E-MU used to be a MAJOR player in the sound world: from emulators/drumulators, to sp-12/sp-1200, to proteus/classic keys/vintage keys. But since the demise of Ensoniq and the acquisition of E-MU/Ensoniq by Creative they have been regulated to being a shell of their former self. The E-MU(Emax/Emulator/SP-1200) vs. Akai (s900/MPC) sampler wars of the '90s were VERY reminiscent of a typical Apple VS. PC/Windows: heated, passionate, loyal alliances, etc. Now Akai is releasing a new MPC and E-MU is...
OK they have been working on software instruments, that apparently seem to work sometimes. I am an owner of the original Proteus X LE plug, that works OK for me; my system is blue screening occasionally so I don't know if those are system components or software, let alone the Proteus LE in particular. I happen to have the new Proteus X2 full version (the one included with the xboard 49), so I will see if that is more reliable/stable than the original ProteusX, or my LE version. If it is all I have to do is worry about a piece of E-MU hardware if I ever get rid of the xboard.
Once I got a taste of some of the E-MU ESC library titles, I immediately was reminded of E-MU's pedigree in the sampling world. You have to imagine that over 20 years (not just) in the field leaves them with a nice set of sample assets. I currently have Mo' Phatt, Beat Garden, Techno Synth Construction Yard, Protean Drums, Vintage Pro X 3: Keyboards; Planet Earth is coming with the xboard. There are a few more things (street kits, vintage x 1-2) I want but am reluctant to invest in a library that may not be accessible to me.
With that being said I put the blame of this oversight on the E-MU and the smapler makers.
E-MU:
Is it so difficult to release this library in a multiformat: EmuX, Kontakt, Halion, Giga? Is it that important that try and establish Proteus/Emulator X? How many more units would you sell if you targeted more than Emu/Proteus X users? How many Emu/Proteus X users are there compared to Kontakt users, Halion users, Giga users, and Reason Refill users?
Sample makers:
No one thinks it to be valuable to access this library? While you try to stuff samplers with 3GB, 7GB, 15GB, 32GB, 900TB, 125PetaBytes, 604ExaBytes or library, maybe you could utilize an already existing exemplary library?
Currently Samplelord is the only sampler I know of that will recognize all, but only loads some of the EXB files: Proteus Composer, Vintage Pro X 3 = yes, everything I currently have = no. There is some issue with a multisample library that Samplelord will not recognize. That's the explanation I got in an email response (less than 24 hours from my initial message) from the guy at Samplelord. Understandable, Samplelord is less than $200. There's no way you could get that feature set/functionality in Kontact, MachFive, Halion, or Giga AND keep the price so low.
Call me crazy, but am I the only person who thinks the ESC library is fantastic and deserves to be more redily available?
Now I am very aware of Digital Sound Factory - http://www.digitalsoundfactory.com/ and there soundfont offering, as well as their port to Dimension Pro in conjunction with Cakewalk (by Roland -
). There are some solutions there; it looks like there are soundfont versions of Mo' Phatt, Proteus Composer, Vintage X, Virtuoseo, and I guess Old World Instruments. I am really concerned about my really-inspiring building blocks: Protean Drums, Beat Garden, and TSCY[/url]. There doesn't seem to be a 1 to 1 port of those. DSF mentions Orbit, but does not specify it as Orbit 3, which is what supposedly Beat Garden and TSCY are based on. The Cake library has PX-7, which I am assuming is identical in samples (maybe not patches 
) to Protean Drums. It seems a shame that this amazing-sounding resource will probably have to die.
Am I missing something?
Sorry for the rant.
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