There is no doubt that Access puts out quality synthesizers. Their main line of synthesizers is the Virus.

There are 4 different Virus models: The TI Desktop, Snow, Keyboard, and Polar. They all offer unique features, but we’ll be focusing on the Access Virus TI2 Desktop in this review.

Software synthesizers are usually limited to 20-30 voices. This is because each voice eats up your CPU.

The advantage of getting a hardware synthesizer is that it will be able to produce sound and process effects independently without the aid of your computer. Having that strain lifted from your computer gives you so much more flexibility to create your tracks without worrying about audio dropouts and overloads.

For less than $2500, you can pick up an Access Virus TI2 off Amazon. In this review, I’ll be going over all of the TI2’s main features so that you’ll be able to make a more comfortable buying decision.

If you have any questions, feel free to drop a comment down below.

This Review Will Cover:

• What’s Included?
• Main Features
• Hardware
• The Sound
• What Others Think Of The Access Virus TI2 Desktop
• Pros
• Cons
• Summary

What’s Included?

With the Virus TI, you’ll get an easy-to-follow quickstart manual, a USB cable, a power cable, and a power supply.

The instruction manual is printed in four languages: English, German, French, and Spanish. If for some reason you lose the manual, you can always download it here.

Main Features

The Virus TI2 is an extremely powerful desktop synthesizer. It is made out of an all-metal enclosure that has a nice wooden strip on the front of it.

There are plenty of knobs and buttons that give you easy access to important parameters. If you are someone who hates diving through menus to tweak parameters, you’ll love the TI 2.

Hardware:

The Access Virus TI2 Desktop runs using a Dual DSP system to allocate all of it’s resources. This makes the virus run much more efficiently.

A part of the TI2 that I love is how often its firmware gets updated. Access is always adding new features to improve the user experience and to add support for more DAWs.

An advantage of the Access Virus TI2 Desktop version is that it can be rack mountable. You’ll have a much harder time mounting a Virus to a rack if you got the keyboard version.

Surprisingly, the TI2 Desktop is fairly lightweight. Overall it weighs about 7 pounds. The TI2 is a nice, compact synthesizer.

The Virus TI2 Desktop can be synced to an external midi clock. It can alternately send its own midi clock signal as well. This comes in handy for the TI2’s arpeggiator and quantized knob-movement feature.

The Sound:

There are many different oscillators you can choose from on the TI2 Desktop. You’ll get the traditional sine, square, and triangle waves, but you’ll also see more interesting waveforms such as hypersaws, formants, and granulized waves.

There are 512 RAM patches and 26 banks of 128 ROM patches. All of these can be switched out and customized by the user.

The arpeggiator is quite versatile on the TI2 Desktop. It has 32 programmable steps that can be customized specifically for each patch.

You’ll find 3 LFOs. It was nice to see how crazy you can get with the LFOs. There are 68 waveforms to choose between. You’ll also have 2 fast ADSRT envelopes.

The effects section of the Virus TI2 desktop is amazing! You can use a maximum of 192 parallel effects. For effects you’ll get reverb, delay, chorus, phaser, frequency shifter, ring modulator, distortion, 3-band EQ and new Character processors.

A nice part of the effects section is that you are not limited to only processing synthesized sounds. You can turn the Virus TI2 into an effect processor for external analogue and digital signals.

There are 2 independent filters. They can both switch to either a high-pass, low-pass, band-pass, or band-stop filter. There is a separate analog filter added that is modeled after the famous Moog MiniMoog.

The TI2 can crank out up to 90 voices. Having this many voices will fatten up any sound that you decide to make with ease.

What Others Think Of The Access Virus TI2 Desktop

The reviews for the Access Virus TI2 Desktop were extremely positive!

A common trend in reviews I read was that there is no shortage of wavetables with the TI2. This is true because you get such a wide selection to choose from! Along with your traditional waveforms(sine, square, saw, triangle), you’ll get plenty of strange waveforms such as the HyperSaw waves and the formant waves.

Another commonly mentioned feature of the Virus was its warm filters. There isn’t one cheesy sounding filter. All of them have a nice smooth sound to them.

I also heard some reviewers talk about how there is a plethora of effects included. You’ll find reverbs, delays, tape delays, chorus, and much more! There are 25 distortions and saturators.

There is a huge community behind Access’s products. For that reason, everyone found it easy to get going with the Virus TI2. If you run into any issues, there are plenty of tutorials and articles put out about the Virus TI.

It’s also nice that Access provides firmware updates frequently. This shows how much they care about their products and improving the user experience.

Pros

• Produces an amazing sound
• Knobs are laid out well and can easily be used for complete control over a sound
• The TI is the best sounding Virus around

Cons

• The price can be a bit high for some producers.

Summary

Overall, the Access Virus TI2 Desktop is an extremely powerful hardware synthesizer. It will for very well whether you plan to create leads, basses, pads, noise, or FX. The TI2 can make pretty much any type of sound imaginable without struggling.

If you can only have one synthesizer in your studio, you will want an Access Virus TI2. Without a doubt, it has endless sonic possibilities.

>>Click here to buy the Access Virus TI2 Desktop on Amazon!<<

Leave a Comment