Vir2 Instruments

The Vir2 Electri6ity is perfect for a keyboardist or piano player who wants to be able to do some really good guitar stuff. Most all keyboardists like me are good on the keys but not with any other instrument mainly a guitar. This is a chance to get the great guitar tracks that you want to add to your music without having to outsource and pay a guitarist to come in and lay something down. This VST can take care of everything for you, you will get some great guitar models like Les Paul, Rickenbacker, Strat, Tele and a few others that are really good as well. All of these guitar models will be right at your finger tips and you can use your keys (which you are already good and familiar with) to play them. There are also amps that you can use with each guitar and some of the amps are classic, jazz, metal, modern and British. I have never heard of a guitar sound coming out of a VST sounding as good as it does coming out of the Vir2 Electri6ity, you will have full control over your guitar model and can even do some slide noises and other great things that are guitarist can do. SOUND QUALITY Installing and setting this software up is quick and simple. It does not take long for it to load up and since it is a VST you can use it with any program that supports plug ins. I have used it in Reason and Cubase the most and in both of them it works great. The sounds that you will get from this VST are amazing, you will have some real guitar sounds available for all of your songs and without the need to actually play the guitar. OVERALL OPINION You can use it on a Mac computer and a PC, you will need to use ASIO drivers if applicable though because if you don’t have a system that can handle a lot of CPU then you might be sunk. Once you get into using Electri6ity and adding some effects it can start to eat up your CPU. This is an affordable plug in and a great buy!

I run this in Kontakt 5 on a Macbook Pro i7 and an RME Fireface 800. Q installed, performs and continues to perform without any compatibility issues. I have not read the manual as this set is pretty straight forward. All you do is install the Library, locate the sound you want in the Library Browser. Load that up and you can see all the effects and parameters you can change right on the GUI of the plugin. Very simple and very clean looking. It is kept this was because all the effects' specific parameters are only seen when hovering over the effect knob. This helps reduce clutter and I imagine give you greater control over each parameter as there is more room for more knobs/faders this way. SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE I have not had any issues with glitches or audio pops. Also, I have not lost any work. I load up Kontakt and this plugin is exactly how I left it. So far, it has been very stable. No crashes or any other strange behavior. I give this plugin an 8 out of 10 for performance. Most of the sounds are quite nicely sampled, but some seem to come across kind of thin or sounding like someone already EQ'd them. This is not a bad thing necessarily, but I prefer to have the pure raw samples so I can decide on the EQ. I should admit that I am not familiar with a lot of the instruments that are offered so this could be natural aspects of the instrument itself. I also noticed that some instruments require a brick wall style limiter as some keys are relatively quite, and the next key could be 2-4 db higher. This can be a little frustrating if you are using this live and want good dynamics. But, the tools provided in the GUI can help solve this. I have been using this for a few months now. OVERALL OPINION What I like most about this set is the large number of interesting (some of which I have never heard of) ethnic instruments. I imagine I could write most if not all of an older Kung Fu movie score with this set. I also really like the EFX offered. Some consist of chaotic bow techniques that can add some interesting suspense to your tracks (think Twilight Zone). What I don't like is the Volume issues I mentioned earlier and as well as, dealing with the chromatic sampled instruments, the inconsistency of note play. Key C2 may play a clean note of the instrument, where D2 may be a "glided" note. Again, this could be characteristics of the real instruments, I can't say for sure. All I can say is that you have to spend a little time with every instrument to prepare for its behavior. I will give it an 8 out of 10 for quality of sound. Some instruments sound a little thin and can be hard to sit in a mix, but most are very well done. I have used several sampled instruments of the ethnic variety (Soniccouture Gu Zheng, Arabic style Flutes, etc....) Vir2 Q contains many instruments I have not seen before. I would buy this again and recommend this to anyone who doesn't feel they have enough ethnic instruments laying around.

As with most Kontakt libraries set up is very simple. It comes with a manual and all necessary documentation. Installing it is a breeze. All you do is pop in the CD, copy the files to anywhere on your hard drive, and then direct Kontakt to the files. Most of the time Kontakt will find them automatically for you, though. Once MOJO is installed users will find that it is pretty easy to get the hang of. There are a few screens for features such as key switch options and effects, but these are all very simple. Assigning different articulations, modes, and releases to different keys is easy as well. One thing I found that I don't like about MOJO is that there is no way to save key switch layouts. I don't really like the default one, so setting it up every time I open it up is kind of a pain. It runs very smoothly. I'm using a Dell XPS Studio with six cores and 6GB of RAM. Some instruments take up to 500MB of RAM, while others don't, so depending on the instrument MOJO is a bit of a CPU hog. It has never crashed on me before though, and it always runs nicely in Kontakt. The instruments take a little long to load. Maybe 25 seconds for some of them. Others are very quick. I love MOJO for the sounds though. It's the only virtual instrument that replicates all kinds of saxophones convincingly. With the use of all the included articulations you can create some very lively saxophones pieces. Some articulations are overblown, vibrato, and "doit". There are also releases that the user can pick from such as "rip up", and "trills". Some other features are having the ability to choose the amount of players at once and choosing between legato, mono, or poly. Overall the sound is great, the stability is great, and it's simple to use. It will take some time to be able to create convincing saxophone peices with the use of the releases and articulations but users will get the hang of it. MOJO is the only virtual instrument I own that I use for saxophones and I feel like it will stay that way for a while.

It's not actually a VST, it runs in "Kontakt Player" which comes in many of the usual formats. So I'm sure it works in all DAWs besides PT and Logic but they still mite work I just don't know if Kontakt Player comes in AU or RTAS formats. Using the kontakt player is a little confusing at first. VI ONE doesn't really come with a manual for that so it isn't that easy to get started. VI ONE is very simple but the features that are intertwined with it in kontakt player are a little hard to understand. For instance if you want to use it as a multi-out instruments it was a little wierd in FL. Other than that though it took about a week to get use to...so not that bad. SOUND QUALITY I've been using it for over a year and it works great. It's not really a CPU hog so even with my computer not designed for music I can get a lot of use out of this. (2GB RAM, 2.0GHz processor) It has never crashed. The loading times are a little annoying even though they are average. If you put it on an external HD though you'll be in pain. OVeral I love it. The sounds included with it are not your typical even though they cover that too. Some instrument groups are lacking...such as piano, choirs, and synths. Others however are phenomenal such as brass, strings, organs and every other instrument that isn't in other plugins. VI ONE has quality flutes. What plugin has GREAT flutes? VI ONE. It even has great saxaphones. OVERALL OPINION I love the sounds it comes with, but I don't like how it runs in Kontakt Player because it makes the plugin hard to use as a multi out instrument. I'd definatly make the purchase again...especially for only 99 bucks at GuitarCenter.