHNO AND DANCE MUSIC
THE EFFECT ARE REALLY GOOD
THE VIRUS REACT OF THE PLAYING IS REALLY GOOD