NAMM Show Update: Access Music announced the most comprehensive feature update in the company’s history.

Version 2.0 for the Virus TI adds Graintable, Formant-based oscillators and enhanced Wavetable synthesis. The new operating system introduces Section Locking for the Virus Control plug-in, searchable patch categories, 25 additional Wavetables and 256 additional signature ROM sounds, an improved user interface, a patch complexity indicator as well as loads of other refinements.

The Graintable oscillators applies techniques as those used in granular sampling and pitch-shifting algorithms to synthesizer Wavetables. The formant-based oscillators work in a similar fashion, only with one crucial difference: the formants remain fixed as you play. This effectively turns the oscillator into a filterbank on steroids comprising up to 256 resonant bandpass filter poles, whereby the cutoff of each virtual pole is determined by the harmonics in the current Wavetable index.

The existing Wavetable oscillators were also updated. OS2.0 allows PWM-style modulation and the degree of interpolation between the individual waves can be altered. As a result a Wavetable can morph from smooth to coarse to stepped (which makes it sound similar to a wave sequence).
Virus Control also underwent major improvements. There is Section Locking, a new technology by Access Music GmbH, enabling the TI to lock specific aspects of a sound from changing. For instance locking everything but the arpeggiator. Now when browsing through the library the sound character will remain unchanged, but the arpeggiator pattern will alter depending on the settings of the selected new patch.
2 banks of signature patches have been added to the TI’s ROM. Brooklyn based breaks and electro wizard Matt Stolley spent most of 2006 working on “10 dirty years” – certainly the darkest collection of Virus sounds so far. Matt Picone also supplied a performance bank.

OS2 is available as free download for all existing Virus TI user.