Vir2 Electri6ity virtual guitar - review

[David Polich]

I installed Vir2's "Electri6ity" today (on my PC, where most of my VI's live and are triggered via MIDI from DP on my G5). Absolutely amazing sound - I have a lot of guitar VI's (Pettinhouse, RealGuitar2, Real Strat, Prominy LPC,
AAS Strum Electric, Virtual Guitarist 2) and I have to admit, I'm putting Electri6ity at the top of the list for sound quality. These are the best sampled electrics I've ever heard.

The available control for sound, articulations, and behavior are mind-boggling. You can literally design the degree of sympathetic resonance,
how your pick angle and position will vary with velocity, fretboard position, and note intervals, you can determine whether you slide up from four frets below a target note or slide across to a target note from an adjacent string, whether you play certain notes on certain strings or multiple strings, degree of time for strings to sound within a strum, tone switch position, pickup position, amount of string "sag" dependent upon playing velocity...the list is gigantic and it will take you weeks to go through all the variations. Not to mention that the Electri6ity engine recognizes 2000 chords from your position on the keyboard and revoices them automatically to guitar voicings.

Electri6ity doesn't come with MIDI strum patterns or arpeggios, unlike MusicLab's products or AAS Strum Electric. It takes some time to get the hang of playing it too..one thing I realized after some head-scratching was that when you launch any of the guitars, they default to velocity controlling the main articulations (muted, sustain, and vibrato), and control of the guitar was kind of clumsy for me. Switching the AMT articulation control to CC's allows you to use the mod wheel to switch the articulations - much easier to play. I found that going into the Settings/Strings panel and adjusting per string velocity-to-volume to at least 60% yielded better playability, too. The default velocity to string volume settings are on the low side, I'd recommend setting them higher.
Vibrato is enabled by pushing the mod wheel all the way forward - the middle position of the mod wheel gives you sustain with no vibrato.

A couple of minuses (naturally) - the included effects are not very good.
The pedal chorus/delay/flanger is okay, the amp simulator is downright awful. I don't recommend bothering with the "amped" versions of any of the guitars, just launch the DI versions, and use something like Amplitube3 or
Guitar Rig for your amp simulations. The other somewhat annoying "feature" is the placement of the keyswitches - it's really best to have at least a 76-key controller, if not an 88. Many of the articulation keyswitches are in the uppermost octaves of the keyboard, meaning that you certainly have to overdub them as events on your MIDI track, or else grow another pair of arms. Fortunately, the most critical keyswitches are in the octave right below the lowest note of the guitar (which can be set to C, if you want).

The manual recommends that you install the Kontakt4 engine and then the library - but if you already have Kontakt4, you don't need to install it from the disc. I thought this was confusing, Vir2 should have stated that if you already have K4 installed, you can bypass installing the Kontakt engine. The guitars themselves take some time to load - most of them hover around the 500-700 MB size, a couple of them are larger.

The guitars are all winners, with the exception of the Gibson L4 which, to my ears, lacked volume in the uppermost octaves. I tried different pickup and tone positions but couldn't get those high strings up loud enough for my taste. Some might find the 335 to be a little on the thin side, it didn't bother me, but it is definitely not as fat and huge and chunky as the Les Paul. The Les Paul P90 straddles the line between a Strat and a Les Paul tone, the Rickenbacker is gloriously jangly, the Strat is biting and full and the Tele - well, it sounds like you want a Tele to sound. The Danelctro Lipstick is super bright and metallic, very much a "character" guitar. The thing I found all guitars had in common was that they really do sound like you plugged the real thing into your console - not an ounce of that blanketed, papery "sampled" sound to any of them.

If sound quality was the only criterion, then I'd say that Electri6ity deserves a "Holy Grail" award. Highly recommended, and worth the price.

[Armageddon]

I'm pretty happy with my guitar VIs of choice (the entire MusicLab series, which I'm currently slapping together a user demo for), but I'm dying for a decent workhorse bass VI/sample set. I have both Scarbee Pre-Bass and Jay-Bass, as well as Pettinhouse DirectBass 2.0, and while Pre-Bass isn't that bad at all, it's a fingered-only instrument, and like all Scarbee basses, it's designed more for funk and soloing than for traditional rock bass playing. I had considered BASiS, but that includes a lot of samples I just don't need, like the synth basses.

[David Polich]

I'm pretty happy with my guitar VIs of choice (the entire MusicLab series, which I'm currently slapping together a user demo for), but I'm dying for a decent workhorse bass VI/sample set. I have both Scarbee Pre-Bass and Jay-Bass, as well as Pettinhouse DirectBass 2.0, and while Pre-Bass isn't that bad at all, it's a fingered-only instrument, and like all Scarbee basses, it's designed more for funk and soloing than for traditional rock bass playing. I had considered BASiS, but that includes a lot of samples I just don't need, like the synth basses.

Basses? Trilian - end of story.

http://www.spectrasonics.net/instruments/trilian.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Armageddon]

I haven't really messed around with Trillian, but the sheer size of the instrument, combined with the fact that you have to snag a special patch to use it inside Snow Leopard and that, once again, it comes with a lot of synth basses that have no need for (I have Minimonsta, Pro 53, Arturia's CS-80V and Arp 2600, eighty different sampled synth basses in my IK Multimedia VIs, etc. that cover the same ground just fine) kind of turned me off of it. I'm seeking something along the lines of Scarbee Pre-Bass, but without all the unnecessary doo-dads and a more rock-oriented soundset (like a picked articulation). I was heartbroken that DirectBass 2.0 didn't fulfill this, and that the P-Bass sample set in Ministry of Rock, while being ideal, articulation-wise, has its own problems with being limited to two amped versions and no DI version. Or maybe I'm just too damn picky.

[Tobor]

I haven't really messed around with Trillian, but the sheer size of the instrument, combined with the fact that you have to snag a special patch to use it inside Snow Leopard and that, once again, it comes with a lot of synth basses that have no need for (I have Minimonsta, Pro 53, Arturia's CS-80V and Arp 2600, eighty different sampled synth basses in my IK Multimedia VIs, etc. that cover the same ground just fine) kind of turned me off of it. I'm seeking something along the lines of Scarbee Pre-Bass, but without all the unnecessary doo-dads and a more rock-oriented soundset (like a picked articulation). I was heartbroken that DirectBass 2.0 didn't fulfill this, and that the P-Bass sample set in Ministry of Rock, while being ideal, articulation-wise, has its own problems with being limited to two amped versions and no DI version. Or maybe I'm just too damn picky.

Trilian. Just give in.

There are 'lite' versions of most of the big patches. I really like the Clean Fender Bass, which is a lot like the Scarbee P-Bass, but there are lots of other really nice, nice things. I never owned Trilogy so am enjoying many of those basses (bases) for the first time. Double Fretless etc. The tweakability factor allows you to vary the amount of DI and amp, for example.

I do own the XP80 Bass Legends board and it's great being able to use those wonderful (+ small footprint) sounds in a plug-in as well.

Tobor

[Kurt Cowling]

... combined with the fact that you have to snag a special patch to use it inside Snow Leopard ...

There's no special Trilian patch for Snow Leopard. That was for the previous bass-VI, Trilogy.

[David Polich]

Correct. Trilian works fine in SL, doesn't need a patch.

The latest version of Trilian features "remastered" versions of every electric bass, including the picked ones (and a new "rock" version of the fingered Fender), and the difference isn't subtle. The basses growl, bark, and snap like you want them to - if you can't get these basses to speak in your rock tracks, you're doing something else wrong. Trust me, I've tried ALL the electric basses out there, including the Scarbee ones. Trilian (latest version) trumps all of them, IMO.

You won't find a better acoustic upright bass than Trilian's, that's for sure.

Don't discount the synth bass patches in Trilian - I have the Arturia synths, and the Trilian synth basses sound great compared to those. And there are synth basses in Trilian you can't get from the Arturia synths. Plus, Trilian has new "juicy" filters that are extremely cool.

[Armageddon]

Damn peer pressure! I've gotten some really good recommendations from you guys in the past, so I'll definitely check into Trillian. I'm getting some fairly decent sounds from Pre-Bass, my main concern it that is kind of has a mushy attack that I can't tweak, and most of the release sounds and fret noises that are commonplace in other bass VIs are virtually nonexistent, even if you boost their volumes (I did, however, manage to get a slightly looser sound out of it by tweaking the Loose/Tight settings).

[mhschmieder]

This is sort of a cross-reference post, as it's unlikely people would notice this special promotional sale if it was only mentioned relative to one of the two products:

"Vir2’s „Electri6ity“ is this year´s hottest guitar library!
Buy "Electry6ity" now and you´ll receive this year´s bass highlight, Prominiy´s "Rock Bass SR5" (worth 95€) for FREE!"

Not sure if it's just for the boxed edition vs. downloadable editions, but if the former, the rules have changed recently due to DHL disappearing from the USA, so make sure to cover your bases first regarding customs fees as my last order from them caught me by surprise and got returned since my co-workers couldn't hand UPS a cheque for customs fees upon pickup. It all worked out eventually, but was a bit stressful.

I have an email from Best Service detailing how to pre-empt this problem via a special note in the sale order, but don't have time to hunt that down right now. If anyone needs that info, let me know, as I know which pile it's in.

[erikjamesmusic]

Vir2 is one of my favorite sample companies. I just ordered "One" and "Mojo Horns" is in the near future.

Thanks for the review, David. Regarding Guitar VIs, I'm currently in the mind-set that if I can't play it myself, or use the samples I have from Kontakt, Eastwest, and Kurzweil libraries, then I should probably hire a session player

[Armageddon]

I gotta admit, Electri6ity is growing on me by leaps and bounds. Like David, I agree that the keyswitches demand an 88-key controller (and mine bit the dust, so I have to Octave Up and Down to reach 'em), but the up-down strumming alone makes it a worthwhile venture. My only major problem is -- and this may be due to the restrictions of my hardware -- the fret squeaks, bends and other incidental sounds that pretty much sell the realism of the instruments seem to be present when I first load a patch, but somehow seem to magically disappear after about four or five minutes of playing (and this is in K4 standalone and as a plug in DP, so it's not a product of pre-gen). No amount of dialing up articulation sounds seems to bring them back. I even batch resaved all the original patches for faster loading and followed the owner's manual instructions for tweaking Kontakt for more conservative CPU/RAM usage, but the problem persists. I can only theorize that these sounds drop out in the hullabuloo of Kontakt struggling with so many articulations, scriptings and rechordings playing simultaneously on my slower machine (and Eletri6ity certainly does load up a bunch). Hopefully, it'll be a nonexistent issue when I upgrade to an i5 or i7 machine.

I'm not a huge fan of the built-in FX, either, but they are useful when you just want to sketch out a guitar part without the hassle of loading up DP and running it through Guitar Rig, Amplitude or Waves. Otherwise, the FX add an additional burden to a maxed-out K4 instrument.

I think it's awesome that they're packaging this with SR5; the two complement each other perfectly! In fact, Vir2 should take a page from Prominy's playbook and possible incorporate "Lite" versions of all their guitars in the next Electri6ity update ...

[spencer4t]

Just curious...do you have to have Kontakt to run Electri6ity or would Mach5 work? Thanks!

[mhschmieder]

Actually, I took a listen to the Prominy SR5 audio demos the other night and was VERY impressed. It sounds like they avoided the typical mistake of playing the notes on the wrong string, or using bad strings in the sessions. Also, this is a five-string Musicman, and most bass libraries stick to four-string models.

Even so, the price at Best Service isn't enough incentive over buying Electri6ity domestically from Florida Music Co. (who have consistently had the lowest price since it first came out). So I'll wait for another sale before picking this library up, as there are so many sales as it is this month that non-sale items need to be put on hold.

[Alimrocker]

is that true that "the limit of electri6ity is the sky"?that's what they say.I'm asking this since I don't know how to play a guitar.is there any playing technique specially in performing a metal solo that this software can't perform?for example I think slides in it is not so complete.or maybe I still don't know how to do that. can you tell me please?

[David Polich]

is that true that "the limit of electri6ity is the sky"?that's what they say.I'm asking this since I don't know how to play a guitar.is there any playing technique specially in performing a metal solo that this software can't perform?for example I think slides in it is not so complete.or maybe I still don't know how to do that. can you tell me please?

You're definitely confused. Electri6ity doesn't "perform" solos for you.
It's actually somewhat difficult to master, you have to learn to use the
right keyswitches and the pitch bend and mod wheels correctly. Kinda like
an actual guitar, really. There is no "auto-play" or "auto accompaniment"
feature, it doesn't do automatic strumming either. In other words, you
have to be a good keyboard player, and know how guitar players play,
in order to get the best results.

The Electri6ity demos you hear on Vir2's website are done by very skilled
musician programmers, and include a lot of MIDI overdubs and tricks to make
them sound that way. If you purchase and install Electri6ity, and load a
guitar patch and put your two hands on the keyboard and expect something like the demos to happen, you will be very disappointed.