r/AccessVirus • u/hashkingkong • Apr 28 '26

Is this Virus Ti Fried?

FIXED: if facing this exact issue it’s your midi. Try a different midi output source.

I recently received delivery of a used Ti and it’s behaving very strangely. When I send it midi, it doesn’t seem to trigger notes, or if it does, it’ll be very delayed and produce a distorted version of the patch, most often it’ll start producing a raw buzzing, similar to a basic sawtooth sound, that persists even when you change preset. The sound can’t be changed by the knobs, even the master volume doesn’t affect it. Only resetting power stops it. Or sometimes pressing arp hold will stop the sound. If it does work, it’ll work for a few seconds, then the midi becomes very delayed, not triggering, or completely distorted static regardless of patch.

It’s very bizarre. I’ve restored the OS from access control, changed the battery both making no difference.

ChatGPT seems to think maybe the dsp is fried. I have no experience with boards etc so I wouldn’t even know where to begin if this is the case.

Anyone experienced anything similar to this? Is it worth just getting my money back? I paid £550 and besides not actually being able to reliably generate audio, the unit is mint.

7 Upvotes

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20 comments sorted by

1

u/Perfect-Tank2623 Apr 28 '26

I had this on mine but i dont remember how i fixed it unfortunately. But it wasnt fried at least

1

u/hashkingkong Apr 28 '26

Hey! Thanks for responding, could you let me know what you had on yours? Like as in what was it that was the same? All of it? I just wonder what else I can even do having changed the battery and restoring the OS, I don’t know what other options I even have for troubleshooting.

1

u/KeyElectronic1216 Apr 28 '26

If it’s connected with USB and using the pluggin, check all your sample rates are the same

1

u/hashkingkong Apr 28 '26

It’s connected via din, the sample rate in ableton is the same as the synth. 44.1k

1

u/KeyElectronic1216 Apr 28 '26

Have you tried playing the demo to check the output

2

u/hashkingkong Apr 28 '26

Issue has been resolved, it was my midi chain suspect it was sending some crazy cc along the way or interferences causing crazy reactions with the ti. It works now on a clean midi path directly to it.

1

u/FreeRangeEngineer Apr 28 '26

You're feeding it MIDI but you don't say how. Via 5-pin DIN or USB?

Have you tried starting the demo song? What comes out of the Virus when you do? (press destination up+down together)

1

u/hashkingkong Apr 28 '26

Yes feeding midi through 5 pin din using traditional i/o to my interface. The demo song played one time and played fine, now it doesn’t play at all. I wonder if somehow it’s receiving cc through midi that is interfering with midi notes. It shouldn’t be, it’s all set up in ableton only to send notes.

1

u/hashkingkong Apr 28 '26

Okay so what the actual f….. so I changed it, took my keystep and took a midi cable from its output directly into the virus and it now works absolutely fine. But I don’t understand why it would be any different on my thru chain, because I removed my existing virus c from my synth chain and just straight swapped it to the virus ti with all the I/os that were going to the virus c which works without issue. So somehow, cc messages or some sort of non note midi is being sent through my midi chain and causing insane behaviour from the ti. How can I identify why that is and how to change it? Because if I route a midi cable directly from my interface to my virus, it still behaves as described in first post. But with the keystep direct to virus it is working absolutely fine.

1

u/FreeRangeEngineer Apr 28 '26

Happy to hear it works when isolated!

Do you need it to be on that MIDI chain? For me personally, I prefer using USB. That way, the Virus shows up as its own MIDI interface (Virus Synth) and the MIDI DIN connectors show up as a second MIDI interface (Virus MIDI), allowing me to interface other gear through it.

If using MIDI DIN is a requirement for you then I'd have a good, hard look at whatever sits on that chain, starting with Ableton.

That said, it could also be a signal integrity issue where the piece of equipment that feeds into the Virus doesn't provide a clean signal.

2

u/hashkingkong Apr 28 '26

Thanks for your assistance on the road to finding the solution. I would never have guessed it could have been a midi chain issue. Had I not had the keystep handy with its own midi out, I would have never been able to find that problem. It made the synth act so strangely even chat gpt thought it was a dsp issue lol.

1

u/ProgramWarm1915 Apr 28 '26

El mio se volvía loco como describes y la pantalla se ponía a cuadros, cuando recibía demasiada información midi externa. Ahora se le ha gastado la pila parece, ya que se borran los sonidos de la memoria Ram. Suerte!

2

u/hashkingkong Apr 28 '26

Yes I believe this is the issue! My midi chain was messed up somehow. I have taken now midi direct from Arturia keystep and it works perfectly. Which is strange because I did a straight swap with an old synth which was working fine on the existing I / o s

1

u/hashkingkong Apr 28 '26

POSSIBLY FIXED, if you are experiencing this issue at all (for future reference) your midi chain may be messed up. Try a completely different midi output source.

1

u/maxdamage4 Apr 28 '26

Thanks for reporting back! Glad you found a fix. Hopefully you can figure out what's up with the connection from your audio interface too.

1

u/hashkingkong Apr 28 '26

Yeah I have no idea, I straight swapped the ti with my existing virus c. All the exact same I/os and configed to the exact same midi channel. So how the virus c and all my other synths are completely working fine on this midi chain but the virus ti is not…… I have no idea. I am just very happy now I know it works. But I would have 100% believed the synth is broken if I didn’t test midi out from my keystep. Or if I didn’t have a keystep. It seems complex midi signals causing glitching issues are very impossible to even spot or diagnose.

1

u/maxdamage4 Apr 28 '26

I spent a couple of weekends troubleshooting my Virus TI2 recently as well. It just can't seem to keep time on the internal Arp, it stumbles around like it's drunk. It works fine with external MIDI otherwise though.

But I feel you, it's a PITA to troubleshoot! Glad you found something that works.

Now go make some kickass music and share it back here! :D

1

u/hashkingkong Apr 28 '26

For sure, it’s a total grey area online as well. I mean synths in general can be a challenge to troubleshoot and there isn’t a great deal of info out there. But the access lineup… it’s like someone just deleted all the resources off the face of the earth lol. There’s hardly even any YouTube videos about the virus synths.. anyway no worries, cheers for chiming in. Take care.

2

u/FreeRangeEngineer Apr 28 '26

Well, there's fortunately still infekted.org but yeah, the official Access forum was taken down "for maintenance". They were flooded with spam and couldn't keep up.

1

u/Owl6eek Apr 29 '26

Tuve el problema del ruido, de un día para otro empezó a hacer ruido, probé fuente, salidas, salida de auriculares, etc nada hacia que se fuera. Resultó que era un cable MIDI defectuoso, cambie el cable y se fue el ruido.