Apple computer emulator system

Byline: JASON SCOTT ALEXANDER

If I may be frank from the top, it's been far too long since anyone has seen any new and exciting sampler products from E-mu. With a brand name as revered in the sampling world as Moog is in analog synths, E-mu has been kickin' out bits for well over 30 years. Following the success of the prohibitively expensive Fairlight CMI sampling workstation of the late 1970s, E-mu produced the first affordable compact sampler with the launch of the original Emulator in 1980. As the series grew, the Emulator paved the road for the EII, EIII and EIV as well as offspring products such as the Emax and ESI series of samplers.

For an organization that essentially built and revolutionized the modern sampling era, it was more than a little surprising to witness the once-pioneering hardware company take a hit from the new-breed soft sampler. Products such as Tascam GigaStudio, Steinberg HALion, Native Instruments Kontakt, MOTU MachFive, Apple Logic's EXS24 and Propellerhead Reason's NN-XT have not only proliferated in nearly every commercial and home studio in recent years but also made the hardware-sampler industry start showing its age. What sampling hardware did have going for it at its peak, though, was dedicated processing power and DSP effects, integrated I/O and MIDI/synchronization ports, a purpose-built speed of work flow and an innate sense of reliability. Clearly, bridging these two ideals is what E-mu is banking on with Emulator X Studio.

PARTS DESK

Based upon the EIV, where E-mu left off in the acclaimed series, Emulator X and Emulator X Studio seek to take the company's legacy lineage to the PC in the form of a 24-bit, 192kHz software-streaming sampler with hardware-accelerated DSP effects processing. From a software perspective, Emulator X offers unprecedented ease of operation with automated sampling, pitch detection, preset creation, in-depth synthesis capabilities, waveform editing and hard-disk streaming. Boasting polyphony limited only by your CPU's capabilities, the Emulator X software can run stand-alone or as a VST instrument within your favorite sequencer application on Windows 2000 and XP machines (sorry, no Mac support). By combining a dedicated outboard high-definition audio interface and a comprehensive set of professional sync features, the flagship Emulator X Studio bundle, reviewed here, further extends the integrated nature of software sampling to outside of the computer.

E-mu provides a real gift bag full of goodies when you open the box. Sorting everything out, you will quickly come across the three main components that make up the hardware side of Emulator X Studio's business, collectively referred to as the 1820M kit. The reasoning behind having its own name is that the hardware is also marketed and sold separately as the E-mu 1820M Digital Audio System (DAS), which comprises the E-mu 1010 PCI card, the AudioDock M breakout box and the Sync Daughter card. Providing the dedicated processing brains and DSP hardware-accelerated effects behind Emulator X, the 1010 card is the connective core to the hardware system. Featuring an Ethernet-style RJ-45 port for connecting to the AudioDock M, the card also provides coaxial S/PDIF digital I/O, ADAT optical I/O and an IEEE 1394 port. Although the FireWire 400 port does not support audio at this time, it certainly comes as a welcome bonus for adding external storage devices.

The 1U half-rack-width AudioDock M provides the majority of connections to the system. On the front panel, you'll find two balanced 1/4-inch/XLR Neutrik mic/line combo jacks featuring independent hi-Z preamps with 40dB input-gain controls, -12dB green mini-LED activity indicators, red mini-LED clipping indicators and a common 48V phantom-power switch across both. Also provided are MIDI Input and Output jacks; an additional S/PDIF output; a 1/4-inch headphone jack with volume control; and several LED backlit status indicators for displaying MIDI port, clock source, sample rate and SMPTE settings. Around back of the AudioDock are six balanced 1/4-inch line-level inputs and eight outputs configured as three stereo pairs and one monitor pair. All of the 1/4-inch jacks are gold-contact and software-switchable from -10 dBV or +4 dBu. Showing E-mu's hip-minded roots, the AudioDock thoughtfully sports a pair of RCA phono plugs with ground lugs for sampling from turntable inputs. An additional MIDI Input and Output pair, four ministereo alternate outputs (mirroring the main 1/4-inch jacks and intended for use with powered computer surround speakers configurable to 7.1) and an E-mu Digital Interface (EDI) port for tethering the AudioDock to the 1010 card round out the box's connections. The AudioDock also provides true zero-latency hardware-monitoring facilities.

Incidentally, the M suffix that you keep reading about stands for the systems' mastering-grade high-definition converters. E-mu comes right out in its literature and boasts that the converters found in the 1820M are the same as those in Digidesign's wallet-wilting Pro Tools|HD 192 I/O interface hardware, featuring extremely flat response and a huge 120dBA dynamic range.

Finally, the Sync Daughter card provides comprehensive sync support with word clock I/O using BNC connectors to allow the host PC to lock up to peripheral hardware by providing master clock or synching in slave mode. A special adapter cable is provided that connects the sync card's mini MIDI Time Code jack to standard 5-pin MIDI DIN sockets. Standard 1/4-inch SMPTE I/O jacks complete these facilities. Also included in E-mu's little gift bag of parts are miscellaneous ribbon cables and installation connectors, a headphone splitter, six installation CDs (drivers, applications, four discs of sound libraries) and a "Quick Start" guide.

INSTALLATION

For all the components and parts at hand, installation is surprisingly simple and straightforward - if slightly time-consuming. In accordance with the 1820M "Getting Started" guide, I removed the computer cover, and the 1010 card was the first to find its way into an open PCI slot; then, in went the Sync Daughter card. Even though the sync card doesn't actually use or plug into a PCI connector, its installation eats up a PCI card space, nonetheless. The manual suggests using a PCI slot adjacent to the 1010, but this is not entirely necessary. As long as you have an open card-access panel on the back of your computer, you can mount the sync card there, as the ribbon cable that connects it to the 1010 card is plenty long enough to reach. The cables are keyed so they can't be incorrectly inserted. Nothing to fear here.

The next step is connecting the 1010 card to an available hard-drive power cable from the computer's power-supply unit. Because the AudioDock M uses no dedicated power cable of its own, it receives its juice from the 1010 card itself via the supplied RF-protected RJ-45 umbilical. Should all your power connectors already be in use, the supplied power-converter cable can be used to daisy-chain the 1010 with a disk drive or other device. Pop on the computer cover, connect the AudioDock, and the hardware's ready to rock 'n' roll.

The first time you restart the PC after installing the audio card, Windows asks you to install device drivers for the newly detected hardware. E-mu advises you to cancel this option and, instead, insert the DAS driver and software-installation CD-ROM. For this review, I received the latest 1.60 version of both the DAS driver and the PatchMix DSP utility. Drivers are ASIO 2 for ultra-low-latency monitoring. You also have the choice to install various bundled software titles at this time; these include Steinberg Cubase VST (primarily included to get new Emulator X customers without a VSTi host up and running), Steinberg Wavelab Lite, SFX Machine Lite and Adobe Acrobat Reader. Likely, you'll already have comparable applications on your system, so trimming these from the install list can save you quite a bit of disk space.

Finally, you're ready to install the sampling application. Once again, you have the option to install components, which include the Emulator X Ultra Sampler stand-alone application, the Emulator X VSTi plug-in, the X Converter sample-conversion utility and the factory sound banks. I got the chance to try out the brand-new version 1.5 of the Emulator X software for this review. Freely downloadable to current Emulator X owners, this version adds integrated software effects at the preset and multisetup level, the ability to audition sounds straight from disk and a new Single View Screen that allows you to quickly search and dial up sounds in seconds.