emusonacid! legacy

are the DAC's equally fat sounding? do the z plane filters sound the same?

I've only had my X for a couple of days so this isn't a detailed review, but yeah, I didn't notice any difference in the X and my E4. I havent played with the filters too much so cant comment there.

the filters are about the same and you get more on the emux anyway, The quality is spot on on my emu x studio, the best soundcard i have ever had as well, just shame about the way the patchmix works, but i spose its to help people who had rfx cards it must work a similar way.

i'm returning my rfx32 card and 8 analog output expander card as they don't work in my e4xt ultra anyway and instead getting emulator x studio and i'm in the process of building this new machine specificly to run it:
amd athlon 64 fx-53
asus sk8v motherboard
gig of dual channel pc3200 ecc registered corsair ram
2 74 gig western digital 10,000rpm raptor drives in raid0

going to run nuendo, reaktor, and emulator x on it and finally be able to do music completely natively.

aeser wrote:i'm returning my rfx32 card and 8 analog output expander card as they don't work in my e4xt ultra anyway and instead getting emulator x studio and i'm in the process of building this new machine specificly to run it:
amd athlon 64 fx-53
asus sk8v motherboard
gig of dual channel pc3200 ecc registered corsair ram
2 74 gig western digital 10,000rpm raptor drives in raid0

going to run nuendo, reaktor, and emulator x on it and finally be able to do music completely natively.

Why ecc ram? U know its ONLY useful for server machines. ECC ram will produce a slight performance penalty anyway. U just need Cas 2 DDR ram.

drayon wrote:

aeser wrote:i'm returning my rfx32 card and 8 analog output expander card as they don't work in my e4xt ultra anyway and instead getting emulator x studio and i'm in the process of building this new machine specificly to run it:
amd athlon 64 fx-53
asus sk8v motherboard
gig of dual channel pc3200 ecc registered corsair ram
2 74 gig western digital 10,000rpm raptor drives in raid0

going to run nuendo, reaktor, and emulator x on it and finally be able to do music completely natively.

Why ecc ram? U know its ONLY useful for server machines. ECC ram will produce a slight performance penalty anyway. U just need Cas 2 DDR ram.

that motherboard and athlon 64fx chip require ecc registered ram

Just to add:
Differences from the Ultras.

1 You can have 17 different waveforms for the LFOs.

2. 54 filter types, loads more than we had on the Ultras.

3. An oscillator, which was missing on the Ultras.The Ultra treats voices and samples as oscs. This is a seperate and dedicated osc with tune and offset..Invaluable.

4. You can save any of the patchcord pages as a template and reload them on any preset you want. Very useful, particularly if you've created great preset patchcords and want to use them on another preset.

5. 13 trigger modes, more than the Ultras.

6. Higher parameter resolution on the filters.

7. An excellent navigation system.

8. The best DSP tools I have come across at sample edit level. Negates the use of some of the audio editors I use.Even simple tools like moving nodes on the sample edit graphical display makes life so much easier. I found the time stretching/compressing and pitch shifting tools very useful.Along with sample rate convert.

9. Node movement graphical display on a number of the tools. The ADSR of an envelope can either be manipulated by moving the nodes with your mouse or by using the ADSR knobs next to it and you have six stages of this.This type of node moving editting is also available on other parts, notably the sample edit page.

10. Assigning and naming the midi controllers and having them appear on the main preset page makes it a dream to use. I assigned ADSR, filter freq, fil resonance, pitch up/down etc.. here and by moving any of the knobs I had instant control over any of these parameteres, without having to leave the main preset page, reminded me of analogue synths. You can also assign any source destination to the controllers by simple drop down menus. Ultras, you had to go back to the patchcord pages or the filter pages to change any event.

11. More patchcord source and distinations.

12. Internal or external clock/tempo sync.You can use this on envelope, osc offset, lfo freq etc..

13. Copy/paste, drag and drop makes life so much easier. Being able to create layers on the fly and move the data around makes it a handy tool. This method is adopted at every stage of the EX.

14. Graphical display for most functions, envelopes, filters etc.. and template saves and loads are other features that make editting and creating large banks of many presets so much easier.

There is a load more, but it's all in my review, whic will be uploaded on my site next week alomng with the 1820M, so I don't want to hog this space here by listing them.

If any one is interested. There is no character length file name issue in the EX, it is a problem with windows. This was raised in another forum and has been banded about on the net.
The EX cannot act as a cross platfrom for the hardware samplers, I wish it did, what a joy that would be. However, I love this product. BTW, I do not work for Emu.

All the best.

right now i'm getting the best of both worlds, using an e4xt and a pc running emulator x (and sequencing from a mac using digital performer).

aeser wrote:right now i'm getting the best of both worlds, using an e4xt and a pc running emulator x (and sequencing from a mac using digital performer).

sounds cool, any thoughts so far in terms of comparison???

ezman wrote:

aeser wrote:right now i'm getting the best of both worlds, using an e4xt and a pc running emulator x (and sequencing from a mac using digital performer).

sounds cool, any thoughts so far in terms of comparison???

the e4xt sounds fatter/fuller/warmer, but emulator x (at 192khz) sounds much much clearer/more detailed, the filters really compliment eachother too. really this combination is all i could ever want really, it is literally the best of both worlds. i'm still getting to know the emulator x so it's still much quicker for me to get around and do what i have to do in the e4xt.

the samples that come with emulator x are kickass though too.

I bought the Emulator X to use along side my E4XT and they are worlds apart.

The Emulator X can't touch the E4XT Ultra:
1. The E4XT is a stand alone hardware that's leaps and bounds better in terms of performance and reliability. The Emulator X crashes! It clips! It maxes out my CPU, Hardware, memory. How much money do you have to sink into a PC to get it to work right?! And now adays, they are all saying that it should be set up on an independent PC. So, for under $1000 you can have an E4XT and for 2x that you would still have issues with an Emulator X.
2. Of course sound is objective, but the E4XT sounds 100x better to my ears. The Emulator X is too thin sounding. Beleive it or not, the E4XT cheaper converts, which limited the output signal, creates that "warm" sound that EMU is famous for. The Emulator X uses better converters, but in the digital world that means - TINY SOUNDING. Analog sounding is better and that's has little to do with technology progression.
3. I hate dealing with PC's and Windows OS. There's always something going wrong with them - and this is coming from someone who build every PC he's owned since 1988! That's a long time!
4. And something everyone forgets to mention - there is a ton of features that the E4XT offers, like Doppler, that Emulator X doesn't. I'm sure they will eventually, but for now, the Emulator X can't touch the E4XT.

aeser wrote:

ezman wrote:

aeser wrote:right now i'm getting the best of both worlds, using an e4xt and a pc running emulator x (and sequencing from a mac using digital performer).

sounds cool, any thoughts so far in terms of comparison???

the e4xt sounds fatter/fuller/warmer, but emulator x (at 192khz) sounds much much clearer/more detailed, the filters really compliment eachother too. really this combination is all i could ever want really, it is literally the best of both worlds. i'm still getting to know the emulator x so it's still much quicker for me to get around and do what i have to do in the e4xt.

the samples that come with emulator x are kickass though too.

Hey, are u running EMUX in standalone (NOT VST Instrument)? so that u connect your Mac's MIDI Interface MIDI I/O to the E-MU 1820 interface and use it as if it were a dedicated instrument? I assume the 1820's Audio outs are running into your mixer and you are controlling E-MUX with your master keyboard controller connected to your sequencer on the Mac??

The emualtor x software and emu series of soundcards do not even come close to the sound of the ultras, its night and day. SMart money is on the ultras, regardless of the fact that emu x may ahve more lfo types and more filter types, truth is they sound like any other soft sampler, no different.

please dont say that !! i want an emu inside my pc with lovely warm filters.

i want a virtual EMU !! why the HEK don't they just use the old emu ultra micro chips on a pci card?? like what is that chip in the 0404 and 1616m?? why isnt it better??

WAIT !!!!! Is it because of creative? have they ruffled emus feathers??

i'm going to ring Rod Hull immediately!!!


filterfreq:)

Just received my Emulator X2 last week. I've owned a few E-MU samplers in the past, an e64, E5000, and an old Emax at one stage even. But this thing I think is by far the best. As a software sampler it kills the competition. Sound quality wise, it's probably not as fat as the hardware Emulators from what I remember of those I've owned, but I'm sure that can be dealt with by mixing through an analog desk, or using bit crusher plugins etc.

Here's why I would never go back to a hardware sampler. MIDI is NOT accurate. It's as simple as that. The X2 running as a VSTi is sample accurate. I layered multiple instances of a single sound and triggered them simultaneously just to test this. No timing variation between any of them! The more I played on top of each other, it just got louder. Try this with a hardware E4 or any MIDI based sampler and you'll end up with that phasey flanging sound due to the limitations of MIDI.

The same thing will happen if you trigger the Emulator X2 via MIDI, perhaps from a Mac based sequencer, if that's your platform of choice.

The downside. It's crashed a few times when I've loaded samples converted from other formats, such as soundfonts and a few programs from my old MPC4000 that I just sold before getting the X2. But for a the powerful features, extra filters and so on, I can live with the occasional crash. It seems I'll just need to test all my converted samples in advance and remove any that cause problems, or determine why they're causing problems.