Review: Access Virus TI Snow
Oct 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Jason Blum
Function keys help to overcome the Virus TI Snow’s size limitation. Press one and an Easy menu of the most commonly used parameters for that function appears on the LCD.
Since its introduction in 1997, the Access Virus has carved a legendary place for itself in synthesizer history. Released at the height of vintage synth mania, just as analog simulation was becoming a reality thanks to inexpensive and powerful DSP, the Virus line quickly garnered critical acclaim for its spot-on emulation of classic analog synth sounds and knob-laden hardware that was fun and easy to use.
As plug-ins began to dominate studio production in recent years, Access introduced the Total Integration (TI) synth line. The revolutionary concept combined a hardware synthesizer with a plug-in interface that could be used exactly like a software instrument. It's a remarkable synergy that adds up to more than the sum of its parts; all the heavy analog emulation number-crunching is offloaded to the hardware, while the software front end provides ease of use and simplified automation inside any VST or RTAS host.
At more than $2,500, the feature-laden powerhouse Virus TI eclipses the price range of many musicians and producers. It's also a hefty unit that is less than ideal for cramped live-performance situations. Access wasted little time responding to those limitations with the compact Virus TI Snow, which offers all of the great features users expect from the Virus synths with pared-down polyphony and a price to match.
A BALL OF FUN
It's hard not to fall in love with the Snow at first sight. It's easy to see that world-renowned German engineering at work. The unit boasts a beautiful but sturdy cream-white metal casing, studded with gray knobs and wonderfully tactile switches, and white LEDs round out the icy motif. A strip of light wood veneer emblazoned with the Access logo adds a nice touch of earthy class to the bottom front panel. Build quality is second to none, and in spite of its tiny stature and cute appearance, the Snow feels like it could easily take the rigors of the road in stride.
The Snow's diminutive footprint is ideal for tabletop use. With a tiny frame measuring only 11 inches long and six inches deep, it's roughly the size of a large paperback. It can fit practically anywhere, so its multitude of knobs and switches are always within arm's reach. The one place it can't hang out is in a rack — the unusual dimensions and lack of a dedicated rack kit make it practically impossible to mount, but it would be a shame to cover up those sleek wooden accents anyway.
A printed Getting Started manual provides a general overview of the Snow's architecture and a basic explanation of the Total Integration (TI) software. The 43 pages of English instructions don't begin to scratch the surface of the Snow's capabilities. A far more comprehensive, 218-page PDF manual lets you delve more deeply into the Virus TI software, and a supplemental 95-page PDF outlines the parameters in exhaustive detail.
Setup requires a 40 MB download of the latest software from the Access Website, and a guided install process walks you through connecting the Snow to a USB port and installing the appropriate drivers. I tested the Snow on a Windows Vista machine and had to disconnect and reconnect the Snow a number of times during installation to get all the drivers running correctly. I also received a notice that the software might be incompatible with my version of Windows, but I never encountered any instances where the Snow locked up or behaved abnormally in Vista.
TOTAL INTEGRATION
As an old-school synth geek who's used to patching in outboard gear with MIDI leads and ¼-inch cables, it felt a little strange connecting the Snow with a single USB cable. But that's all it takes to hook up the Snow to any computer's DAW, which is the idea behind Total Integration.
Access' latest version of the TI software is proof positive that practice makes perfect. Working with the Snow in any compatible DAW is literally a dream come true; just drop the Snow's plug-in on any channel, make any necessary host-based MIDI settings to let you play it from a MIDI keyboard, and you're good to go. A single USB 2.0 cable conveniently transfers all audio and MIDI data. The elegant, easy system worked flawlessly for me in both Cubase 4 and Ableton Live 7. Latency was well within tolerable limits while running an ASIO buffer size of 256 samples, and I never experienced any dropouts, clicks or pops, even when running at 96 kHz. The lack of any extra A/D/A steps in the recording chain offers the extra benefit of keeping audio digitally pristine from synth to speaker. As with any standard VST or RTAS plug-in, you can automate all of the Snow's parameters inside the host DAW without any separate MIDI connections.
The TI software's slick user interface offers an Easy mode that consolidates important parameters onto a single page — a perfect tool for quick studio tweaks or live performances where paging through hundreds of settings isn't an option. These parameters can be changed on a patch-by-patch basis, so you can choose which elements in a patch are most important to you and drop those on the front page.
When Easy mode simply isn't enough, each of the Snow's functions has its own dedicated page that lays out the Snow's guts in detail. Editing within the TI software is the preferred method of patch control — far superior to dealing with the hardware LCD, thanks to the GUI's intuitive graphic displays of envelopes, waveforms and LFOs. Modifying envelope or oscillator shapes is as simple as moving the mouse around on the element's graphic display, or direct numerical entry for finer control.
The Snow's patch browser is particularly well-executed. A split-pane approach allows you to see two patch banks at once, making it a breeze to construct custom banks by dragging-and-dropping between panes, and a convenient quick search function lets you zero in on particular patches by category or name. The browser is fast and easy to use, but I'd prefer a system where patch names can contain more than 10 characters. I realize the limitation of the LCD display on the hardware, but nonetheless it would be easier to organize the thousands of patches the Snow holds in its RAM and ROM banks if that limitation were lifted.
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