emusonacid!

The past week I have been sequencing and recording breaks that I make. sort of a practice in eqing and getting stuff louder. So i am basically making 4 minute long drum solos if you will, with all the stuff you would hear in a dnb choon and such.

one issue i have had, and if you guys have been watching doa you might already know about this. I have had issues with my signal distorting during the passages when i lowpass. matter the fact even in my songs that i have recorded i have had the same issues. But now it seems that I have found the answer with the help of Peejunk on doa. the emu sample when doing a lowpass sweep seems to spike the frequency range from about 115 to 250 hz. more so then the actual signal level. This is the reason for my distortion on the sections that I sweep with a lowpass filter. Wavelab's spectral analyzer has validated this.

so the my amen break type track that i was practicing on, i notched just those sections where the distortioned accured by about 11 db, at those ranges i mentioned above and then normalized my break in cakewalk. i am sure there could be other solutions as well. the over all signal level is much much louder now, and with out distortion. from a far of look at the wave profile, the wave is almost a solid line. So my break is almost if not more so as hot as commercial cd's and this is with out a compressor or limiter.

so just incase you have ran into this issue before, or you are new to this sampler. that might be the reason you are having problems or might have problems getting loud recordings. It sure was mine. one track i had to reduce by 12 db because of this.

just to let you guys know. major break through for me though.

Have you tried Realtime Crossfade? It's been the cure for almost all my Emu woes

First you'd have to work out where exactly the peak appears when using the midi controller - say for example you're using controller A for 'Filter Freq' then check the midi CC value in 'Midi Mix' screen when you hear the peak . For this example say it peaks when it's at 110.

Assign 2 voices with same break sample and the same key positions. Make sure both voices have got MidiA assigned to AmpXfd in the Cords section.

Now in the 'Voices-RTwin' screen set the voice1 range 0 to 110 and voice2 from 110 to 127. Now experiment with fade out values of v1 and fade in value of v2 until the peak drops down to an acceptable level. You should see a V shaped notch at 110. I doubt very much if the value of the fade will be above 10, however you may need to experiment. You might even need to introduce a 3rd voice to get the desired result.

110 was a complete guess so you might have to experiment about a bit. You might not even need 2 voices - just a simple fade out of the single voice at the last 10 midi values might do the job.

Andrew

thanks, that sounds like it would be better then trying to eq the right frequencies down. i will have to give that a go.

it is just the strangest thing though, one would think the overall amplitude would decrease when filtering with a lowpass, or highpass filter. I suppose it does, but i wouldn't have dreamed of the sampler spiking like that.

i suppose that is why the emu has that particular sound with it's filters...

You're using this cord right?: MODW; FiltFreq; -100% on a 6-pole LPF

If so, try adding this ...
MODW; AMPVol; -8% <-or thereabouts

Do u have an outboard compressor?

U can lower the amplitude of the signal in the EMU, then send the signal to the compressor an then sidechain an EQ at the offending frequency of your filter spike. The compressor will then compress harder around the offending frequency, minimize distortion an average out the level of the overall signal by reducing the amplitude of the offending frequency.

BTW madmax, im not sure your method will work here. IIRC the Vol AMP effects the release of the amp env. I have run into this problem b4 with the EMU. However i was doing the reverse of which the above poster wants to do.

Worth a try tho, it may very well work in this situation, since the AMP Vol of 8% is considerably lower than the amounts i needed to use so thus the release of the env may not be altered noticeably.

drayon wrote:BTW madmax, im not sure your method will work here. IIRC the Vol AMP effects the release of the amp env. I have run into this problem b4 with the EMU. However i was doing the reverse of which the above poster wants to do.

Worth a try tho, it may very well work in this situation, since the AMP Vol of 8% is considerably lower than the amounts i needed to use so thus the release of the env may not be altered noticeably.

Huh ... interesting ... I use this all the time when I want a really hot gain on an on a sound with an open LPF and also want to be able to close teh LPF cleanly. Basslines, breaks, you name it.

I've never noticed any effect on the amp ENV release and I do pay very close attention to this parameter when programming a sound. But ... as you say, you only noticed this on higher amounts .... ok wait ... #&*@&$#@$%@@! .... ???? .... !!!!!!!!! ... (that was me thinking) ...

If you set the amount higher - or should I say, lower, as we are talking about negative values - you would hardly be able to hear the sound at all when the modwheel is up. Which leads me to believe that you were refering to the opposite cord, using positive percentages. At a higher value, this would cause any AMP ENV effects to become null (and the releases to become extended) because you've already hit the upper limit for volume on the sound.

Let me try to explain ... say your static level for the sound is set at +0 in the voice menu of preset edit. If you set a cord to ModWh; AmpVol; +50%, your new levels will effectively be way above +10, which is the limit. Therefore when you have the AMP ENV trying to fade the sound out for the release, it is fading from a value of, say +50 back down to 0. Only, you won't hear any change from between +50 and +10, cos +10 is the limit. This would give the illusion that the release has been extended.

At any rate, I'll stop rambling (I'm such a nerd - this stuff is facinating to me .. sort of like math teasers ). My point is that if you have this cord set at a negative value you will not experience this effect since your lower limit on the AMP volume is like -96 or something and your static value, set in the voice menu of preset edit, is most likely going to be well above that.