virus A is cheap. good call. used it's cheap at least.
alesis ion's are also really cheap
microns are shitty, dont' get em, pain in the ass to rpogram, you'll get frustrated...
maybe an analog though wouold be best. Juno106? u can resample it on the mpc... maybe sh101?
there are tons of options nad u really don' tneed too much midi, or even really multimbralitiy if u got a sampler like the 1000 wit 128mb of ram. i f your'e already working with samples now, no harm in making a few bar loops with some high quality relatively cheap synths....
it matters, what kind of music, what kind of chops do u have? everyone forgot to ask those things.
the virus sucks at a lot of music, great for trance, but for a lot of other shit, it just doesn't cut it, it's not good enough. even tho it does sound great for certain things. it's also important to realize it's a relatively simple synth and has been used to death, making you kind play yerself in terms of sounding dated...n just sounding played out... teh juno and sh101 also have been used a lot but the fact that each analog synth sounds different than another of the same model makes the meach have their own personality...
