KVR Audio

313ryans · Post by **313ryans** » Tue Apr 24, 2018 12:48 am

I have owned my emaxii turbo since the mid 90s. About 8 years ago I put it in my son's room because he had an interest in it and could do some really cool stuff with it. I had (have) little room in my garage studio for a plus-sized keyboard anyway. He was 7-8 years old then, now he got a bench press and weight set to make his stinky room and teen self stinkier. The emax is in storage now.

It has one stuck key that I can fix in the summer. It has between 4-7mb of memory (have not checked the utility yet, I mean I did but I cannot remember what it said) instead of the full 8mb. The RAM is proprietary and I doubt I can replace the burned-out chip. There are some 8mb banks I cannot load anymore. It has an old Syquest 44mb drive with about 6 cassettes.

I have 3 kids about to get cars and go to college. My wife and I are teachers and don't have extra money. I am inspired to make some new music. I mean really good, never been done before--but probably should have been done around 1998-2005 ideas because I am like turning 50 soon and had a bunch of babies crawling around in those years type stuff.

I have a nordrack2, Boss dr5, volcas, and some old and new VSTs that will do whatever I need. I am a guitarist and don't really play keys very well. I program MIDI pretty well though. I like my emax, we go way back...but I cannot fit it in my small space.

If I fix it I could maybe get $4-600 for it? I doubt I can rearrange my 8mb banks into 4mb banks with my windows7 PC. It is not analogue, but sounds great. It does the transpose interpolation thing which is fairly unique. I have been agonizing over keys to replace it...like a Blofeld (maybe not small enough) minilogue, microkorg, mininova, miniak or one of the awesome 25 key analogue monosynths out nowadays...or just a 25 key controller.

Or I could just keep the emax in an awkward spot in front of my tube amps and we can tell everyone else to get off our lawns while we both slowly decompose until only a few donate-able parts of us remain.

Given my situation, what would you do if you were in my spot? I already brought my issues up at the official emax forum, and got crickets.

Steve Bolivar · Post by **Steve Bolivar** » Tue Apr 24, 2018 4:20 am

A couple years ago I sold off several synths, rack mounted synth modules and keyboards, and can't say that I miss them too much. One was a Emaxii rack. Maybe sell the keyboard Emaxii and replace it with a small controller and a Emaxii rack if space is the issue.

313ryans · Post by **313ryans** » Wed Apr 25, 2018 1:54 am

Yeah, it’s like putting down a doggy...but i am gonna fixit and sell it. It is in better shape than most emax out there, especially after i fixit. Way back when people used to write about machines being immortal. Not quite.

313ryans · Post by **313ryans** » Sun Apr 29, 2018 4:26 am

I found the source of my non-functioning key...anybody have advice for a dependable fix? I am thinking crazy glue is involved, but any insights considering that I want to sell this and not hear about a broken key in the near to distant future? I respect this instrument and want whomever gets it to not worry about some hack job I did.

313ryans · Post by **313ryans** » Sun Apr 29, 2018 4:34 am

The model# shows that this was one of the earliest emax iis, but his chipboard is showing a 6mb board and it has stereo. Maybe someone spent the $8,000 and then some back in the day? Also, I don't know what part of this is malfunctioning to give it less than the full 8mb of RAM.

Also there is no word synonymous with porcelain here...it is all USA, Korea, and Mexico. Sweet.

313ryans · Post by **313ryans** » Sun Apr 29, 2018 4:37 am

313ryans · Post by **313ryans** » Sun Apr 29, 2018 4:39 am

Will you guys ever forgive me for thinking it takes up too much space?

313ryans · Post by **313ryans** » Thu May 03, 2018 1:35 am

So good news, bad news. Good news is that the broken key link was a clean break, and some super glue did the job on it. After cleaning out decades of dust, hair, and one of my guitar picks, my keys work perfectly with velocity and after-touch.

Bad news is that it is only showing 5mb available. Which is a bummer, but I still have lots of good 4mb banks and some 2mb classics too. In going through all the classic sounds I found some terrible 80s/90s cheese. Some really good piano, vintage synth, orchestral, vocal, and organ banks. I always preferred its cymbals from its drum kits to my Dr5's and VST's cymbals. It is a really nice sounding piece of gear, the E-Mu library offers so many pristine samples, and the emax has nice synthesis options.

313ryans · Post by **313ryans** » Sat May 05, 2018 6:03 pm

I am going to put it on my local Metro Detroit Craig's List soon. If it does not sell I will stick it on ebay. I know a few people who may know people who may want it- and will ask them first.

The photos show the broken black piece that is connected to the key. The white piece is removable and links to the spring that makes contact to the soundboard. I superglued it, and let it cure. It seems like it will last. It is on there strong.

The other photo is the joyful reunion with its old friends in my mancave studio.

My summer project will be getting my tools and workbench moved to a different part of the house. All the drywall, solder, paints, and sawdust is not ideal for a studio environment.

deastman · Post by **deastman** » Sat May 05, 2018 6:30 pm

I just recently bought an Emax SE to replace the one I foolishly sold in the 90s. If I were you, I would sell your Emax II and get a basic controller keyboard to use with software. The original Emax was interesting because it had an actual SSM analog filter, and also sounds grungy in a wonderful way. The Emax II is technically superior in every respect, but in the process lost all the character that made the original interesting. Go with a software sampler and you’ll be much happier with the capabilities and ease of use than with your old beast.

fmr · Post by **fmr** » Sat May 05, 2018 6:49 pm

Do you happen to have the SE Synthesis banks? When I was in college, I worked with an E-Max II Turbo (it has a built-in hard-disk), and I remember that there were one or two banks dedicated to the special synthesis called Spectral Interpolation (kind of convolution) and SE (Synthesis Enhanced).

Last month I got permission to use the college studio, and I sampled extensively a Matrix-12 they have. That studio also happened to have there the old E-Max II Turbo, but when I turned it on, I got no sound out of it. The RAM is recognized, the hard-disk is recognized, I am able to load banks into RAM, but no sound.

I'd love to get the sounds of those two banks.

deastman · Post by **deastman** » Sat May 05, 2018 7:21 pm

fmr wrote:Do you happen to have the SE Synthesis banks? When I was in college, I worked with an E-Max II Turbo (it has a built-in hard-disk), and I remember that there were one or two banks dedicated to the special synthesis called Spectral Interpolation (kind of convolution) and SE (Synthesis Enhanced).

Last month I got permission to use the college studio, and I sampled extensively a Matrix-12 they have. That studio also happened to have there the old E-Max II Turbo, but when I turned it on, I got no sound out of it. The RAM is recognized, the hard-disk is recognized, I am able to load banks into RAM, but no sound.

I'd love to get the sounds of those two banks.

The Emax SE I bought came with an HXC floppy emulator installed and the entire factory library on an SD card. I’m pretty sure the SE disks are in there somewhere. The disks are numbered rather than named descriptively, so I would have to cross-reference them with the list of factory disk numbers to know for certain. If you PM me your address, I’ll send you a zip of the whole lot. I think you might need to use EMXP to decode it to Soundfont or some more useful format.

313ryans · Post by **313ryans** » Sat May 05, 2018 7:54 pm

The emax ii has the additive “spectrum interpolation” synthesis too. It takes awhile, and some luck, to make a good sound by combining 2 samples.

313ryans · Post by **313ryans** » Sat May 05, 2018 8:54 pm

If you don’t mind me asking, I believe the emaxii can read emax files, and some of my banks are unreadable at 8mb. May i pm you for the samples as well?

Also, i agree that the emax se has more character...but i do think the emaxii and other samplers of that era have more personality and sound better than software.

Nothing beat my old Emulatoriii, but it broke down every 6 months...i still kick myself over selling it for cheap. 2008 was a killer year financially. I almost sold this emaxii for $250. Almost sold my Modulus Telecaster a number of times. No one wanted my Peavey at $300. My nord was broken and i could not afford to fixit for 2-3 years.

deastman · Post by **deastman** » Sat May 05, 2018 10:35 pm

313ryans wrote:If you don’t mind me asking, I believe the emaxii can read emax files, and some of my banks are unreadable at 8mb. May i pm you for the samples as well?

Also, i agree that the emax se has more character...but i do think the emaxii and other samplers of that era have more personality and sound better than software.

Nothing beat my old Emulatoriii, but it broke down every 6 months...i still kick myself over selling it for cheap. 2008 was a killer year financially. I almost sold this emaxii for $250. Almost sold my Modulus Telecaster a number of times. No one wanted my Peavey at $300. My nord was broken and i could not afford to fixit for 2-3 years.

Sure, send me a PM. I remember “back in the day” using a friend’s Emax II to convert some floppies from his library to Emax I format. So it was definitely backwards compatible.

emaxii advice