Some good progress has been made on an open source project to emulate the Motorola DSP56300 chip (as used in the Access Virus, along with a whole bunch of other 90s synths from Waldorf, Novation, Nord etc.) and it can now run Virus B and C ROMs as a VST!
Only had a little play but it sounds legit and you can listen to all the factory presets using program change messages. It’s fairly heavy on the CPU, being an emulator.
There’s no GUI yet - apparently they are working on this next. For now you can hook up an external editor (though I couldn’t figure out how to route it properly in any of my VST hosts).
You’ll need to find your own ROMs (not very hard) and follow the setup instructions - if you’re not very technical, it’s probably best to wait until the project has progressed a bit further before trying. Really cool stuff anyway!
I am excited about being able to accurately emulate a Microwave II with a VST! I wonder if anyone has made any audio examples with the microwave rom yet?
As far as I know they are focussing on the Virus first, getting that to a point where it has a basic UI, then they are going to move on to other synths. Not sure which is next up!
Awesome news! I don’t use my Virus C as much as I should. They are still highly sought after as primo virtual analog synths, would be great to pack that sound into a vst.
Totally, same here - I have a Virus Indigo but it takes up too much space so it’s under the bed right now! The Virus has some absolute classic sounds and can still hold its own.
Looking forward to them adding the UI to this as I can’t work out how to connect a controller app to it on Mac
You can change patches and almost everything else. Eq and distortion don’t seem to work though.
I’m not going above 7% cpu on my I7 7700k @4.2 with 32gb Ram even using multiple voices and fx
I also couldn’t get the phaser or the arp working. Some of the presets have arp working though so maybe an issue with the M4L controller part rather than the emulation itself.
Look forward to playing around more, really impressive. Had to stop using it as my MacBook was starting to burn my legs and the M4L device was making my eyes hurt a bit but I look forward to playing around more plugged in to a monitor tomorrow!
Can somebody give me a walkthrough on how to get this running? I have a mini M1. I downloaded the vst and vst3 emulators and copied the rom into the same folder. when I start my DAW it complains about safety issues and says the plugins needs to be updated. something that apple doesnt approve or something.
and the M4L device was making my eyes hurt a bit but I look forward to playing around more plugged in to a monitor tomorrow!