Like meeting an old best friend again.
Total Integration for the Access Virus TI on Windows 11, macOS and Linux, without the old drivers. Its plug-in looks and works like the original Virus Control: every parameter, the preset browser, automation, and the synth's audio over the same USB cable.
Free · open source · VST3 and Audio Unit · released 17 Oct 2026
☕ Free, and it will stay free. Every change is tested on the real synth on Windows, macOS and Linux, often back and forth between the three, and that takes a lot of evenings. If TI Revive gives your Virus a second life and you'd like to say thanks, you can buy me a coffee. It is entirely optional; every feature works the same either way. A test report or a kind word helps just as much.
Did the original Access plug-in, Virus Control, the one that came with the Virus TI, have problems for you? TI Revive rebuilds that plug-in, and we want to fix its problems instead of copying them.
Hanging notes, sync errors, crashes, projects that did not open, the preset browser, automation, timing. If you only remember it roughly, say so.
You also need your own Access “Virus TI Software Suite” installer (e.g. 5.1.7). Access offers it on its download page; you need an account there to download it. TI Revive unpacks only what the plug-in reads from it: the skin, the parameter descriptions, the ROM banks. Older versions are on GitHub.
Windows 11 x64, also Windows 10
Download 4.0 MBTI-Revive-0.8.20-setup.exe
or TI-Revive-0.8.20.msi (3.8 MB)
.msi.SHA-256 6f437e3167e7dd1488fc2ea3052afd5cd9a65ba201469b564c1a48989429c50dmacOS 14.4 or newer, Apple Silicon and Intel
Download 5.3 MBTI-Revive-0.8.20-mac.zip
TI Revive.pkg (not signed: right-click › Open)..pkg next to Set up Access Virus TI files.command and run it. It also parks old drivers that would block the Virus.SHA-256 90879aea0f06e5c050ecb2aa2c74694cc59d5bc4bc5fd75f66eca72dbcd14e14x86_64 with systemd, Ubuntu 22.04 / Debian 12 or newer
Download 2.6 MBTI-Revive-0.8.20-linux.tar.gz
sudo apt install msitools to unpack the Access installer../install.sh "/path/to/Virus TI Software Suite 64-bit.msi"; it asks for your password once (udev rule).sudo usermod -aG pipewire $USER, log out and in), then rescan plug-ins.SHA-256 b995bc4e4582076c80cf968c3b78c3fa2a4b400e84e2c104104f211e83bc74b0The plug-in talks to the Virus directly over USB, so there is no MIDI port to set up and no Access driver left on your system.
One installer per system. It sets up the USB access and puts the plug-in where your DAW looks for it.
The setup unpacks the skin, the parameter descriptions and the ROM banks from the installer you own. No Access files come with TI Revive.
TI Revive Virus Control on a MIDI track. Projects made with the original plug-in open with it. The first start reads RAM A–D from the Virus once, which takes a few minutes; you can play meanwhile.
What TI Revive does, and what we measured on our own Virus TI2 Desktop. The raw numbers and how they were taken are in the repository (evidence, development log).
TI Revive Virus Control is written from scratch and looks and works like the original Access plug-in, Virus Control. It draws its look from your own Access installer at runtime.
Click the ? at the bottom right of the editor: every control gets a short note on what it does. Point at a control to read it, click to keep the note on screen; clicks do not change values in this mode, and the page tabs still work. Esc or ? ends it. The notes are written for TI Revive, not taken from the Access manual. A greyed-out control says why, for example “Inactive now: Chorus Type is Off.” or “depends on Input Mode, Input Atomizer.”
The plug-in finds the clock of the Virus on USB, stamps every note against it and reports its latency, so the DAW lines recordings up with the grid. Any host sample rate works: a resampler converts to the 44.1 kHz of the Virus with -90 dB error.
| 16th notes at 120 BPM | On the grid | Jitter | Drift |
|---|---|---|---|
| Linux, REAPER | 256 / 256 | 0.01 ms | 0 ppm |
| macOS, Ableton 12 (M3) | 256 / 256 | 0.02 ms | 0 ppm |
| Windows 11, Ableton Live | 224 / 224 | 0.24 ms | 2 ppm |
| Classic plug-in 0.7.x | first late, second missing | 0.06 ms | n/a |
Recorded from the USB audio of the Virus and measured by onset analysis. Jitter is the standard deviation.
The audio thread never allocates memory or waits for a lock; note-offs always get a slot, so no note hangs.
| Before (0.7.x) | Now | |
|---|---|---|
| Idle, Virus connected | 5 % | 1.4 % |
| Stress test: 16 channels of notes + 32 automated parameters | 19 % | 2.9 % |
| One audio block, 3 LFOs automating the Virus for 40 min | n/a | max 122 µs, 0 dropouts |
Checked with ThreadSanitizer and AddressSanitizer; 140 unit tests run with every release build on Windows and Linux.
Only the controls that change are redrawn, the backgrounds of recent pages are cached, and on Linux the images live on the X server.
| Before | Now | |
|---|---|---|
| Full repaint on Linux | ~70 ms | 1–7 ms |
| One knob step | ~5 ms | < 1 ms |
| First visit of a page | 27–52 ms | 10–13 ms |
Behaviour of the Virus that is not documented anywhere, found by testing.
A separate app in the look of the Access Virus Control Center, when that is in your Access installer. It
shows the connected Virus and its RAM banks, backs them up as patch libraries and converts libraries between
.mid and .syx. It only reads from the Virus.
Shows live what goes between TI Revive and the Virus, decoded: notes, parameter changes by name, dumps, the bank sync. It lists which programs use the Virus, shows the plug-in's and the broker's logs, and saves them all for a bug report in one file. It only watches; it never sends anything to the Virus.
On purpose.
We test on a Virus TI2 Desktop. For other models, systems and DAWs we depend on test reports from their owners.
| Model | Windows | macOS | Linux |
|---|---|---|---|
| TI2 Desktop | tested | tested | tested |
| TI Snow | no report yet | works for users | no report yet |
| Desktop (TI1), Polar, Keyboard | no report yet | no report yet | no report yet |
140 unit tests run with every release build on Windows and Linux. They cover 94 % of the lines of the core library: the USB protocol, the device access, the editor and the reader for the Access files (measured 16 Oct 2026).
Changes that touch the Virus are tried on our TI2 Desktop before a release; the release notes say on which systems and in which DAWs.
The soft knobs (0.8.7, 0.8.8) and the third USB output (0.8.9) were fixed after a user's report. Bug reports and test reports from other setups show us what to fix next.
Every version Release feed (Atom) On GitHub: Watch › Custom › Releases
Only one driver can use the USB interfaces of the Virus. Old Access drivers, or third-party ones like the driver of another Virus editor, take them first. Disable the other driver and restart; on macOS the setup script offers to park the known ones.
The Virus decides per part where its sound goes. Switch the part's output to “Out 1” and back to “USB 1” in the plug-in to send the setting again. On macOS also check that your DAW may use the microphone.
PATCH UTILITY › Preferences › “Input and Output Configuration” = “3 Outs / No Input”. Then a part's output can be “USB3 L+R” and its sound comes out of the plug-in's Out 3. In Ableton: an audio track with Audio From = the Virus track, Out 3, Monitor In.
Like the original, the plug-in can send audio from your DAW into the Virus: set “Input and Output Configuration” to “3 Outs / 1 Input”, and on the FX 1 page set a part's Input Mode to Static (always on) or Dynamic (played with notes) and Select to L + R. Then send an audio track to the plug-in's sidechain input; the part's filters and effects process it. In REAPER, give the Virus track 4 channels and send the audio to channels 3/4 (check in the pin connector that they feed Sidechain 1/2). In Ableton Live, pick the audio track in the device's Sidechain section. In this mode the Virus does not work as a sound card for your computer. Tested on Linux (REAPER), macOS (Ableton Live 12) and Windows 11 (Ableton Live, in a VM and on a real PC).
Older versions saved the parts in a format the Virus converts itself, and it reset about 20 newer settings on loading: Input Mode, unison, arpeggiator mode, chorus type, envelopes 3 and 4 and more. Projects now keep the current format (0.8.18); older projects are converted when they open, and settings that never reached the Virus open as the Virus played them. A new project's chorus shows “Classic”: that is what the Virus makes of the original's Init patch.
Switched off or unplugged, the editor shows the original's “No Virus TI can be found” page and the page tabs are locked, as in the original. The page goes away by itself when the Virus is back. Do not follow its advice to hold ARP EDIT while switching the Virus on; TI Revive does not need that.
The plug-in sends notes slightly ahead to make up for the USB round trip, so start playback a little before the first note. The original driver did the same.
If your question is not answered above, open a report on GitHub. Reports are read by the developer, and the answer comes in the same thread; it is a hobby project, so it can take a day or two.
diag.on in the plug-in's folder,
reproduce the problem, and take diag.log from the same folder:
%LOCALAPPDATA%\virus-ti-native
macOS~/Library/Application Support/virus-ti-native
Linux~/.local/share/virus-ti-nativeYou need a free GitHub account to post. Look through the logs before you attach them and remove anything you consider private. Existing reports: all issues.
The repository is prepared for working on it with an AI coding assistant.
AGENTS.md gives any assistant the rules and a map of the repository: no Access material in the code, never risk the synth, evidence before claims, and say exactly what was tested.
Step-by-step guides in .claude/skills: test your setup safely and write a report, find the cause of a problem in the logs, and prepare a pull request the way we review it. They are plain text, so they work without an assistant too.
Test reports, reports about problems in the original, and help with reading someone's logs are as useful as pull requests.
The Access drivers stopped working on current systems. TI Revive is free and open source.
By working out the USB protocol and the original software's behaviour from logs, captures and analysis, and by testing on real hardware. Much of the work was done with an AI coding assistant; the tests on the synth are done by hand.