Has anyone played with the Virus Snow yet?

I see a few places have them in stock, but not much on Youtube yet.

(Anybody know if the polyphony cut is a major issue or not. I read about it being 'underpowered', though does that just come up when you're using it for several different sequenced patches?)

Just picked one up to test out.

Pretty small, solid build. Came with a gig bag.

Quickstart manual only.

One thing I noticed right away -

I don't know if it's a setting or not,

but knob movements feel like they're lagging and also not 100% smooth

compared to the old Virus C I used to have.

Getting around is a bit tiring, some menus involved.

But to be fair, I played with the Polar in the store also,

and that had its own fair share for menus.

Sound: half like the old Virus units, half a bit new, i guess from the different oscillators.

Trying to install Virus Control now.

FWIW, I ended up picking up a reboxed Virus keyboard.

Not sure if I needed the polyphony or not -- I imagine I didn't -- but the keyboard itself is really nice.

Had some issues with some weird reboots -- mostly I think when using Virus Control. Jury is still out, but I like the sound of it all.

Attempting to upgrade the firmware was not fun (froze a lot in the middle) --- especially when I found out it was already at 2.5.1 and didn't need to upgrade it. It seems good now though.

How much I end up using Virus Control is still TBD.

I tried to use virus Control, but found the USB audio latency for real-time playing to be to laggy for me. I might go back to it for patch programming, though, although I'm becoming more and more comfortable just using the front panel.

Switch it to direct outs while playing and if necessary local control on.

I utterly hate any latency when Im playing, so tend to use it like that alot.

BTW - my co-producer has just bought a snow - not had a chance to play with it yet thought. I guess sound wise should be exactly the same. As for poly - I dont suppose it will be an issue for us as I tend to bound anything I can to audio as soon as possible.

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I played one at NAMM with headphones. It sounded kinda like a Virus.

Which buffer size did you use?

I too encountered major USB audio latency, but I wasn't able to figure out how to switch audio to direct outs. The outputs went straight to the macbook.

Firmware upgrade was very smooth, did it automatically from Virus Control.

Picked one up yesterday at GC. They had just put it out on the floor the day before so they gave my 10% off. It ended up costing $1250 and some change.

So far I'm really happy with it, I've never had a synth like this and I think it will complement my XS and S90ES really well.

Software install and firmware update went perfectly smooth. I am still testing a few things because my computer did randomly shut off yesterday when I walked away. I'm not so sure this was because of the SNOW VSTi that I had loaded in Cubase at the time, but it is something I need to test today. So far I think I'm going to really enjoy the SNOW.

I couldn't agree more. Latency is the groove killer.

returned mine after one day. seems like a good idea upon reading, but for me coming from the virus c, i should either grab the TI desktop or none at all. but i can see how many other people will love it paired up with a laptop.

i can only imagine i'd feel the same. need them knobs!

Why $o ? And with the dollar, in the short term at least, its only likely to go ...

Its amazing how many companies with a vested interest in soft synths, DAWs, VSTs absolutely will not accept this.

well, I tried to love it, but it crashes my computer I've been working with support, but so far they can't figure it out. I'm going to head up to Guitar Center and return it. Wish it would have worked out, it's pretty sweet!

Ive been using one on a mac book pro all day in ableton live 7 - worked absolutely fine. Didnt bother trying it with cubase on my PC as that has a TI keyboard plugged into anyway

BTW - if you do buy a snow, then with the first batch you will need to follow the instructions on the card in the box and goto the web site to download the 2.7.0.46 software and install that. It seems quite a few people are not noticing the card and havig some problems with the shipped software. Do the upgrade and it should be OK.

Vanilla - what OS are you using it on?

I downloaded all the latest drivers and flashed the firmware. I'm using it on XP SP 2. It only crashes the computer when I'm using the VSTi Total Integration in Cubase 4.1.3. If I don't use the VSTi then it is fine. Basically to get it to crash my computer (and I mean crash, no blue screen no nothing, just powers down my computer ) I just load the TI VSTi and walk away from the computer and anywere from 5 minutes to 1 hour of being idol it will cause my computer to crash.

If guitar center would match B&H or Musiciansbuy.com on the price of the TI Desktop ($1980) I would exchange it for that since with the Desktop I can go back to the 2.5 drivers, but GC won't match those shops and there aint no way in hell I'm going to pay $2380 for the desktop.

Just got back from my local GC. I swapped my SNOW for the TI Desktop. I got them to sell me the Desktop for $1950. Still a lot more than what they used to go for but at least I didn't have to pay the current asking price of $2380. Damn it took a lot of signatures to get them to go for that price

Anyway I hope this one is stable for me. At least if this one crashes I can go back to the 2.5 drivers. With the SNOW you have to use the 2.7 beta drivers as they are the only ones that will work with the SNOW.

Well, Time for me to own up to my stupidity. The SNOW is not defective nor are its drivers/software. I realized something else must be causing this because my computer was crashing with my new Virus Desktop too even on the 2.5.1 TI drivers.

Man this had my mind boggled. I kept thinking to my-self there is no way the code could be causing my computer to just shut down without a blue screen or stop error. I started thinking maybe my motherboard or my motherboards USB ports were faulty in some way, or maybe I had bad RAM, well it turns out it was neither of those.

When I went to open my computer case to put in a spare USB card to try new USB ports separate from the motherboards ports I decided to turn on my computer with the case off to make sure all my fans were running. Well, guess what, my CPU fan was dead! I immediately realized a overheating CPU will shut a computer down in its tracks, so I quickly replaced my CPU fan. I left my computer on all night with Cubase running and the TI VSTi running and my computer never shut down.

Basically the reason the VSTi had anything to do with this was because it would tax the CPU just enough to cause it to heat up above normal and without a fan on the CPU, BOOM, the computer would shut off.

Oh well in the end I got a Desktop instead of the SNOW which I think I'm going to like having the knobs and I only paid $500 more for the Desktop TI.