Switching patches on the fly on a Virus C and a Radias

[Omniant]

I haven't gotten a chance to really get my hands on either one of these synths to know but can anyone tell me how easy it is to switch patches on the fly quickly? I play in a live band which does a lot of improv and requires me to come up with different sounds quickly and I'm not sure if there are banks where you can store patches and just bring them up with a push of a button or what.

These are 2 synths I may be looking to purchase in the near future and want to be sure they fit well in my live situation.

[Roby31]

Yes, the Virus does have multiple banks (128 patches each IIRC) and it's fairly easy to access them (no pun intended) - there's dedicated buttons on the front panel and a couple of tricks for faster scrolling.

[meatballfulton]

Radias lets you select any of 16 programs in a bank with a single button push. You can select adjacent banks with another button push. Much quicker than on a Virus (I have owned both).

[RD9]

They are both easy to switch patches on, but the Radias is faster I think. The Virus C uses 2 buttons to cycle through the banks and 2 buttons to select patches, but the Radias gives you more than one way to select patches ... it provides a combination of buttons and a rotary encoder which gives it a slight edge, in addition to the 16 step buttons that can double as a patch selectors as meatball mentioned. The interface in general is friendlier on the Radias.

But imho the real answer is not to rely on the synth's user interface to be "fast enough", but rather to plan slightly in advance and move all the patches that you most likely will need to use into one bank, making all of them easily accessible. In which case either of these synths will do a good job.

[Omniant]

Thanks guys that's what I was looking for.

[Dane_Xoth]

Planning ahead as mentioned before, on the Virus C you could set up a Multi and split the keyboard.