Surprisingly, Nucleus Soundlab did include the Access drum kits, but for our heavier drum work this serves as additional layers and not the meat and potatoes bottom weight. It is true to its source, but not enough for a standalone collection. I only point this out for those who have heard the TI has drums and expect the usual assortment shipping with most workstation ROMplers. The Oscillator banks are generally preset destinations and allow for some very big layering. I was able to push the synth to its limit without pops or clicks without a multi-core system. I have a new friend in my virtual rack. To find out more about the Viral Outbreak, I snatched a few minutes to talk time with head programmer Jeremy Janzen from Nucleus Soundlab. Griffin Avid: Aside from its popularity, why was the Access Virus TI chosen and is their anything about its architecture that made it an obvious choice? The main consideration was that the TI has a very unique timbre that undeniably isn’t easily available in software form. The TI model was chosen in particular because of its interesting wave/formant/grain synthesis types. Could you tell us a little bit about the creation of the VST and how the sampling was done? Sure. The VST itself and the sampling followed very different paths. For the sampling, I used a program called Extreme Sample Converter. It’s excellent for sampling hardware synths. I sampled a wide variety of my own TI presets, as well as other sounds. I sampled these at 32-bit 96khz using my RME interface, then downsampled them to 24-bit 44khz. What followed is the real work - trimming, processing and looping each waveform. As the final product contains about 1500 waveforms that took quite some time, especially as my looping standards are very high. I won’t accept loops that don’t sound natural, or click - and I don’t use autolooping tools either. The VST itself uses technology from Wusik.com. Basically I license that from them for a fee on each copy sold. It’s worked out very well for both of us. Why use the Wusikstation as a host? What about that company made them the clear choice over something like NIs Kontakt Player? I did attempt to contact NI but I never received a reply. That narrowed down my choices considerably. But even if I had the Kontakt Player as a choice, I would have been tempted to use Wusikstation. Its wavesequencing features are a perfect fit for the Virus waveforms. Kontakt Player has nothing like that. You’ve used the Wusikstation engine as a shell and added several surprising features like the Mod Matrix and now the arpeggiator. As a product generally 38 Producer’s Edge May-June 2009
aimed at being a preset bank, why did you feel it was necessary to add this features? After all, you would have been fine with layering, general tweaks and modest effects. Actually, we have directly followed the Wusikstation versions. So when William (William K is the author of Wusikstation) adds new features, we add them to Viral Outbreak as well. You’ve made your product also available as a Reason Refill. Why is Propellerhead Reason an end format and what is your experience with Reason? Honestly, Reason Refill is my preferred format right now. It’s so wide-open for sound design. You can create very large modular arrangements and save them as Combinators - as well as map ‘macro’ controls so beginner users don’t need to delve into the depths of the patch to tweak it easily. The other factors are that the Refill market is very large, and the Propellerhead staff are extremely friendly and great to work with. Are there other hardware synths being ported over and what other products are on the horizon? Right now there aren’t any plans to do more products based on a single hardware synth. That doesn’t mean there won’t be hardware synth samples coming in different types of packages though... Our next products will focus on two formats - Reason Refills and Camel Audio Alchemy. I can’t speak any more about them right now, but if you own Reason and/ or Alchemy you’ll have plenty more goodies from us soon! Could you please go into a little bit of detail behind the Master Unison and how it can be used to beef up the final output? Master Unison is a monophonic unison that uses a variable number of voices. Depending on what your channel polyphony is set at, it will use that many unison voices. The level of detune is global for the entire patch and set in percentage values. Personally I didn’t use the Master Unison much in my Viral Outbreak patches. The reason for this is many of the samples themselves are recorded very fat, with Unison set on the Virus. So there really wasn’t a need for more fatness. Of course, its there if you want to experiment! Are there any other tips or tricks to getting even more of the Viral Outbreak? I think it’s easy to ignore the advanced wavesequencing features of Viral Outbreak and just use it like a Virtual Analog synth. But that’s really missing the point of the synth. It’s not just meant to sound like a Virus, but to