Review: Access Virus T1
So, I recently purchased a Access Virus T1, and I thought I’d post a review of it for those of you who are curious about what I think. (Probably no one, but nonetheless I feel this need to compulsively blog my opinions of consumer electronics).
First of all, let me comment on the sound. It’s beautiful. It’s lush. It’s fat. It’s probably even phat. It makes me feel like ten times the musician I actually am. I’m tempted to get out my AX-7 just so I can do windmills. It’s that good. Really. Honestly.
Unfortunately, other bits of the synth are.. how we say.. not so good.
First of all, it is the pickiest synth about MIDI incoming signals I’ve ever seen! Only about half of the thru ports on my other sound modules will drive it. As far as driving it from the output of a groovebox, forget about it. This synth wants very very clean midi, proper voltage levels, and no timing glitches at all, even 0.1%..
Second of all, you have to void the warantee in order to rack-mount it – there’s a rack kit, but installing it requires removing a waranty sticker. Smoooth…
Third of all, when passed random garbage on the MIDI bus, the synth !crashes!. Yep, just like Microsoft Windows.
However, despite all its flaws, I love the thing. The sound is so lush, so fat, so sweet.. and yet, with the twist of a knob, it can turn into all the agression of a DX-7 or all the sawtoothed insanity of a Prophet or Juno. It even has a bit of Moog stuck in there for good measure. It’s a wonderful sounding synth.
I haven’t yet started trying to integrate it’s CC implimentation into the mess that is my CC control loop, but I’ll let you all know how that goes once I’ve done it..