Those new EMU cards can now run effects as proper VST plugins, similar to UAD-1 or Powercore... of course, the quality of their effects is probably not amazing... Actually, does anyone know how many simultaneous effects those EMU cards can run?

http://www.sonicstate.com/news/shownews.cfm?newsid=1583

Of course, now = sometime this year.

Windows only.

Forever,




Kim.

I've been following this over on the Emu production forums (here). It sounds pretty exciting, and actually part of the powerfx system is available right now (it's called ewire, and it allows Emu fx to be used as VSTs). PowerFX seems to be adding full VST implementation (PDC and parameter automation) to what is already available.

Quote:

of course, the quality of their effects is probably not amazing

What would make you think that? Emu and ensoniq have always had VERY good effects (except for midi controllers, my Ensoniq DP2 fx box is my last piece of hardware) and you can bet the Emu/Ensoniq teams were in on these effects. I would be surprised if they are not very good...maybe not up to level of some highly specialized plugs, but certainly they will be usable.

Quote:

Actually, does anyone know how many simultaneous effects those EMU cards can run?

Emu users report being able to run several typical fx at once, even multiple instances of multi-fx ; but only one or two reverbs

eidt: users have also reported some issues with faster-than-realtime track rendering during mixdown and track freezing (which would logically be expected with a hardware unit, since it is not meant for faster than realtime use)

I'm going to wait for some good reviews before replacing my Audiophile.

But for a card with low latency and onboard FX for £69.99 ... you cannot grumble at that price.

The fx sound demo's sound good.

i have an 1820M and can vouche for the excellent quality of the effects... they use something like 67 bit floating point precision, i believe, too... those 3 extra bits are headroom bits from what i was told.

Jeez wrote:

.. Actually, does anyone know how many simultaneous effects those EMU cards can run?

For those who want to know about the Emu card, I have one.

We can already, for exemple, use the hardware fx in the cubase inserts with ASIO, or with REwire if we come from the physical ins and want no latency.

The fx themselves are not spectacular, they are the type a multitimbral synth would have. The are great in processing individual tracks in a mix. The number of fx is CPU dependant (the card cpu) you can multi fx 3-4 tracks or so with flanger, chorus, compression, simple reverb for exemple.

If you have a live setup this could be of some help, saving some main cpu, and for exemple they integrate well with the Emu sampler, as it has 2 fx sends... but the fx aren`t recalled by prog. changes etc...

In reality, having a powerfull enough CPU, I NEVER USE THE CARD'S FX. They would not be changed if I loaded another song in my host anyway. But the VST's may give us access to all the card's potential.

The fx would not be my main mixing/mastering tools anyway. But on the long run, I know they will come handy in my live setup, be it for precesing other instruments like bass, guitar, voice etc.

Big omission, there is no noise gate or peak limiter. Would I had realized that, and the poorness of the EMU sampler lib, I may have bought something else, but still only the hardware connectivity/sync/quality/value for the money is almost unbeatable. (or was at the time... )

SecondSkin wrote:

Quote: of course, the quality of their effects is probably not amazing What would make you think that?

Just the impression I got. The box is marketed as "I/O with hardware accelerated effects"... contrasting with UAD/Poco "awesome effects that happen to be hardware accelerated".

That is, the package is not sold on the quality of the effects, it's sold on its other strengths.

That being said, I don't expect the effects to suck - only that I probably wouldn't buy the package for for effects (contrast to UAD/Poco).

Yes, I know the EMU stuff is in a different price range to the other products I mentioned. They're also targeted at different users.

Forever,




Kim.

Amberience wrote:

The fx sound demo's sound good.

Where can I hear them?

Forever,




Kim.

WaveRiderArts wrote:

The fx themselves are not spectacular, they are the type a multitimbral synth would have. The are great in processing individual tracks in a mix.

That's pretty much what I was expecting.

Forever,




Kim.

I'd still prefer something that accelerates any VST effect in a completely transparent way, as if it were running normally on the CPU...

I've heard from some that the effects are limited to 16-bit. Is this true?

-- N

[quote="SecondSkin"]

Quote:

of course, the quality of their effects is probably not amazing

What would make you think that? Emu and ensoniq have always had VERY good effects (except for midi controllers, my Ensoniq DP2 fx box is my last piece of hardware) and you can bet the Emu/Ensoniq teams were in on these effects. quote]

I second that, my old Ensoniq-TS10 had the best effects I ever saw. 48 bits, 48khz if I remember correctly. Also, the EMU APS (sbLive with hacked drivers) has very good reverbers, I miss those. I just don't use it anymore since is too much hazle. But if they offer VSTs now, I will be getting one. At least until I can do my own Reverber that I like.

Best Regards, WilliamK

WilliamK wrote:

my old Ensoniq-TS10 had the best effects I ever saw. 48 bits, 48khz if I remember correctly. Also, the EMU APS (sbLive with hacked drivers) has very good reverbers, I miss those. I just don't use it anymore since is too much hazle.

I think all of Ensoniq' stuff had great fx, especially the ASR-X, but even the Fizmo. I know there are alot of Enosoniq fans around here.

I agree about the SB Live stuff, too. Damned good verbs and lots of other usable bits, but too much of a hassle.

foosnark wrote:

I'd still prefer something that accelerates any VST effect in a completely transparent way, as if it were running normally on the CPU...

Umm, that would be called a second cpu, maybe running fx teleport....

they have some effects demos on emu's website. all the effects seem serviceable workhorse effects, but there's nothing extraordinary there. of course there are times when you just want a standard flanger, phaser, reverb or whatever and i guess it's nice to save a little bit of CPU, but there are plenty of free effects out there that cover the same ground as well or better, imo, if you've got the CPU to spare.

Quote:

the EMU APS (sbLive with hacked drivers) has very good reverbers, I miss those. I just don't use it anymore since is too much hazle. But if they offer VSTs now, I will be getting one. At least until I can do my own Reverber that I like. Best Regards, WilliamK

If I´m not mistaken...EMU developed the chip used in the sblive and they also developed the SF2 format.
Then Creative just bought that technology from them.
the APS use the same chip as the SBlive so it´s the sblive drivers that are hacked!

mindless wrote:

If I´m not mistaken...EMU developed the chip used in the sblive and they also developed the SF2 format. Then Creative just bought that technology from them. the APS use the same chip as the SBlive so it´s the sblive drivers that are hacked!

What?! No way bud, they hacked the APS drivers, so they wouldn't check if you have the sbLive or the APS Sound-Card.

But somehow people just don't like EMU, I LOVE EMU and Ensoniq. They were allways my fave guys...

Wk

WilliamK wrote:

mindless wrote: If I´m not mistaken...EMU developed the chip used in the sblive and they also developed the SF2 format. Then Creative just bought that technology from them. the APS use the same chip as the SBlive so it´s the sblive drivers that are hacked! What?! No way bud, they hacked the APS drivers, so they wouldn't check if you have the sbLive or the APS Sound-Card. But somehow people just don't like EMU, I LOVE EMU and Ensoniq. They were allways my fave guys... Wk

WAY!!!

that is the truth I´m afraid!
you can easily check that out for yourself...I can´t really remeber where I got that info but I think that it was a music magazine or something.
EMU developed the chip used in th SB-Live card and EMU also developed the soundfont.

Why do you think that the only asio drivers fro the SB-live is hacked ones?
the APS came with the asio drivers and the SB-live used the standard WDM or whatever format it was (I can never remeber such things)

Creative wanted to save asio compability for their Audigy series of cards and therefore never developed them for the SB-live although they could have done it easily.

EDIT: the reason ppl never liked the old APS was because of it´s fixed internal samplerate of 48.khz
and not the digitall standard 44.1khz
You would need a rate converter to get the maximum soundquality out of it and that just sucked!

I know this because I used to own a SB-live and flogged it for the MUCH MUCH MUCH better AP 24/96

Actually you are both right....both the APS and the Audigy drivers were hacked for use with a SBLive.


nF

NicFit wrote:

Actually you are both right....both the APS and the Audigy drivers were hacked for use with a SBLive. nF

oh? please explain!

mindless wrote:

NicFit wrote: Actually you are both right....both the APS and the Audigy drivers were hacked for use with a SBLive. nF oh? please explain!

not sure it should need explanation, but...
you could use the original v1 APS drivers with a SBLive with a small modification to an .inf file...you could use v1.1 APS drivers with no moification...only catch was no anolog i/o...only SPDIF. There was a hardware mod you could do to get one set of your analog outputs going(which I did)...SEE HERE
You didn't even have to ever touch the Live drivers...so there is no way it was them being "hacked"

Later someone was able to modify the v1.1 APS driver further to get a pair of analog outs working on the SBLive without modifying the hardware.
...(the infamous APSLive! drivers) which is what WilliamK is referring to.



nF

WaveRiderArts wrote:

(...) In reality, having a powerfull enough CPU, I NEVER USE THE CARD'S FX. They would not be changed if I loaded another song in my host anyway.(...)

...that´s why i still go for two cascaded DS2416. they still blow my mind away
i can live with that 23ms latency and only fixed 48khz. but i have no problems, all settings are stored withing song and still today its a fantastic card IMHO.

NicFit wrote:

mindless wrote: NicFit wrote: Actually you are both right....both the APS and the Audigy drivers were hacked for use with a SBLive. nF oh? please explain! not sure it should need explanation, but... you could use the original v1 APS drivers with a SBLive with a small modification to an .inf file...you could use v1.1 APS drivers with no moification...only catch was no anolog i/o...only SPDIF. There was a hardware mod you could do to get one set of your analog outputs going(which I did)...SEE HERE You didn't even have to ever touch the Live drivers...so there is no way it was them being "hacked" Later someone was able to modify the v1.1 APS driver further to get a pair of analog outs working on the SBLive without modifying the hardware. ...(the infamous APSLive! drivers) which is what WilliamK is referring to. nF

actually you're all right and wrong:

EMU developed the SF2 format and the 10k1 chip for Creative for their SB Live.
Later on they developed the APS as a pro soundcard.
Their drivers were more advanced that the original SB Live drivers. (eg. up to 10ms sec. latency which was pretty good at that time & high quality fx) - thus the APS Live hack
Those drivers were all for Win95/98/ME

There were never APS-drivers for XP developed by EMU though - they simply dropped support.

Thus the invention of the KX-project

Recently then EMU suddenly released APS-drivers for XP which are a hack of Creative'sw SB Live drivers for XP combined with the old console/fx.
These drivers also work for the SB Live and are thus similar to the original APS Live hack (in that they enable an owner of a SB Live to use EMU's HQ fx.)

jens wrote:

NicFit wrote: mindless wrote: NicFit wrote: Actually you are both right....both the APS and the Audigy drivers were hacked for use with a SBLive. nF oh? please explain! not sure it should need explanation, but... you could use the original v1 APS drivers with a SBLive with a small modification to an .inf file...you could use v1.1 APS drivers with no moification...only catch was no anolog i/o...only SPDIF. There was a hardware mod you could do to get one set of your analog outputs going(which I did)...SEE HERE You didn't even have to ever touch the Live drivers...so there is no way it was them being "hacked" Later someone was able to modify the v1.1 APS driver further to get a pair of analog outs working on the SBLive without modifying the hardware. ...(the infamous APSLive! drivers) which is what WilliamK is referring to. nF actually you're all right and wrong: EMU developed the SF2 format and the 10k1 chip for Creative for their SB Live. Later on they developed the APS as a pro soundcard. Their drivers were more advanced that the original SB Live drivers. (eg. up to 10ms sec. latency which was pretty good at that time & high quality fx) - thus the APS Live hack Those drivers were all for Win95/98/ME There were never APS-drivers for XP developed by EMU though - they simply dropped support. Thus the invention of the KX-project Recently then EMU suddenly released APS-drivers for XP which are a hack of Creative'sw SB Live drivers for XP combined with the old console/fx. These drivers also work for the SB Live and are thus similar to the original APS Live hack (in that they enable an owner of a SB Live to use EMU's HQ fx.)

Finally some wisdom!
hahah, I was right all the time!
heheh

Good thing I got rid of that crappy SBLive card though, gave it away to a buddy of mine (poor guy )

still using an APS besides a Mia here

the APS converters&preamps are still top notch (despite being only 20bit/48khz)

From the CM (#73) review of the E-MU 1820M, re: onboard DSP effects:

Computer Music magazine wrote:

The DSP effects included are many and varied - a host of EQ plug-ins, compressors, flangers, wahs, delays, a reverb and suchlike are all included, and there are over 500 presets that ship with the basic package. While it's certainly useful to remove certain effects processes from your CPU-driven software mixer to a DSP system, it's only really worthwhile if the effects are up to speed, and we have to say that, aside from the useable reverb and the passable compressor, the rest of the effects are just OK and didn't really get us too excited. For: DSP relieves your aching CPU Against: DSP effects are just OK

Oddly, in the review for the Emulator-X system which utilizes the 1820M (CM#74), they commented that the DSP reverb wasn't the greatest.

_mt

tibenmik wrote:

From the CM (#73) review of the E-MU 1820M, re: onboard DSP effects: Quote: The DSP effects included are many and varied - a host of EQ plug-ins, compressors, flangers, wahs, delays, a reverb and suchlike are all included, and there are over 500 presets that ship with the basic package. While it's certainly useful to remove certain effects processes from your CPU-driven software mixer to a DSP system, it's only really worthwhile if the effects are up to speed, and we have to say that, aside from the useable reverb and the passable compressor, the rest of the effects are just OK and didn't really get us too excited. For: DSP relieves your aching CPU Against: DSP effects are just OK Oddly, in the review for the Emulator-X system which utilizes the 1820M (CM#74), they commented that the DSP reverb wasn't the greatest. _mt

Dif. reviewer perhaps?
And perhaps the testing was done on a dif. setup.
I dunno...just to make things a bit clearer.

I'm going to an Emulator X system... Anybody wanna buy my EMU APS w/Edrive? It's packed in it's original box with all manuals disks and cables and includes the updated WIN2K and WINXP drivers and apps. Pass it on. I can send photos upon request.