emusonacid! legacy

I must apologise in advance if some of these points seem like dumbass newbie stuff... I've been using esi32's since they came out, maxed, turbo'd and w/ internal HD's and syquests (r.i.p. these latter). I also have an esi4000 w/ syquest and external zip. I am happy with soldering (broadcast engineer for nearly 20 years).

I just bought one of the many e4x's appearing on e-bay at the moment- I aren't in tears exactly over this because it cost ?300 total and is a pretty good sampler anyway...

BUT

recently, because of gigs and baggage allowances and general hardware fragility issues, I have preferred using the proteus-type modules. I have an audity 2k (w/ the extra rom which I pried out of emu after many 'phone calls late 2002), a planet earth, a pk6 and a p2k.
and so naturally my thoughts turned to flash simm authoring, for the last two especially.
I could get all my mellotron tapesets onto one 32Mb simm, I thought.....

(done same sort of thing w/ alesis quadrasynths but 8Mb? do me a favour... & no resonant filters either)

that emulator archive site needs a bit of clarification work- tweakz' site wasn't much better... I guess there isn't that much interest in burning custom roms.... will the software emu do it? I would guess not. and so what will become of the proteus range? will rob papen be the only guy able to put his favourite sounds into the solid state domain?

so after lengthy interweb study, both with and without the aid of burning herbs, I somehow got the idea that an e4x with the latest o/s on it would be able to make roms for me.

bollocks can it; I need an ultra to do this. the e4x is really just a big box with an esi4k in it & a slightly better interface. so what I bought ain't what I otter have bought for this task. now I am scanning for a 2nd hand ultra box- doesn't matter what else it can do or how big it is so long as it can burn these bloody flash simms for my p2k and pk6. it'll probably cost less than the two simms I need to buy from emu before they discontinue those aswell.

which one of these do I want? ah yes.....

duncan.

I've had my emu 6400 for 7 years and can't help you with you question but could you tell me if it takes your roms from the proteous / pk6 I understand there sposed to, I just have never used an esynth, also i would not mind trying to make a rom of my emu morpheous If you do find your answer,

yeah, looks like the e4x will take a couple of roms right next to it's ram; I haven't tried it yet, & to be honest, that wasn't what I bought it for.... looking at the architecture of the sampler, it's somewhere between the esi samplers & the proteus family in terms of patch cords and modulation matrix, but without all the beat-synced lfo and arpeg stuff.

I still think that emu created the best possible solution for musicians who want to create their own sounds/textures/loops on a "proper" sampler and then transfer them to a rompler for live/portable use.
(I say this after a few years of using alesis q-synth stuff and going through the torture of making custom 8Mb ram cards for them)
it's just a pity that they made it so expensive to do & that they look like abandoning the functionality.
you've got to wonder what will become of the huge proteus range now that they've discontinued all the hardware samplers.... does this mean there's no market for sound authoring equipment? are we supposed to survive on factory rom sets?

duncan.

well essentually most manufactures are turning to software anyway, as hardware costs them too much to produce in todays poor world trade, and software is constantly upgradable with out the hastle of making new hardware processors, I think this is all wrong but there you go , now days you can get stuff like the proteus 2500 for ?200 and thats so cheap because half the world has gone software,

I will never personally go this way but this all happened in the early 80's when everyone fucked off there analog gear and brought digital synths, Then in the earley 90's all the old analog prices went through the roof , now its the same but digital hardware is dropping and software is costing more. All i say is keep all your gear becuase in a few years everyones gonna be buying stuff that is no longer made and the prices will increase.

yeah, I'm inclined to agree. I managed to avoid the fashion & stayed out of the technology arms race, hanging on to my analogue stuff & acquiring even more of it during the 80s & 90s. the mellotron cost nothing. the moogs were all under ?100, except for the memorymoog, and my pro-1 cost me ?70 in a hard case. my 303 was ?50 & the mc202 was ?70.
prices for hardware samplers are in a similar downward spiral- doubtless I could've held out a bit longer & got my e5000ultra for even less than I just paid for it.
(the e4x I bought cheaply & by accident will find a good home in the girlfriend's studio....)
still, at least the machine is now being appreciated & used properly. the 40Gb hard drive had one folder on it, called "1st tune", which contained roughly 2Mb of samples.... typical.
now, after a couple of hours familiarisation (I am a long-time esi user & had no idea how much stuff was automated under EOS ) & a version-up to 4.61 (which took about 5 minutes... easy!), the machine is creaking-full of mellotron samples & waiting to burn a load of it onto flash simms which will arrive this week hopefully.
here's the thing- when I ordered these from emu last week, there were FIVE left. I ordered two immediately. I don't think there'll be any more, & these chips are made specially for emu. the flash simms advertised for cisco routers & the like are slower & more expensive. so if anyone reading this is remotely interested in burning roms for a proteus box, they'd better look sharp!