emusonacid! legacy

hi there just a quick question, which sampler is better the e6400 ultra, e5000 ulta, esynth or the e4xt?

thanks in advance

soon to be emu owner

depends on what upgrades each has (ram, hd, fx, i/o etc).. but in general, the 6400 ultra would be the best... be careful to check the specs of each before buying!

Sound wise its the same. The e5000 has limitation in voice upgrade (as fare as i know):

else its the same?

yeah i remember the e5000 only being able to have 64-voice polyphony
... also it doesnt support use of internal sound roms.. and can only have 2 scsi devices in chain

The E5000 can have internal ROMS. Mine has an Orbit Phatt Rom installed and it works perfectly. Just like all the Ultras if you use a ROM, the sample Ram will be reduced by half when the ROM is active. In my 128M E5000, this means when I'm using the Rom I have 64M of sample memory (in addition to the 1000 Rom sounds). To go back to full memory requires a simple settting change from the setup menu (enable/disable rom).

The 5000 only has 64 voices but this is generally not an issue. Mind you, I use the E4 Platinum as the main sampler in my setup.

M

The 5000 does not have limits on the SCSI bus. I am using it with:

1. External SCSI CF/PCMCIA reader (3 actual devices)
2. External ZIP drive
3. PC

So in this setup there are actually 5 devices, 3 physical in the chain. I have also chained CDROMs into the setup.

M

so the general consensus is the e6400 over the e5000

but what about the e4xt and the esynth?

see if you can find an e4 Platinum. This *is* an Ultra model, with every known option possible. It came out after the E4XT Ultra and was the last top of the line sampler from Emu.

Its outstandingly feature rich and includes the RFX card, Dual MIDI, 128M Ram, 16 Analog outs, ADAT IN/Out, AES/EBU in/out, External PC Keyboard interface and SCSI/IDE.

I'm running it with the last V4.7 software and its great. This was my upgrade path from originally the ESI-32, then E5000, now e4 Plat. I still have all three, the 5000 is a backup now.

M

Useful links with timelines of emu samplers and so on:

e.g.

e6400 - 1996
e6400 Ultra - 1999
E4XT Ultra - 1999
E4 Platinum - 2000

http://www.emu.com/corporate/history/timeline.asp

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/May02/a ... urfx32.asp

M

cheers guys
so the general opinion is get the e4xt and if not get the e6400 yeh?
also just to check (for when i get one!) ijust take the out and put it in the input of my desk yeh?

also the hard drives that you can get for them, there for storing samples etc on yeh?

sorry to be a complete retard!

The original pecking order in terms of price from lowest to most expensive at the the time was:
E5000 - E6400 - Esynth - E4XT

The E6400 for example lacks the 2nd midi set, wordclock & AES/EBU digi in/out that is standard on the ESynth (along with a rather nice sound ROM!)

This table will be helpful:
http://www.synthony.com/vintage/emuultracomp.html

ferocious_element wrote:cheers guys
so the general opinion is get the e4xt and if not get the e6400 yeh?
also just to check (for when i get one!) ijust take the out and put it in the input of my desk yeh?

also the hard drives that you can get for them, there for storing samples etc on yeh?

sorry to be a complete retard!

Tardness noted, but dismissed as irrelevant... we all had to start somewhere.

Yeah, general opinion being what it is, the E4XT has advantages over the E6400... you get the 128 voices off the bat, rather than 64 expandable to 128 (though the expansion may be difficult to come by); the 2nd MIDI/wordclock/AESEBU can be had as an upgrade for the E6400 (also includes a connector for an ASCII keyboard... the old DIN-5 ones; provides a good work around for the dreaded front panel button gremlins), but are standard on the E4XT, which saves you the trouble of looking for the expansion card. Oh, and if I remember, the E4XT came with a small SCSI hard drive installed, while it was an option for the E6400. The E-Synth could be thought of as an E4XT with a 16MB sample ROM already installed inside.

Other than that, the Ultra models have identical hardware inside (nearly identical... I think there's a socket or four missing from the E5000 mainboard)

Yes, the hard drives you can get are for storing samples, but E-mu arranges samples inside of banks... the banks also contain the presets that access the samples. I don't know how much you know already about the hard drive options... it's actually another topic in itself, but feel free to ask in this thread if you need clarification.

Yes, you can just take the main outs and connect it to inputs on your desk. It's what I've got (well, from the E6400 main outs to a stereo channel on a small Behringer mixer and from there into my sound card). The outputs on all of the Emulator 4 series are balanced TRS jacks (the very first model, the E-IV, also had balanced XLR main outs... but it's like a lobotomized hamster compared to the Ultra models in terms of processing power and memory for the operating system, severely limiting it... sorry, wandered off topic), but should work with unbalanced cables as well.