emusonacid!

Hey guys... recently I bought an Alesis ION which I love the sound but it is only 8 voice polyphonic. Nooooo problem cause I've got an E5000. So I've been practicing sampling the ION to the E5000 with the help of that EOS auto sampler program for logic (makes it nice and easy i looove it) but somethings are not quite right I have a couple of questions about sampling synths.

1. Got filters on the synth obviously, is it usual to sample the synth using these filters and then either turn off the filter on the EMU or filter the filters. When I did the latter it didnt sound good, I think the resonance on the resonance was causing clipping has anyone done the filter of filter successfully? Conversely since the Z-planes are so phat is it a better idea to bypass the ION filters and sample the pure sound then tweak that sound using EMU filters to what i want?

2. Obviously since I want the sound of a synth recreated I want an eternal sustain as long as the note is held down. I origonally tried to do this by looping each sample in the multisample. This sounded bad, there is seemingly no way to loop the sample without an audible click at the beginning. Perhaps because I sampled without bypassing the filters on the ION. Anyway can this instead be done by changing the voice amp filter dcy2 to hold.... does the EMU let you specify hold values?

Anyway if the only way to do this is to loop the sample, is there a sysex command that I can put into the logic EOSautosample program that will automatically loop the voice? Any other advice on sampling synths is greatly appreciated....

Drew

you like the ion?

okay, well, first thing you want to do is turn off all the filters and envelopes on the synth. then once you get that, you should be able to sample it and loop it. you can sample the patch at say A4 and then set a loop point at a size of 100, and it will loop perfectly. there is a calculator on the emu that lets you figure out how long one cycle is at any give note. i did this the hard way and figured out the actual equation for it. if you are still having issues, then convert the sample down from 44100 to 44000. you are not going to hear any sound difference. i do all this with the test tones from the emu, and i have got some really good sounds made from just those tones. so it should work even with your synth.

okay, lets say you sample a string patch. you have turned off all your filters and envelopes and such, so you have the raw sound. get your loop points up and running then in the envelope screen create your attack, decay and release. attack will make your sound fade in of course, and your release, default 20 will make the sound fade out. use that with an increase value for longer decays after lefting off the key. your decay will be more more cuting a sound out, like making a string pluck or amplitude changes in the body of the sound. once you have done that, if you need filter effects, like a sweeping lpf, you can use the aux envelopes to do that as well. becareful with the release, as you can actualy get the sampler stuck and make it get louder, and louder, and louder, until it is madding. this can be done by the evil source called keysustain. i fear that source....

there are going to be people that will tell you to sample every octave of the patch, like c of each octave to get the best possible sound. and you should be able to get away with it since you can clean up the samples to be only one cycle long. low memory. i don't do the sampling thing right now as i haven't had too many issues with the sampler's interpolation, or whatever that is. but some do. and if you do do that. if you want a really close sound, then sample every other key and spend hours setting it up. but do what you like.

one other tip, if you are detuning a patch, you need to turn that off as well since that will cause issues with getting a good loop, more then likely you will just have a stable loop and the detuning will go away. now if you want detuning, take your sampled patch, create a new voice, over lap that patch ontop of it's self, and then detune, you will start to hear a flange around +/- 2 on the f tune screen in the preset edit screen. if you mess around here, you can actualy come up with a completely different sound and bizarre filter effects.

as for filter on filter, if you q something at the same value as it as already been q'd you are of course going to push the frequencies around that area really high, and of course distort it. the z planes are very powerful and you can destort even with out qing something up prior. hell, you can make bass that people in the next state can hear.

as for softwar question, i don't know. that would be more for people that have intergrated there emu's with there computers. i'm still trying to make back ups...

now your ion will sound beefier going through your emu, you need any help on anything that i may not have explained well, give a shot. but your sampler is an emulator, and thus should be able to be used as an emulator of your ion.

Thanks for your reply S&H it was really helpful....

I love the ION its fukkin wicked really it is. Actually it sounds even better through the emulator Actually I can make a good loop now without calculations, just zooming in and adjusting start and end times. Its also sweet as to check out the waveforms comin out the synth

I have two more quesitons about the amp envelope tho.......

1. I have to turn release1 setting time "100" or more before I can hear a change in the release on my multisample is this normal?? I mean on my synth and my ROMplers, a release setting of about 300ms is audible

2. Has anyone else noticed that release2 amt of any more than 0 results in a hanging note. Why even have a release of more than 0 and secondly does anyone know how to turn all notes off on the EMU Ultra when this happens???

thanks guys

DREW

actualy, a release setting of about 30 or 40 should produce alittle bit of a hang, and more then that will produce a longer tail. the release is always there, if you look at your wave froms in a pc based recorder, where you can see the wave, you will actualy see the decay when the release is set at 20, this is to cover up any missed zero crossings when you let go of the note. it fades it out so you don't get a snap.

the envelopes are two stage envelopes, two stages for each attribute. i warned you about the hanging notes. what you have done is set the release amount on the second stage at a high level, and there for the sampler has no more information to end the tone. as far as it knows, you want it to do that. here is an example of how to set up the release section of the amp envelope. you would set release one to say an amount of 50, and a duration of 60, then release 2 would have an amount of 0 and a release time of 60 again. what you will hear is a two stage decay. the first stage will be from full amplitude to about half over a period of whatever 60 represents, and then the next stage would be from the about half amplitude to zero over the span of whatever 60 represents. if you set the second release to anything but zero you will more then likely end up with a stuck hanging loop tone, or something that gets louder and louder and so on. to end this, you need to go into master, utilities, then tones. turn your mixer down all the way, or you will blow your head off. once you hit the tones section, you will hear a sine wave at maxium volume at 440 hz. this is a test tone for calibration. but it breaks the emu's loop. then return t what you were doing.

as for the loops. you don't even really need to zoom in. if you know the pitch, then you will know how many samples are per cycle. and you would loop that many samples, and it will work perfectly. like the example before, if your sample is at 440 hz, your loop size is going to be 100 and you can actualy set that loop anywhere. above zero crossings, below, start at the middle of the cycle. it will not matter. it WILL work.

anyway, i hope that i answered your questions... also, to let you know, we have the same sampler.

If you have Sound Forge (I can't vouch for Wavelab) and a SCSI connection to your sampler, you can always set up a sustaining loop and dump it to your sampler. The sampler will read the loop points and loop accordingly. This is the way I do it as i find it a little quicker than using the sampler itself (yeah...sacrilege I know)...Give it a whirl as the Loop Tuner in Sound Forge is quite a good feature...Nads