BEST SAMPLER and WHY??

[rawdigits]

Originally Posted by DivineChemical

E-Mu Samplers as a whole are the ****ing shit.

WORD

[teknosmoker]

Originally Posted by DivineChemical

E-Mu Samplers as a whole are the ****ing shit.

Yes they are. Love em! If there were only a stable/effcient way to transfer samples between them and a Mac Pro though.... I have not used my E6400 Ultra since my G5 exploded and I had to upgrade to a Mac Pro. My old Adaptec 39160 wont fit into a PCIe slot and I'm not going to buy an ATTO SCSI>PCIe card that costs more than my E-MU.

[DivineChemical]

They have USB to SCSI adapters on eBay. That's what I use for sample transfers half the time. The other half, I just sample directly from the computer using S/PDIF.

[teknosmoker]

Originally Posted by DivineChemical

They have USB to SCSI adapters on eBay. That's what I use for sample transfers half the time. The other half, I just sample directly from the computer using S/PDIF.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Are you using a USB to SCSI adapter successfully on a Mac running Tiger (or more specifically, an Intel-based Mac)? If so, what specific brand and model of adapter you are using and what software are you using to do the SMIDI transfers?

Transferring a large bank of sounds (drumkits, full sampled keyboards, etc.) back & forth between my computer and my E-MU using S/PDIF isn't terribly efficient. Also, the digital I/O's of my audio interface are all in use by my outboard effects units and climbing behind the rack to swap cables every time I want to move something to or from the sampler kinda' kills my workflow.



-T

[DivineChemical]

Originally Posted by teknosmoker

Thanks for the suggestions.

Are you using a USB to SCSI adapter successfully on a Mac running Tiger (or more specifically, an Intel-based Mac)? If so, what specific brand and model of adapter you are using and what software are you using to do the SMIDI transfers?

Transferring a large bank of sounds (drumkits, full sampled keyboards, etc.) back & forth between my computer and my E-MU using S/PDIF isn't terribly efficient. Also, the digital I/O's of my audio interface are all in use by my outboard effects units and climbing behind the rack to swap cables every time I want to move something to or from the sampler kinda' kills my workflow.


-T

I'm using mine on PC, but there are drivers for Mac usage. It's a Microtech adapter I picked up off of eBay for $30. The end on it is DB-50, so I had to invest in $30 worth of adapters and cables to get the Centronics plug that E-Mu's require. (When did SCSI adapters get so expensive is all I want to know?) I'm using Awave for SMDI transfer, but apparently Chicken Systems is available for Mac if you want to use that. I'm a bit hard-up for cash, so I can sell you my USB-SCSI setup if you want. $30 sound fair? (In all actuality, I do use S/PDIF more often since I alter the samples on computer before transferring them over to the sampler. I have the E-Mu setup to auto-assign my samples so I can just fire off a whole drum bank in about three minutes this way and have it fully setup.)


On a side note, there are S/PDIF patchbays out there.

[lord toranaga]

I have tried on my g4 ppc successfully

however on my intel mac it does not work.

I think teknosmoker and I have been over this in the past.

[DivineChemical]

Okay, nevermind then.

[teknosmoker]

Thanks for trying to help out DivineChemical, but as lord toranaga stated, not much joy trying to get the USB>SCSI thing working on Intel Macs. He and I indeed chatted together about the situation on a sampler forum (emusonacid.co.uk I believe).

If i recall correctly, lord toranaga, you've got an old G4 tower with a few SCSI cards in it acting as a "sample server" for several hardware samplers. Hope things are going well with you.

I was just hoping that someone had finally found a way to get SMIDI running without an ATTO card on the current crop of Mac Pros.

Oh well...




-T

[disturb]

Anyone care to enlighten me on the differences between the roland s750/60/70 ?
can't find much about this...

[dlmorley]

Originally Posted by disturb

Anyone care to enlighten me on the differences between the roland s750/60/70 ?
can't find much about this...

Here is what I think I know!
The 750 and 770 are basically the same. The 770 has a digital interface, balanced main outs on XLR and an internal hard drive.
RAM is 18 mb max on the S-750 and 16 mb max on the S-770 (because the 750 has 2mb ram built in whereas the 770 doesn't).
When buying an S-750 CHECK it has extra Ram. The RAM is cheap as chips, BUT you need an expansion board to move from 2MB up. If it doesn't have the board, I have no clue if you could find one anywhere.
They have BRILLIANT converters and are IMHO some of the best sounding samplers ever built. A trio I would call top rate are the Emulator III (not the later IIIx/E4/E64/6400 etc series I'm afraid), Fairlight III and S-750/770. I have worked on many samplers and these three are the daddies. I still have the S-750 and SP700 and my Series III fairlight. Alas, I no longer have an EIII but would love one. I do have an EII+ which is great, but the EIII is king of the EMUs The Roland having the big advantage amongst those 3 of being the most reliable and cheapest!
The S-760 can have 32mb ram and is a very nice sampler, but to my ears sounds different to the S-750. No idea why. Maybe different converters or whatever. It still sounds VERY good btw. I think for strings and such like, it's excellent, but the low end on the S-750/770 is deeper and more powerful. The S-760 can read Akai S-1000 disks via SCSI btw

There is a Turbo version of the S-750 (mine was upgraded by Roland) which gives it a faster processor I think for midi data and processing. In any case, the S-750 has about the best midi timing of any sampler.

The SP700 is a playback version of the S-750/770 but has 32 meg ram, 4 stereo outputs (the 750 has 2 stereo and 6 mono) and can read Akai but has no Mouse control or RGB output. Sounds like the S-750/770. Great as an S-750 expander.

[aeonlux]

Roland S-Series (and JD-Series synth) filters are just amazing to me when it comes to strings/pads/atmospheres for electronic music production. Pair one of these with Roland SDX-330 and it is pure cream.

The E-mu E4 is worthy to be sure - I own two of their synths based on EOS architecture - but in terms of pure sound quality it doesn't compare well alongside the Roland.

I use a fully-blown Roland S-760, Yamaha A5000, and Elektron MachineDrum SPS-1UW for sampling. Love those Yamaha filters!


cheers,
Ian

[rawdigits]

I transfer large amounts of samples with a cd.
I have an external SCSI CD Rom Drive with my E4XT. I use chickensys to burn a readable cd.

If you have large amounts of samples this is a good method.


Didn't do much over SMDI except with transferring recycled loops.


I think for sending large amounts of samples over SMDI there is only dsp quattro for OS9 users..


anyone..?




@ dlmorley

What do you think about the midi timing in the E4XT Ultra? Is it really true that the S-750 has better midi timing?

Spill the beans..



Greets

[DivineChemical]

@aeonlux: I love your avatar.

[dlmorley]

YES! I much prefer the Timing on Roland compared to Emu.
Try this.
Program a 16th note hi hat pattern and route it to 1 out. Then listen to that while playing some rhythmic chords with say 6 notes on another out that is muted. Add more notes if need be! On the early E64 it used to make the hi hat shuffle. Same on the Emax II (I bought one new and took it to EMU in holland as he said it might be a fault. We compared with another unit. same thing)

Of course MIDI does this to a certain extent anyway and this may or may not be critical depending on how you use it AND I haven't used ALL the emu range. I seem to recall them making an Ultra upgrade that improved midi timing. BUT it did bug me.

Someone mentioned the Yamaha A5000. Yes. Very good high quality samplers. Nice FX and decent features. Very cool. Slow hard disk access though...I must fit a zip drive to mine as it can replace the floppy.

[roginator]

yep I had same problem with old E64....so I upgraded sampler to E4xt with os 4.62....
problem is gone...and I dont have timming isues anymore..

my advice since I had a lot ( eos samplers ) AVOID : E-64, E-IV and E6400..that earlier models have small timming problem!!!!


stick to E4x model if you can...no timing problem and sounds better than latter ULTRA MODELS...I dont like sound of latter converters ( BUT thats me)....

[roginator]

BTW I work on G4 Dual 1,42 and have olds SCSI adaptec 2490 UW wich I was using on old mac on 9.2.2( from time to time I want to go back to that system again)
that card dont work on OSx??? why

anybody using that card with osx????

[rawdigits]

thank dl morley


i have a maxxed out e4xt ultra.. i thought the ultras didn't have this problem anymore..

i am runnin my emu in multimode with different drum presets for beatmaking..

every preset uses a different midi channel..though i think i can't make like 15-20 presets without timing beeing audible sloppy..

have to check this if I have time for that.. i have a unitor 8 hooked up to a serial port..midi timing is very important for me..don't want my emu to be sloppy..


by the way..have a nice string juno patch to share..will write it down in the other thread if i find time..




Greets

[lord toranaga]

Originally Posted by roginator

BTW I work on G4 Dual 1,42 and have olds SCSI adaptec 2490 UW wich I was using on old mac on 9.2.2( from time to time I want to go back to that system again)
that card dont work on OSx??? why

anybody using that card with osx????

I am using the 2930 cu with osx

[teknosmoker]

Originally Posted by roginator

BTW I work on G4 Dual 1,42 and have olds SCSI adaptec 2490 UW wich I was using on old mac on 9.2.2( from time to time I want to go back to that system again)
that card dont work on OSx??? why

anybody using that card with osx????

I used an Adaptec 39160 to successfully to transfers with both a G4 Quicksilver dual 800 and a G5 (Early 2005) dual 2.0. Bias Peak was the software I used for the SMIDI transfers.

[teknosmoker]

Originally Posted by rawdigits

I transfer large amounts of samples with a cd.
I have an external SCSI CD Rom Drive with my E4XT. I use chickensys to burn a readable cd.

If you have large amounts of samples this is a good method.

I've thought about using Chickensys Translator to do similar transfers. I don't like the idea of burning a CD every time I want to do a bank transfer though. How do you get the samples from the E-MU back into the computer, if needed? For example if you wanted to use your Mac to batch process a sample set that you've created inside the E-MU.

I guess you could use 2 Iomega Zip drives and Chickensys. A SCSI Zip drive for the E-MU (I have a couple of them) and a USB Zip drive to use with the Mac. I need to confirm that the USB Zip drives will work with Intel-based Macs though...

A cost-effective SCSI PCIe card would make this soooo much easier.

-T

[lord toranaga]

i Am waiting for a UB version of DSP quattro.


I have a secret hope that the usb->scsi adapter will work with a proper UB version of my transfer software.


also there is a ful mac version of translator in the works
, I received an email from chickensys.

the new mac version will have the same functionality of the previous pc versions

[joshelevator]

Originally Posted by amenbrother

Emu e64 - nice snare sound. Softens the highs compared to the ultra. This is a really nice machine with eos 4.2. Affordable to the max, oldskool sound, but with modern editing. Really nice.

Emu e6400 ultra - nice gitty highend
Emu X2 - Clean

Love them all.

Sometimes I think about Akai, Not very much though.

so the e64 has cool sound? a friend of mine has one for sale...i've been looking for an ultra series emu but this sounds interesting too.

[rawdigits]

Originally Posted by teknosmoker

I've thought about using Chickensys Translator to do similar transfers. I don't like the idea of burning a CD every time I want to do a bank transfer though. How do you get the samples from the E-MU back into the computer, if needed? For example if you wanted to use your Mac to batch process a sample set that you've created inside the E-MU.

I guess you could use 2 Iomega Zip drives and Chickensys. A SCSI Zip drive for the E-MU (I have a couple of them) and a USB Zip drive to use with the Mac. I need to confirm that the USB Zip drives will work with Intel-based Macs though...

A cost-effective SCSI PCIe card would make this soooo much easier.

-T

Good Question

Well I am fairly new to the Hardare Sampler game and really haven't thought / needed that yet..
I think with chickensys you can load the bank via smdi.. maybe other know better..?



Interesting thread...bring it on!




Greets


Christian

[DivineChemical]

Originally Posted by roginator

my advice since I had a lot ( eos samplers ) AVOID : E-64, E-IV and E6400..that earlier models have small timming problem!!!!

Wow... I didn't know this. Thanks for the warning! (MIDI timing is something I get into fights with people over. lol.) I have an ESI-4000 and I have no MIDI timing issues at all running all sixteen channels hard. I was thinking about upgrading to an E64, but if this is something I have to worry about, then forget it. Anybody know if the ESI-2000 has this MIDI issue by any chance?

[roginator]

I had e64 for a long time

I know good and bad sides..

Good upgrade is to jum prom standard 1mb system ram to 2mb system ram so that way you can use v 4.01 and higher
wich improove midi timing and fix some bugs!!!!!!

also old eos samplers have problematic LCD display backlights!!!!and sometimes display just dies (thats no big problem just change fransistor under Hi voltage trafo for display) its not hard lolocate it but if you dont know about this fixing can be pain!!!! I KNOW

[teknosmoker]

@ lord toranaga

-I just picked up a Castlewood Systems USB>SCSI adapter on eBay tonight. I'm going to try using my old G4 Powerbook to do sample trasfers and network it to my Mac Pro.

What kind of SCSI adapter did you use successfully between the Castlewood USB>SCSI adapter and your E-MU? The E-MU has a 50 pin Centronics plug, I just don't know what kind of SCSI connector the Castlewood adapter has on it.


-T

[lord toranaga]

castlewood has hd50

very common one-bay.


only $5 us + shipping

[teknosmoker]

Thanks for the info. I believe my MPC2000XL uses an hd 50 SCSI connector. If that's the case, I might have an extra appropriate SCSI cable lying around.

-T

[lord toranaga]

you would still need an adapter, because the castlewood is hd50(male)

most likely, just the same as your cable.

i bought a hd50 to centronics adapter for 4.95$ US

[teknosmoker]

S**t - you're right. Where'd you find one for $5?