E-MU'S NEW SAMPLERS: THE MOST POWERFUL EVER?

Unless you've been off vacationing in another galaxy, you know that E-mu Samplers have literally defined "state-of-the-art" since their introduction over a dozen years ago. E-mu's Emulator 3 was the world's first true stereo sampler (other machines used phase-locked mono samples back then - and some still use this process today). Current cutting-edge E-mu samplers are, of course, light years ahead of what was available in the early 1980s. In fact, a fully-loaded 16-bit E-mu Emulator E4X Turbo can be expanded up to 128 megs of sample RAM - more than one thousand times the sample memory the original Emulator One came equipped with!

With this history, you can bet that the latest generation of E-mu samplers are the best in the business at what they do. But the E-mu engineers also recently added some pretty heavy-duty synthesis capabilities, which we'll get to in a few minutes. First, let's take a look at the three rackmount E-mu samplers.

The flagship of the E-mu line is the E4X Turbo ($4895 list). E-mu states quite clearly that the cornerstone of their technology is providing the user with high polyphony - in the case of the E4X Turbo, that's an incredible 128 voices. This is important for two reasons. One is the support that high polyphony provides for layering sound elements. Layering or stacking sounds is a natural, intuitive approach to sound design. As long as there's polyphony to spare, extra layers can be molded into sounds to make them richer and more complex. Another factor is sequencing, which typically places high demands on voice availability. 128 note polyphony means less chance of notes getting stolen in the middle of a complex piece.

Of course, besides plenty of polyphony, the E4X Turbo features E-mu's user friendly interface that makes operation a snap. Automated tasks like looping, normalizing, truncation and sample placement make the entire sampling process easily accessible to almost anyone.

The E4X includes 1000 sample and preset locations and the ability to upgrade to 128 megs of sample RAM (that's 12 minutes of stereo sampling at 44.1kHz). Your off-the-shelf E4X Turbo ships with 16 megs of RAM, plus a one gigabyte hard drive loaded with over 400 megs of killer E-mu sounds. Also take note of the fact that the E4X Turbo (like the other E-mu samplers) will read E-mu, Akai S1000/1100 and Roland S-700 series libraries from CD ROMs. Both the Turbo model and the E4X ship with analog and digital ins and outs.

Exclusive to all E-mu samplers is E-mu's incredible SoundSprint technology which allows you to play any sound set saved on your internal or external SCSI drive instantly without having to wait for the unit to "load it up." It's as if your E-mu sampler were sitting on a huge "virtual ROM bank." To take this a step further, it's like owning a synth with one gig (or more) of onboard ROM! This is particularly important during critical session work when you need to find exactly the right sound without wasting huge amounts of time!

The E4X also continues the long tradition of E-mu's professional-sounding audio quality thanks to 18-bit DACs and internal 24-bit precision which eliminates aliasing and clock noise by maintaining a constant sample rate. The E4X Turbo even comes standard with an 18-bit dual stereo effects processor built right in, allowing you to add reverb, chorus, flange, delay and other effects without any signal degradation. The E-mu designers also topped off their creation with a sophisticated feature called Digital Modular Synthesis (DMS) which allows you to patch control sources to synthesis parameters and combine all this with E-mu's tremendous Z-plane filters, dual LFOs and 32 sample layers.

If you can't quite come up with the bucks for a full E4X Turbo, you'll be glad to know that E-mu's E4X sampler ($3695 list) can be upgraded at any time to full E4X Turbo specifications. In the meantime, you have 64-note polyphony, 4 MB of RAM and a 540 meg hard drive stocked with killer sounds. Hey, that's more than enough power to start making some serious music folks!

Finally, there's the E-mu e-6400 ($2795 list) which is very similar to the E4X, but without the digital ins and outs or the onboard effects processors (which you most likely own anyway).

Space prevents us from giving you any more details about these instruments, but all-in-all, these new E-mu machines are impressive tools that will find their way into thousands of studios - maybe even yours. So call your Sweetwater sales engineer for all the details and, of course, your special pricing on the E-mu sampler that best fits your needs and budget!

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