Then again there hasn’t been anything remarkable on the synth front. Micron SE seems to be just a color job, motif XF was a joke of an upgrade and I’m not even interested in looking at the DSI Mopho keyboard. Is it just me or do the Dave Smith synths have a bit of a basement workshop fit and finish? Sorry but its not just about the sound to me. A synth has to look the part. The blofeld keyboard is out of the question as well because as much as it rocks spec wise, my experience with waldorf synths hasn’t been great. I find them frustratingly buggy.

Reaktor 5.5 seems like a worthwhile upgrade but will I ever have the time to use it . I get the sense that native instruments is tightening up the reliability of their line up. I’ll give battery another chance. Maybe 3.1 isn’t as crash prone as 3.0.x.

Looks like Korg dropped the price from $999 to $699 on the Radias-r. Should I bite? That is one fine synth and I’ve had my eyes on its knobs for a loooong time. Hmm maybe not. The time thing again. Maybe I’ll just get a Korg monotron instead and see if all of the noise about analog synths actually hold water. It can’t be bad for $60.

The imminent  os 4 upgrade will offer a mod matrix feature on all Virus TIs. The feature allows you to use an arpeggiator pattern as a source in the modulation matrix. To those of you not familiar with a mod matrix, I would describe it as a non random, tempo synced, sample and hold LFO. In other words, its a sample and hold LFO that allows you to set the wave level at each individual step(up to 32 steps in the viruses case). A few enhancements have been made to the arp editor in Virus control to facilitate this feature. Firstly, The arp has gained an “Arp matrix mode”. In this new mode, the arpeggiator does not trigger new notes after the first step of the pattern while keys are held down. This allows you to play a sustained sound and have for instance, filter cutoff modulated cyclically by the matrix.

This new addition to the Virus Os has made it a bit easier to put of getting a Korg Radias. Now I can wait till I find a truly crack head deal. The virus’ implementation has a long way to go to match the Radias’ 3 independent sequencers and 16 physical knobs but it is a decent start.

In a future point upgrade, it would be cool to be able to set the modulation destination as an attribute on the arp itself, in addition to setting them in the mod matrix. The TI’s LFOs currently work like this so I don’t believe this will be difficult to implement. The reason this would be cool is that, it would make it possible to switch the range of modulation levels to one that makes sense for the destination being modulated. Take a scenario where you want to modulate the index of a wavetable oscillator with the matrix. If the selected wavetable only has 24 waves, does it really make sense to be able to set the modulation level to 127? All together class “NO”. The EXB-Radias expansion available for the Korg m3 workstations, work this way. The modulation step level settings are also presented in a bipolar fashion so it is clear to the user that they are modulating an attribute either up or down relative to the the attributes current value.

Other goodies slated for the release include comb and vowel filters which are available in the effects block rather than the filter block. 6 spice(curry, saffron, chilli, onion, pepper & mint) themed stomp box overdrive effects are also on the menu. I suspect that the colors of the spices they have chosen to name the overdrives after, is a clue to the identities of the stomp boxes the access engineers based their models on.

I’m still happy I chose the Virus Polar even though I still have an outstanding mortgage on it . The new comb filter will fill a void left by by recently departed waldorf blofeld and the vowel filters will bring back to life, the one feature I missed dearly on my E-mu 6400 Ultra sampler.

Not a bad upgrade at all. Bravo chaps!!! The released demos sound good to these ears but have a listen for yourself at Virus OS4.