24 February 2008

Access Virus TI Polar

The Access Virus TI Polar is one of my favorite synthesizers. It is such a versatile and flexible machine. You can literally do anything with it. It is commonly mistaken to be a 'trance' synthesizer. I think this is because there are a lot of presets for it in that genre. But it can certainly do much more. My good friend Qui Robinez is an excellent sound designer and he made some great patches for the TI. I use several patches from his 2007 'Solar' set on my AeroDynamics album. For example the lead sounds in the solos on 'Falcon' and 'Turbulence' come from his hand. You won't believe that these sounds come from the TI actually. You can download his soundset from the Access Music website at: http://www.access-music.de/. Off course the TI it still is a VA (Virtual Analog) and you will hear some aliasing sometimes. But it can do things you would never be able to with any real analog.

I used to have a TI desktop before by the way, but I couldn't resist the looks on the Polar. Isn't it astonishing? I love it for sure. And it is so much nicer to have keys on it and controls that match the sounds. Here on the right you another picture which shows the amazing white leds a bit better. You should really see it in the dark :) But I could make a good pictures in the dark unfortunately. The unique feature that makes this synthesizer so special is the Total Integration part (TI). You get a VST plugin that you can use in your sequencer software where you can totally control and edit the synthesizer over an USB connection. You can also route up to 3 stereo channels internally, so you need no outboard gear to record it and off course all is perfectly in sync with latency compensation and all. All in all a perfect workhorse. This one is certainly not leaving my studio unless off course Access Music comes up with something even better :)

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