EMULATOR X

At some point, every hardware manufacturer takes the plunge into the virtual domain. So it is no surprise to see that Emu have entered the dangerous world of the virtual domain.

The Emulator X has landed.

Emu class this product as a ‘Desktop Sampling System’. To me, that is the understatement of the year. This product goes way beyond being 'just a sampling software’, and what it offers is a thorough and thought out product that encompasses a world of features more akin to a studio built for sampling and sound design. It is packed with hidden delights that make you want to use the software. For those into serious sound design, this product delivers features that, not only makes the designers goals easier to attain, but offers huge flexibility and an array of tools that make other software and hardware samplers pale in comparison.

You might be thinking, at this point, that this is just an E4 Ultra sampler, melded with a Proteus 2500. You would be wrong. Soon, you will find out why.

Let us begin.

The Emulator X (EX) can be used as a vst instrument or completely stand alone. It comes with a converter that can be used to convert a whole range of sample formats to then be used in the EX.

It offers:

1. Up to 24 bit/192 kHz sampling and playback. But not sampling at 192 kHz, obviously.

2. The much desired, and accommodated, 32 bit floating point internal processing.

3. Drag and drop preset, voice and sample.

4. Sample streaming from hard disk.

5. Phase locked stereo signal path.

6. Ultra High Precision Pitch Interpolation (user defined)

7. Real-time controllers.

8. 54 different filter types, including, multi-pole resonant filters, phasers, flangers, vocal filters and multi-parameter morphing filters.

9. Voice and sample zones allow crossfading by, position, velocity or real-time controller and up to 128 layers deep.

10. Three multi-stage envelopes, two lag processors and two multi-wave LFO’s per voice.

11. A complete collection of sample-based DSP functions including time compression/expansion, equalization and sample rate conversion.

12. Multiple solo modes and assignment groups let you simulate the playing response of physical instruments and classic synthesizers.

13. Up to 36 patchcords per voice allow you to get as complex as you want when building instruments. Arithmetic modifiers in the patchcord section allow you to construct complex synthesis models.

It houses a plethora of editing tools and DSP functions, a synth engine and ‘those’ filters. It also comes with a 2 gigabyte library, spread across 4 cd roms. Enough sounds to keep you busy for months.

But before we get deep into the EX, let me iron out some problems or, rather more accurately, little niggles that need addressing.

As with all new software, there is a teething process that the product has to go through, and in the case of the EX, it is more to do with the manual and it’s lack of defining certain procedures or explaining some rudimentary features that are just mentioned and not resolved. There are a couple of other little niggles, but we will cover these as we go through this review.

1. On installation, which is a breeze, you will have to copy across the manual and rename it as Emulator X.PDF. I am sure Emu will address this oversight in a future revision. Make sure to do this as the help section, on the toolbar at the top of the EX, needs to have this housed for you to have access to the manual.
2. There is a rumour floating around the internet that the EX cannot save file names beyond 64 characters. This is not true. This is a problem with Windows XP and has nothing to do with the EX.
3. REX, Recycle’s native format, is not yet supported as a file format, but will be in a future revision. However, I have found an easy workaround this obstacle and will show you how to use your REX files in the EX. However, there exists a comprehensive range of formats that are supported.
4. The manual does not explain how to load non-native sound banks. I have had many emails on this particular problem. The idea of not being able to load your Eos cd roms has scared some people into thinking that all their Emu cd roms are now defunct. This is not the case. The loading of these cd roms is easy and the data transfer is seamless, it’s just not explained in the manual. I will come to this soon, so hang in there.

Setting your audio preferences

From the Emu manual-edited

Streaming

When you load an Emulator X bank, you are not actually loading the sample files into your computer’s RAM, only the preset information and the first few seconds of the sample are loaded. The rest of the sample data is taken directly from the hard disk when needed.

This streaming technique makes fast loading times possible even when using huge banks that would clog a RAM-based sampler. Multi-layer, minute-long, stereo samples on each key are no problem for Emulator X. Sample streaming is not new.

You have the option to enable or disable streaming audio. If streaming is turned off, the

Emulator loads (or attempts to load) the entire bank into your computer’s RAM.

Pre-roll

This important control allows you to set how many seconds of each sample should be loaded into RAM when the bank is loaded. This setting greatly influences the performance of Emulator X when streaming is on. The setting you choose depends on: the number of samples you want to use and the amount of RAM in you want to dedicate to Emulator X.

The smaller the pre-roll, the more disk access will be required for sustained sounds.

Frequent disk access can overtax your computer system, depending on its speed and the number of other disk dependent applications you have running. Large pre-roll times will improve polyphony and performance at the expense of system RAM and slower bank loading. If you set the pre-roll high enough, the entire bank will be loaded into

RAM and no disk streaming will occur.

Sample Buffers

This control allocates the amount of RAM that will be set aside for Emulator X. In other words, the number of the largest complete samples in the bank that can be kept in the

RAM cache. As samples are played, they are loaded from the hard disk into RAM. If you play those samples again, they don’t have to be reloaded if they are already in RAM. This control sets the size of the RAM cache that will be kept and lowers disk access at the expense of the RAM.

Type

You have a choice to use either Direct Sound or ASIO audio drivers. If you have another high quality sound card installed in your system, it will be shown in this field. ASIO (Audio Stream Input/Output) is a cross-platform, multi-channel audio transfer protocol. ASIO is fast and supports 16-bit and 24-bit data width. To use Emulator X with the E-MU Digital Audio System, select the E-MU ASIO driver. Selecting Direct Sound uses the audio output device specified in the control panel of your computer. In general using Direct Sound is not recommended because of speed and latency issues.

Buffer Size

This control sets the number of sample periods between updates of the synthesizer parameters. The buffer size can adjusted according to speed of your computer’s CPU. A faster CPU can handle a lower buffer size. The default setting is 128 sample periods, a good compromise of performance to CPU usage.

Use Optimal Buffer Size

When this box is checked, the Emulator X will choose the best buffer size based on the

ASIO Buffer Latency setting (located in the ASIO control panel). You should normally leave this feature enabled for best audio performance. In certain rare cases you may want to manually set the buffer length to improve MIDI or synth performance.

Sample Rate

This control sets the output sample rate of the Emulator X, and will always match sample rate of your sound card. The default setting is 44.1 kHz.

CPU Cap

This control sets percentage of CPU resources that will be used by Emulator X and consequently the maximum number of samples that can be played at the same time.

Depending on the design of the preset, a single Emulator X voice may contain multiple samples which play simultaneously. The maximum setting is 80% CPU usage. If you hear notes being “stolen” in your sequence or as you play the keyboard, or if the disk meter readout at the bottom of the window goes into the red, increase the value of this control. If you have other applications running, you may want to reduce the setting of this control to free up more CPU for them.

Headroom/Boost

Headroom is the amount of dynamic range remaining before clipping occurs. The headroom can be a bit confusing because the higher the number, the lower the volume.

The amount of headroom is adjustable from 12 dB to -30 dB in 1 dB increments. A headroom setting of -15dB provides the hottest output level, (and the highest signal to noise ratio) but may produce “clipping” if too many notes are played at once. The default headroom setting is -15 dB, which maintains an excellent signal to noise ratio while keeping a reasonable amount of headroom in reserve. If you hear the signal clipping or breaking up, increase the amount of headroom. In practice, you can think of this control as adjusting the control range of the Master Volume control.

Ultra-High Precision Interpolation Button

This button allows you to select between E-MU’s ultra-high precision pitch shifting algorithm, or a lower quality pitch shifting scheme which uses fewer CPU resources.

If you are using presets with a sample placed on every key, as is the case on many banks, you can switch high precision off to free up CPU with no penalty in audio quality. No pitch shifting is occurring anyway. High quality pitch shifting is only needed when you are playing presets which have a few samples mapped across the entire keyboard. In this case, the Emulator X shifts the pitch of the available samples to fill in the keyboard.

ASIO Control Panel

This button brings up the E-MU ASIO control panel which allows you to set the ASIO buffer latency in milliseconds. This important setting determines how fast notes will sound after you play them. If this time is too long, (<10mS) the keyboard response will feel slow and sluggish. If set too fast, however, you will hear the sound break up and crackle when you play too many notes. Try experimenting to find the setting that gives the best performance out of your computer.

MIDI 

This group of preferences allow you to set up the MIDI inputs, adjust the master MIDI volume and velocity curves and turn the “IntelliEdit” feature on or off.

This page allows you to assign, the midi channels, switch on or off the program receive changes from an external source, to set the midi response and to select from a list of 24 defined velocity curves (to suit your playing technique), to adjust the volume curve and sensitivity for controller #7 (volume midi cc value).

Controllers we will come to later. Other simply selects the last bank on start up and allows for clearing the clip indicators after 10 seconds.

The multisetup page

As you can see from the image above, you have the ‘tree’ on the left hand side, which shows the bank loaded, the presets within that bank, the samples and the multisetups. The right hand pane (main page) shows all the info from whatever you select on the left hand side, the tree. You have the toolbar across the top and right at the bottom you have the status bar, which shows you size, CPU usage, midi channel selected etc.

The main body of the pane shows you all the 32 midi channels, what preset is on which channel, volume, pan, output (in this case the 1820M) and auxiliary selection (which defaults to reverb, delay and distortion, but can be changed at any time to any other dynamics and effects on any of the three auxiliaries provided).

Below the body of the pane, you have the midi controller data, filter overdrive (which can be applied globally and selected from a drop down menu, see image Filter Overdrive), the aux selections, tempo, tune, transpose, master faders with a built in limiter and the piano roll. As you can see, from the image below, the choice of filters is immense.

Filter Overdrive

The multisetup pane (main page) allows you to select any preset and place it on the desired midi channels on the main pane. You can also load banks with pre determined midi channel assigns and it will show on the main pane. By double clicking on any of the presets, you will open up the voice page. We will come to that in a minute. First let us deal with the tree.

The tree shows the Emu hierarchy of banks, presets, samples and multisetups. Like operating in Windows, the same open and close tools are evident with a plus and minus sign. If you open a folder, like the example above where I have opened the preset folder, you will see all the contents of that folder, in this case all the presets in the presets folder.

The hierarchy is very simple. You have samples that are housed in a voice, so a voice is a collection of all the samples with all their relevant data and all the DSPs offered in the synth engine. A preset houses and maps one or more voices across the keyboard and includes all relevant data pertaining to layers, crossfades, pan volume etc and including the synth engine. The multisetup is the data incorporating the mapping of the presets across the 32 midi channels. The bank houses all the presets.

Looking at the tree, you can see how this all works and by opening any of the main folders, you can have access to any of the tree components. By selecting any of the components, you will open up their relevant panes. The other way of accessing the different panes is to double click. So, if you double click on a preset, it will open up the voice pane (voice pane image).

But first let me explain how you can load banks and presets. You can use the file menu option and load existing EX banks (extension .exb) or use the system icon on the bottom of the tree. Remember when I mentioned earlier about loading Eos banks off a cd rom?

Well, this is how you do it.

By clicking on the system icon, I have opened the system tree, much like you do in Windows when you select my computer. There I have selected desktop and sub menu CD-RW Drive (Y:). This is where my Eos cd rom is loaded. I have then selected a folder, a bank, and then the preset. I now right click the mouse over the preset I want to load and then I select ‘merge’ from the menu that opens. This loads the preset into the EX. You could even do this with just the bank and use the merge by right clicking the bank and that will load the whole bank for you. Simple, isn’t it?

By using the ‘update library’ (update library image) function I can load all my banks into a location for easy access later and by using the library icon, at the bottom of the tree next to system icon. I can then locate and load any bank I want.

Finally, you are left with ‘import sample’, whereby you can import a sample and place it into a preset or voice, and ‘acquire sample’, whereby you can record or load a sample (acquire sample image).

Update Library

Here, I am updating the library, with all my banks, to my D: drive.

Acquire Sample

Here I can select the record source, apply chops/gate, load etc. I also get a nice graphical display thrown in. In fact, I get the graphical display on many of the functions on the EX. I have graphical displays on the Filter, Voice and Lfo. I even have control over the graphical display, both in terms of ADSR knobs, and in terms of having nodes on the display that I can move around. You will see this when we come to the voice section.

Preset Global pane

This is the main preset global pane. Here, you can see the transpose, volume, modulators, patchcords and a selection of tuning scales, chosen from a drop down menu. And you also have the midi controllers section. The midi controller data is something that you can define by using existing templates or create your own. This is one very handy tool. The ability to have the controllers, right there, in front of you, means that, by a turn of a knob, you can alter the parameters of any controller. Once a knob is selected and moved, it highlights itself, as you can see from the image above. In this instance I have altered the decay and sustain of the bass preset. You can define the controllers by using the menu, preferences, controllers (controller preferences image), and assign your own controller source and destinations, or you can assign controller source and destinations from the patch cords settings (we will come to that soon). These controllers can also be defined by source and destination through the patchcords page (patchcord image) in the voice section of the EX (voice edit pane).

Controller preference

These set the initial value of MIDI controllers A-P for the preset, as we talked about earlier. As soon as a MIDI controller is moved, it jumps immediately from this initial setting to the new setting of the control. On the right, you have the standard default controller values. However, these can be altered to suit your needs.

Controllers A-P can be adjusted via MIDI or by turning the controller knob in the preset pane. These controllers can also be set by using the source and destination parameters in the voice edit pane.

Voice pane

This is the main voice pane, accessed by opening the preset (in the tree on the left) and selecting voices and zones. By using the toolbar on the top, you have access to all the sub menu panes. On opening, it default to mix tune and you are presented with the voices and their relevant parameters like volume, pan, group, transpose, coarse and fine tune. By clicking on any of the fields on the top toolbar, you get access to the key window, velocity window, where you can set crossfades etc and key return. On the right and at the top in the same row you get access to all the continuous controller windows. Here you can assign crossfades, cross switches etc.

By selecting the key window and using the icon next to the voice, I can open up the samples window whereby I can either see all the samples within that particular voice, or I can select a sample to place there (sample select image). From here you can copy and paste, drag and drop, samples voices, groups, layers, ranges, just about anything to anywhere you want. You can create crossfades, cross switches, ranges, layers etc. Nothing is more than a couple of clicks away. In fact, this is true for the whole of the EX. Simplicity in design, simplicity in operation. This is far away from any of the features afforded by the hardware samplers, or most soft samplers in today’s marketplace.

Eddie Bazil (Zukan)

www.samplecraze.com