KVR Audio

Majken · Post by **Majken** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 5:58 pm

Hey! I got my Emulator-X Studio a few days ago. Only just begun playing around with it, but oh boy is it powerful! The DSP effects are ok, pretty standard stuff, except from the Reverb which i think is very very nice. Can't wait til the VST wrapper is released for them so you can run them without the I-Wire from a VST host.

I started digging into the synthesis engine of the Emu-X today and all I can say is that I'm stunned. I made 4 samples using stomper, a 1 cycle sine, tri, saw and square wave and used them to build sounds in emu-x. I was hoping for some chippy sounds that at best sounded like Gort's mini soundfont banks. However as i fiddled around with the features there's a few things that really strikes me as amazing. You can use several voices for each preset that can all have their very own envelope, lfo, filter and modulation settings. Meaning you can go as wild as you want.

This means I've decided to make an emu-x soundbank in around 100k. I've also been thinking of throwing up an emu-x forum for people that wanna discuss and trade presets and what not. Well just plans but i couldn't be happier with the soundcard and software. The only thing i don't like is that you have to save banks when running as vsti, meaning you quickly fill upp the harddrive with duplicated samples and presets. Who knows, maybe they'll change it around in future updates.

Hey analogesque, wanna give my bank a shot later on when i got some more presets?

Emu-X = Kickass!

/Majken

Majken · Post by **Majken** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 8:14 pm

Here's some soundexamples of two presets I made. The waveform samples that make up these pad presets are a staggering 1.75kB in size. Enjoy!

http://www.majken.se/emu-x.mp3

Again, Emu-X rox!

/Majken

Hypertone · Post by **Hypertone** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 9:25 pm

Wow that sounds great! Hard to believe that's a simple waveform, it must be one powerful sampler. My mind is finally made up, I'm going to buy Emulator-X.

thorau · Post by **thorau** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 9:30 pm

I'm interested in buying Emulator X, but I have some questions about it. The site of E-MU has not much informations about the product.
Does the library include the "old" sounds from EMU I to III also?
Is it possible to buy only the sampler and use it with any soundcard ( M-Audio stuff f.e.), or do I need to buy the complete bundle to work with it?

Tachikoma · Post by **Tachikoma** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 9:45 pm

I had a demo in a shop, after 30 seconds the PC rebooted. Granted this guy has a shitty P800 with hardly any memory and it looked like a crap PC that was never configured correct, but is it stable ?

Majken · Post by **Majken** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 10:06 pm

rebooted?.. yikes!.. Well I'm seeing no signs of anything like that here, in fact emu-x has been running for at least the last 12 hours or so in the background at 5ms latency while irc'ing, reading forums and listening to music in winamp. I press a key on my keyboard and viola, no stuttering, no glitches, just pure low latency sampler playback

About the samples, well hmm.. There's a Proteus bank that's pretty good some strings and stuff, a hiphop bank, some beats i haven't tried and a big grand piano i haven't tried. There's some good stuff i suppose but it's really the soundfont importer that kicks ass for freebies. Haven't tried more than a couple of hundred presets from soundfonts but so far they've all been good and considering you have a kickass synthesis engine to improve them doesn't really make things worse.

VanLichten · Post by **VanLichten** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 10:13 pm

I have another question - can you use the soundcard that, as i understand, ships with it, for recording or is it a simple D/A converter for the synth ?
And: Is EX CPU-hungry ?

Richard

Majken · Post by **Majken** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 10:35 pm

Hell yes you can use it for recording! That's one of the most important reasons I bought it. You get 8 analog inputs with the bigger Studio version and 8 adat inputs. Meaning you could grab an 8 channel micpre with adat out and record 16 channels at once. Supposedly the converters are the same you find in the ProTools HD gear.

Emu-X is pretty cpu hungry, all depending on what you do. However it's intelligently cpu hungry really. You set a peak cpu % and if it goes beyond that it starts stealing voices. Meaning you don't have to worry all that much about the computer dying when you hold down your sustain pedal and your cat takes a walk across the midi keyboard.

Supposedly E-MU have promised an update sometime this summer that will give you a VST wrapper for the dsp effects on the card. This means you could actually use the soundcard to save some cpu by running reverb, distortion and speaker simulation plugins on the cards dsp chip. It is already possible to use these effects in VST hosts through a wiring plugin but this means you will have to rout the signal through the soundcard mixer. This works great though and I'm very impressed by the reverb. I tried seeing how much it could take and i was allowed to put 2 stereo reverbs, 2 distortions and 2 amp sims on the dsp, meaning they would use 0% cpu. Which makes the somewhat cpu hungry Emu-X your best friend

/Majken

VanLichten · Post by **VanLichten** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 10:41 pm

Hey thanks for the quick answer.
Sounds really, really good - guess its time for me to depart from the old soundblaster and buy its heir - one a EMU, always a EMU - had a Ultrproteus one and loved its filters to the death, EX hasn't the 256 the Ultraproteus had but i think 64 will do for the start...

Richard

Majken · Post by **Majken** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 10:49 pm

Oh yeah, the filters are almost too sweet. You tend to spend an hour just twiddling around with filters and filter settings while editing patches. So much to choose from and they all sound so different. From sharp phasing filters to vowels and smooth lowpass filters.

I used to be a soundblaster owner myself btw. Bought the Audigy Platinum EX the day it was released. Oh boy did i regret that 1 month later when i realized asio was never gonna get any better than it was and that i'd be stuck with 48kHz. The E-MU really doesn't seem to have anything to do with Creative except for the minimal logo they put on it. The latency is really good and there's no EAX to be seen

/Majken

Hypertone · Post by **Hypertone** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 11:11 pm

Is the Emulator X powered by the DSP or is it native? Does anyone know if I can buy the standard Emulator X package and upgrade to the breakout box later?

It would be sweet if Emu started making some virtual Morpheus, Audity, Proteus, etc. synths for it.

Majken · Post by **Majken** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 11:20 pm

The Emu-X is CPU powered. Only the mixer effects are DSP powered. Don't think it's possible to buy the breakout later on since it uses a different PCI card.

And yes, more virtual E-MU stuff please!

/Majken

Majken · Post by **Majken** » Wed Apr 21, 2004 5:05 pm

For E-MU talk, join!

http://www.productionforums.com/emu/

/Majken

ICHi · Post by **ICHi** » Thu Apr 22, 2004 5:44 am

Supposedly E-MU have promised an update sometime this summer that will give you a VST wrapper for the dsp effects on the card.

***Just would like to clarify for the record. I don't know where you got this information from but we have not promised anything.

Best,
ICHi
E-MU Systems

Tachikoma · Post by **Tachikoma** » Thu Apr 22, 2004 6:35 am

Your tech support told me about the VST wrapper too.

Make sure you speak with one mouth Ichi. It is better you remain silent.

I got the Emulator X