E-MU Emax SE

Well what can i say its not a emulator by any means but its still an awsome try to be!!!!! its very simular to the emulator2 in that the software and panel grafics are simular in nature, but even though its a 12 bit sampler with real anolouge filters i find the emulator 2 witch plays back samples at only 8bits and only has 17.5 seconds in sample time including sequencing to be much more rich in sound and realizim too, but for only paying 200 bucks canadian the emax 1 grey in colour is still a very nice sampler, if using a good computer sequencer and some nice digital effects i find its even better than an emulator 2 by todays standards.

there is a sequencer built in the emax but its only real time with no click track to keep time and its a 16trk sequencer witch i find odd cause the emax is only an 8 voice polyphonic keyboard so???????? but if you are creative and make some good drum loops than you can use that as a metrodone type beat as long as you loop the sequence after one or two cycle, it at least for me it makes it easy to sequence alot of drum and bass witch sounds like it was made on a more complex sequencer. and if you multie sample lots of sounds in one preset you can make a worthwile sequence and suprize a lot of other emax owners.

the sounds are, well its a sampler, sample somthing than prosses it through the filters and??????????? if your a sound deziner than it should sound fucking good, if your a first time emax owner i guess you need to cheat and download samples, witch ive never done a smpler is a sampler ive herd all kinds of good reviews on emus sample library but ive never liked playing music with pre sampled for me ready to use sounds, i find it takes the whole adventure out of owning a sampling keyboard, dont you?

yes the emax is in great health for a 21 year old sampler, its the disk drives that will kill your emax, but only put your emax in a teperary coma, just take out your drive take it to some old school computer parts store or dealer and get him to find you about 3 other drives that run on ds dd and read in 0 not 1. dont listen to other people its a lie they want you to order a drive for 300 bucks...i heard you can only use the drive out of a mac classic witch by the way are really hard to find, i bet you didnt even know that you can use the drives out of any old ensoniq keyboard, (ensoniq sq80. ensoniq eps. ensoniq vfxsd, and more..............

you cant get support from emu so we are all alone emax 1 and 2 users we need to keep finding other cheep ways of keeping the emax 1+2 alive, anyone with any new remadies please speak out, not to mention ordering parts from the us is such a rip off they just want money.and war, fags

hey all keep emaxin on.......

ah! the Emax SE you use this nowadays as a cool retro sounding sampler-
or if your going after a NIN,front242,Depeche mode,skinny puppy or crusty trip hop or drum and bass type of sound -the filter is good for some acid madness-

-this thing has some bite! -but also some nice atmospherics! wow!-same as the emultaor II

best suited these days to a more radical type of musician rather than an uncreative wimp who wants to play "proper" nice consevative music -get outa here you little @#*&!% cheesball!!

This is a sampler that debuted in the mid 80's for about $3500 as an "affordable" sampler compared to the high-end emulator II. It's a 12-bit sampler with 1 megabyte of non-expandable memory. I had also purchased the hard drive option: a 40mb drive for a cool $600 ;) It workes the same as the Emax II. Sampling is fairly easy, other than the fact that there is no thru for the audio signal. The manual is excellently written in a way that one can actually enjoy reading it.

Here's the deal: As a sampler, it's old. BUT as a synth, it is excellent.
The original emax (grey in color) uses analog filters to process the samples. This causes amazing hybrid sounds that could fool one into thing=king that they were made on an analog synth. Back when memory was expensive, samplers were used more as synthesizers. One would sample a short, 1 second long tone, loop it, and process it like he/she would on a regular synth. In a nutshell, my emax sticks around as a bass synthesizer. The Emax II contained digital filters. While they are good for spacey tones, they just didn't sound as fat as the analogs.
The emax is a multitamboural synth, that can handle up to 16 midi channels. It is velocity sensitive through midi, but not from it's local keyboard. The reason for this is that Emu had to keep costs as low as possible, and by doing that, a lot of corners were cut.
The sequencer is 16 tracks, but it isn't really made for regular sequencing. It's a good scratchpad sequencer, and it was mainly used for data dumping form a dedicated sequencer.

its main feature these days is it's analog filters. other than that, it sounds like a 12-year old 12-bit sampler.

it's a little buggy-- i have used all OS's for it, but it apparently lays in the hardware. I used to gig with it a lot, but i would sweat buckets when i did. I had to time the use of it when i played live just in case i got an error while trying to load a bank. As far as the, construction, it's built pretty solid. It's pretty ugly, too.

Emu is pretty good with tech support. I have called them a lot over the years, and I get the same people. I had one problem with the hard drive a long time ago, and one of the reps was mistaken about the warranty, and I had to haggle a bit to get things straightened out (he said 6 months, the manual said 1 year). But other than that, they are one of the better ones. I mean, you can still call and ask tech questions about the emax. that's pretty good right there.

It's an instrument that I will probably never get rid of. I have owned it since it was new, and I still use it, even with newer samplers. But i basically use it as a traditional synth, or as a backup if my other sampler has a full bank.