EMU Proteus sound modules opinions

[Jeremy_NSL]

I've read lots of you guys who own EMU proteus-2000 series romplers, command stations etc. I may have an opportunity to grab a xk-6 (xtreme lead) keyboard and am wondering what the best options are to fill up its 3 other expansion slots.

Is the Ensoniq ZR-76 soundset any good? I realize it has a pretty good piano included, but besides that? And anyone with sound demos for it? The emu site has none.

Which of the 3 orchestral soundsets (Peter S, or Sessions 1 and 2) are the best bang for the buck?

Any other modules you like very much? And briefly, why? Thanks very much.

[Jeremy_NSL]

Come on guys, a little please!

[groovebox]

Hi floyd,

Not so much an answer...

Be aware that stocks of the ROM cards is getting scarce.

I have a Proteus 2000 btw with Extreme Lead and MoPhatt installed.

There is a Yahoo group for the P2K - those guys on that group have a huge variety of the ROMS in daily use and would be the best source of info in this regard.

Sorry I could not help u directly.

Respect
BB

[Jeremy_NSL]

Hi floyd,

Not so much an answer...

Be aware that stocks of the ROM cards is getting scarce.

I know Thats why I have to act fast, decide which I want, etc.

I have a Proteus 2000 btw with Extreme Lead and MoPhatt installed.

There is a Yahoo group for the P2K - those guys on that group have a huge variety of the ROMS in daily use and would be the best source of info in this regard.

Sorry I could not help u directly.

Respect
BB

Do you have an url for the group? Thanks.

[jzero]

I don't know the url but http://groups.yahoo.com has a search feature for locating groups.

[Jeremy_NSL]

found it.. now I only have to wait for moderator approval to even view the posts

[tconrardy]

I can answer to what I have.
MP7 with Composer Rom is great: you get a little bit of everything. P2000 patches work on it as well.I also have Rob Papans Beat Garden which has lots of great pads and also ethnic percussion since the world ROM is so scarse now.I also have orch sesions 2 which is the solo stuff. A good set of orchesral solo instruments. The other ROM I have is the world Ethnic ROM which as mentioned almost impossible to find...and it's great!

TC

[Jeremy_NSL]

Thanks Tim. Looking at what is still available at the huge discount at emu: mp7, mk6 (whats is the diff between mp7 and mk6?), sounds of the zr, composer, beat garden and xl-7. I am thinking of buying the sounds of the zr, composer and beat garden. At $60-70, I can probably recover my money on ebay if I don't like them I suppose.

[tconrardy]

Thanks Tim. Looking at what is still available at the huge discount at emu: mp7, mk6 (whats is the diff between mp7 and mk6?), sounds of the zr, composer, beat garden and xl-7. I am thinking of buying the sounds of the zr, composer and beat garden. At $60-70, I can probably recover my money on ebay if I don't like them I suppose.

Hi
MP7 is a desktop module with a 1 octave large keyboard pad, but with 16 knobs. See my review on Patch Arena. The MK6 I believe is a keyboard unit.

Your choices seem good. I have heard there is a good piano in the ZR ROM. But Composer has good pianos too,so you might be duplicating a bit, as both are "composer" sets. I know you will be happy with Beat Garden however. But you should find out what ROM is being supplied in the MK6.

Overall I love the sound of these EMU stuff. ( listening right now as we speak to a sequence I wrote) The synthisis structure is amazing too with those Z plane filters!

TC

[flametop]

I have 4 roms in my XL-7. My 2c

XL-7 (X-Lead) = Good 'bread-n-butter' dance rom
Beat Garden = Excellent percussion and pads for dance.
Tech Yard = Similar to the beat garden in scope but a bit more mainstream.
PX-7 = Biased to 'realworld' drums, but huge range of them (not easy to find outside of buying a PX-7 command station)

[Sielsynth]

The sounds of the ZR rom is well worth it if you are looking for some decent piano sounds. I bought it to augment the sounds of my Command Station(comes with composer rom). The piano is a 16 meg version of William Coakley's perfect piano. It was great on the actual ZR-76 keyboard and is just as good here. The rom is mostly variations of the piano and some other good stuff like EPs and Bass. If you've ever heard a ZR-76 or an Ensoniq Halo, then you've heard this ROM.

[Neuromancer]

The 'sounds of the ZR' ROM came stock in my Halo. I haven't used it in a few months, but my opinions of it are as follows:

-The 'ZR' rom has very few overall waveforms in comparsion to nearly every other 32 MB soundset released by EMU for their Proteus-style keyboard/rack module series(443 as opposed to 900 to 1100 for most of the roms). I suspect that much of the waveform memory was taken up by the acoustic piano(15 of those) and transwave(28 of those) samples, which understandably would take more memory than most samples for playback units.

-The "Perfect" piano is pretty good, but they should've chosen a different name, imho. I agree with the above comment regarding overlap with the composer rom.

-Fewer organ waveforms(16) compared to the composer rom(30), but they seem to be different(in name, at least) and I happen to prefer some of the rotary organ sounds on the 'ZR' over the composer rom, but again to me they are a bit different, so less risk of overlap here.

-As mentioned above, the ZR rom has 28 Transwaves; possibly recycled from various past Ensoniq synths(?). I have no idea which are from what synth. I like this inclusion, but the problem I have found here is that you can not modulate the table position of any of the included transwaves, which is a bit of a letdown for those who like do just that(i.e., like on the Fizmo).

-The 'ZR' rom has an entire bank of read-only sounds taken up by a GM bank. I personally could've done without this.

I hope this is at least semi-useful to you.