E-MU Emulator II+

The funny thing about some of the older instruments in the synth and sampler world is that they are actually much easier to use than their modern equivalents. The SP12, the MPC60, the akai S950 and here the Emulator II are all so very easy to use. Of course, it is probably down to the fact that their features are more limited compared to today's gear but even so, the designers often seemed to have thought hard about how to make everything as accesible as possible.

I actually owned an original Emulator after I purchased it for very little from my 6th form college when they were shedding old gear. It had just four voices, no real editing facilities or velocity sensitivity and a miniscule 2 second max sample time. BUT, it was absolutely dead easy to use. No messing around, and I created plenty of personal libraries for it. It looked quite cool, if a little austere, and gave me back problems it weighed so much. I'm pretty sure they must have cannabilised a sherman tank to make it and I reckon it would come off best in a head to head with a Volvo. Whatever, much as I loved it, I realised that there was much better equipment around and ended up buying a (then) recently released Akai S950 and sampled all my Emulator libraries into it.

Shoot forward a couple of years and I saw an Emulator II for sale for around a grand. I went over to test it out and suddenly realised what a massive difference there was between the two instruments. It was velocity sensitive, 17 odd seconds of sample time, a hard drive, 8 outs, a reliable floppy drive ...... it wasn't as advanced as the Akai as a raw sampler but it was very easy to use. All the functions are listed on the front panel menu with their relevant parametrical number and four sliders to help editing. Its kind of like having the manual right in front of you and is very helpful. The LCD is pretty tiny but it helps get the job done and was definitely a step up from the original Emulator, which didn't have one.

OK, to stop drawling on....its very easy to use!.

I've listed some of them above and there have been some great reviews already but I'll just add my thoughts: its worth emphasising that this is a mono sampler, not stereo, and that the hard drive can be a tad noisy!. I customised mine a little a few years back and put in a primitive suspension system after I realised the bulk of the noise was caused by the drive rattling against the chassis. It has a lovely, if limited, filter and LFO as well as a moderate degree of controller modulation flexibility. Nothing like as impressive as modern gear but I'll bet it was a revelation for its time.

The keyboard actually feels quite nice to play (I reset mine and gave it a bit of an overhaul so I'll bet that's needed with un-serviced models).

I had the old 5 1/4" floppy replaced with a 3.5" Teac model. I think this is pretty essential so its worth potential buyers enquiring about such modifications before purchasing.

Well, its easy to say that what you put in you get out, but that's not true. It has a 27khz sample rate at 8 bits so there is a considerable reduction in quality compared to the 44.1/96khz modern gear. But that's not so relevant if you use it like me for percussion and sound fx. It sounds pretty much the same as my SP12 in terms of clarity and the two work well together. I have to say I don't use it much anymore as I prefer the sound of the MPC-60 to the Emulator II and find the former has more presence and compression which makes hits and beats that bit more crunchy and rich. However, I'm sure this is subjective and that there are plenty who'd prefer the Emu.

I've had it serviced twice in ten years so I wouldn't necessarily call it reliable. Actually the services were pretty expensive and its worth factoring in this extra cost if you purchase an un-serviced model, as it will doubtless need it at some point.

Fine - no probs. Good website with helpful info as well.

On account of the fact that I don't really use it much anymore then I'll call it a decent but dated piece of gear. It looks great and is nearly always the instrument people start fiddling with when they come to the studio but I think its an instrument for the collector or curious. I say this yet its worth baring in mind that many quality tracks were created with it back in the 80s so there's no reason why that couldn't still be the case. Just make sure its all working properly!.

There's been a few super helpful (and thorough) reviews already, so I'll make comments brief:

Manual is great. The E-Mu sound library disks sound like when they were created: the 80's.

Editing patches takes a bit of work, but with time it becomes pretty quick and easy.

People have been pretty thorough in describing the features. I find them adequate.

Arthur Green (bottom of the page) said it best, and I want to reiterate it: if you're looking for a general sampling keyboard so you can make midi compositions with realistic sounding instruments, look far elsewhere. But if you want a sampling keyboard with a very unique character and sound, this may be a great board for you. I find the lo-fi nature of this board to be its main selling point, and it's the character of this board that keeps me using it.

Eh, I worry a bit about mine. I'd be afraid to gig with it unless I had a pretty substantial stand (the thing is like 80 pounds!) and a super-duty flight case. Even then, the load time is such that you'd have to have some impressive between-song banter to keep the wolves at bay.

I'm making a dust cover for this synth, because I want to feel like I'm being *somewhat* proactive about keeping this thing in good condition, as I have no idea who'd be able to fix it if it ever craps out on me.

It's taken me some time to get into this machine, partially because I got it concurrent to a Korg MS-20, and in terms of instant accessibility, the Emulator isn't quite the inviting machine when compared to the Korg. One thing that people haven't said much of, and it's a big reason why I purchased (and continue to use) the Emulator is its ability to do drums. Hip hop producers have been salivating over the gritty bit reduction of low-bit sampling drum machines, and the EmulatorII came out at around the same time as E-mu's venorated SP-12 and SP-1200, and has similar sampling architecture. A SP-12 will fetch 500 or more on Ebay, and an SP-1200 will pull upwards of 1000. For a very similar (even a bit more gritty) drum sound, I picked up my Emulator for 350.

Pretty easy to use (I don't have a manual). I was suprised to find that the OS isn't actually on-board. The sliders are very helpful for editing. I inherited quite a large sound library when I bought it among which there are perhaps five or six decent sounds. If flacid drums, weak brass and laughable strings are your thing then fire up this baby. If wet-arse sounds aren't invited to your tea party then don't go near it.

It has a basic midi spec and 8 note poly which was about standard for the time. No built in FX and the sequencer ranks as the worst I've ever used. The LFOs are really very flexible so sound FX are the order of the day.

Does it sound good?. Better to ask "Does it sound bad?" to which the answer must be "does gerbil shit roll?". I don't care what people say about the filters, this thing sounds weedy and lacking in the necessaries. It has such a weak freq range and the 12-bit quality is so lacking by today's standards. Its LFO routing is quite flexible and I do like the keyboard for some reason but the stuff that comes out the 8 monos is abysmal in sound quality and, I find, lacking in character or guts.

I practically had to give it mouth-to-diskdrive to get it into my studio so I think the concept of gigging is a little alien to its universe

N/A

No-one's gonna steal this dinosaur - it weighs a ton and sits next to a load of far lighter, classier gear. I confess that I bought it on a whim. I still remember being 13 and wishing that I could own one. Magazine articles and interviews lauded this thing and it looked, and still does look, inviting with its quirky fascia and sticky-out harddisks. 15 years on, I own one and thank the gods that technology has moved in such leaps and bounds. This machine, by today's standards, is crap and, if you really like to PLAY an instrument (as opposed to step-sequence it) then it really is beyond bloody awful. Its incredibly noisy (rattly internal hard drive) and is only for the visually-stimulated collecter or emulator fanatic. I intend to wait until it draws it's last breath and then sell it to some rich toff by pluging it into my K2500, load up the marcato strings preset and convincing him its the dog's bollocks. #8000 should do the trick.

A very straight forward machine but the patch editor will make things easier . The manual is ok but the best thing to do is just keep working at it . The presets are boring but when you start sampling your own sounds and then editing them , it will get interesting . The latest software version available for it is 3.0 but I'm using 2.34 .

The EMULATOR II is an 8 voice polyphonic sampler with an 8 track sequencer and an arpeggiator . The keyboard action is nice , it's velocity sensetive . The EMULATOR II comes with 512k of sample memory and the II+ model has two independant 512k memories . The EMULATOR II HD has a hard drive that holds 20mb of memory . The hard drives are still available and so are the 5 1/4 inch disk drives , go to www.emulatorarchive.com . The EMULATOR II has MIDI and SMPTE , it can send and receive both . As for accepting new sounds , it's a sampler so the possibilities are endless .

The EMULATOR II is an 8bit sampler but it doesn't sound like an 8bit machine . They used a compression technology , it's 12bit in and then the samples are compressed to 8bit words but if you use the editor the sound is transmitted to the MAC as a 16bit word . It's a great sampler for industrial , ambient , and exsperimental music . The machine is very responsive and still a great sampler . After all , no matter what is available today - it's still an EMULATOR II and nothing can take that away from it . The machine has analogue filters , amplifiers and envelope generators . Combine that with sampled waveforms and you have a machine that is NEVER obsolete .

Very dependable , I work on it myself . I've had to fix some of the molex connectors inside but after 16 years I think that ain't bad . I do gig with it , it looks great on stage .

Customer support is lacking , I don't believe in that ridiculous obsolete mentality of just because it's old - it's got to go . They only made 3000 of these machines so there is no excuse for not keeping it up to date . There are web sites on the EMULATOR II so that shows you that people still use them . I bought an old MAC II ci to run the DIGIDESIGN SOUND DESIGNER Program for it because I want to keep using it . Get the picture yet there E-MU systems .

I want to get a couple more of them , I love the EMULATOR II . I have been playing synthesizers for 17 years , I used to do the analogue thing but I'm over that . I used to buy analogue synths back in the 80s for cheap and now they are way out of hand . I would much rather spend $900.00 for a new KORG MS-2000 than waist it on some old piece of junk that is atleast 20 years old . I have the EMULATOR II , KORG MS-2000 , KAWAI K-3 , POWER MAC 6116 running REBIRTH 338 , I-MAC running VIBRA 9000 , RETRO AS-1 , META SYNTH , TURBO SYNTH , SOUND EDIT 16 V2 , LOGIC AUDIO PLATINUM , BIAS PEAK 2.04 , STELLA 9000 , and GAMA 9000 . I also have an old ACETONE RHYTHM ACE FR-2L , ROLAND RS-09 , HAMMOND AUTO VARI 64 , CASIO SK-1 , CASIO MT-68 , KORG DSS-1 , and a YAMAHA TX-81Z .

Version 3.1:
The EII+ has no real internal presets upon booting the system (as do most earlier samplers), although it does come with some performance disks provided by E-Mu. These are mediocre by in large, and generally not very substantial nowadays as its days as a "general purpose" sampling instrument are basically numbered. But, the OMI CDROM libraries (utilizing the CDS3/CRM3 CDROM system) are considerably better despite being as cliche as the factory disks.

The manual is very well written, although to be honest, the machine is very intuitive to operate. A few features are mentioned in the manual, but not printed on the EII+'s front panel, so if you like concrete information, all modern manuals for operating systems 2.35 and above should have this and are highly recommended. If for no other reason, get it because it clears up any confusion over what might appear to be machine quirks in the first week or two of operation, and it will speed the learning process immensely.

No modern patch editors work with this machine, as it is edited through the RS-422 interface on the rear of the machine. But, one may obtain an old Macintosh exclusively for the use of editing the EII through this interface using a copy of DigiDesign's Sound Designer (not to be confused with the far more modern Sound Designer II).

I rate an "eight" for this category, because it is quite easy to use and intuitive to navigate and work with the machine. Not even back-breaking without the manual, although I still highly recommend it. I will clear certain things up.

As far as features go, we are given a full eight notes of polyphony to work with. While, I find this a tad lean, the machines does remarkably well with what it has unlike a lot of other synthesizers with this approximate amount. No real built-in effects, but you have your standard line of "sampler processing" which includes truncation, looping, splicing, etc. Eight-standard monophonic outputs, which allows separate potential processing per voice, which is unorthodox but way cool.

You have a total of 17.6 seconds of sampling time that can be spread over 60 keyboard regions to work with (recorded at 8-bit mono and 22.7 KHz), and can be layered any which way if polyphony permits. You will find "truncation" and "looping" to be your best friends when you need more memory to work with. Althoough you can store up to 99 voices with up to 99 presets per bank, the practical usage you will find yourself often using is no more than 1-5 presets with maybe 20-30 voices tops. This isn't shabby, and isn't as disadvantageous as it sounds, as E-mu has permitted the EII+ user to make as much use of every key and as many voices and presets as the user could possibly use to allow those extreme cases where a user just might need all 60 keyboard regions to layer a hybrid EII+ and external MIDI drumkit or a regime of effects or allow a lot of small tiny snippets of voices to have a lot of "scratch" memory to work with. So, despite often these maximums may never be reached, I applaud E-Mu's "let's make it work for that .01%, just in case" philosophy at the time.

Consider though, that the standard 512K of memory, which is not as low as it sounds, it is also used for the eight-track sequencer, which also pools from the main bank of memory. The sequencer is a tad on the crude side, but synchronizes to SMPTE frames, MIDI, metronome clicks, or a manual tempo can set (therefore, making it a clock source in itself). Any of these eight tracks can be either mapped to internal EII presets, or external MIDI devices through the MIDI Output, and your sequencer memory depends entirely on how much memory you left after sampling and creating presets (learn to become efficient with memory if you like using the sequencer). The arpeggiator is half decent too.

Keyboard is of high-quality, despite being hardly qualifying for semi-weighted class. It is not aftertouch sensitive, but the velocity dynamics are quite good, and the action is quick and response without being too sluggish or too spring-loaded.

Expansion is minimal, you can throw in an extra floppy drive for your machine (which, are still available), but the hard drive kits and memory doublers (giving you two independent banks of 512K as opposed to one) are no longer available. So, if you consider purchasing one of these, don't skimp on the actual machine if you intend to make excellent use of it.

Note, the various models of the Emulator II.
The "EII":
- Standard one or two floppy drive model
- One bank of memory at 512K
The "EII+":
- One or two floppy drives
- Two banks of uncontigious (independent) memory at 512K
The "EII HD" and "EII+ HD":
- One floppy drive only (other slot used for hard-disk)
- One or two banks of memory at 512K apiece

I own the Emulator II+ ("EII+").

The hard-disk version from what I have heard is noisy, and because how much more useful two floppy drives seem to me, I only recommend the hard disk models ("EII HD" and "EII+ HD") for performance or extensive studio use with pre-made presets. I find when working with creating presets and doing disk formats and disk management, the two floppy drive model is more useful. For calling up a host of sounds at anytime with no fuss, get the hard-disk model. Also, floppy drives just seemed more reliable to me (hence, my decision on this incarnation).

I rate a "nine"

Sounds are curiously good when you work your own presets, often better than you would expect from a sampler of this vintage. Although, at the same time don't expect your usual 8-bit sounds out of this machine, like the first and third Emulator machine, the filters are real analog filters. While, being a big fan of digital (especially, older digital) I could normally care less for analog technology, I find that the analog filters meld very well with the digitally produced waveforms. I think the first three Emulators are perfect showcases why digital and analog can compliment one another as opposed to having one replace the other or start stupid vintage instrument flames about. The sort of sounds you get out of this machine don't sound like a normal analog instrument, but they are punchy and warm if you want them to be. The trick with the first and the second Emulator is to make it do what it does best, because as I said before, you will find it is not really suitable to modern ears as a general purpose sampler. But, as what I'll call a "sampler keyboard" (a synth, which derives its waveforms from sample-based technology), it does very well and still stands on its own as a perfectly viable machine. Because of its flexibility with keyboard regions, voices, and so on, it does make a viable drum machine too amazingly if you handle it well. In some cases, you may find that despite its potential for being a bit on on the lo-fi side, you may actually like the sound a lot for what it is.

I rate an "eight" for this category, because while the sounds tend to be on the lo-fi side, the instrument definitely has a certain quality of character that is difficult to obtain with modern machines. As mentioned before, despite its shortcomings it does a lot with what it has. While, I don't recommend it as an instrument for realism, if you don't mind "synth", it does a great job especially when you play with splicing and looping (a lot of pre-wavestation effects can be made by more (but, not immensely) skilled users). For some, its line in keyboard instruments and drums may be worth it alone.

The machine is quite reliable, in my opinion. I would keep this machine close to home though, as they are known to become more fickle with age. But, you will find that it is largely the storage devices that are a tad sensitive and are to be handled carefully (ie. floppy drives, hard drive, CDROM systems, etc.). Always, and I mean, always ship or move the machine with either a scratch floppy disk or the storage cardboard "dummy" disks" in the drives with the latch down. The drives are still available, but are NOT your typical computer 5.25 DD drives designed for standard computer floppy controllers. These still run $300-500 apiece. You will find to fix a bum hard-disk drive, it may be a similiar expense, so watch if you buy one with any of the above problems (or wish to add a second drive to a single drive model). The LCD screens run about $100 nowadays, so these aren't a big expense to have repaired if it goes or is bum. Keyboards and switch contacts can actually be cleaned yourself, and rarely if ever go south. By in large, this machine is quite sturdy and if handled carefully shouldn't give you any problems.

Note, that the CDS3 CDROM system (actually, an earlier Sony drive) is remarkably fickle in comparison to modern drives, so treat that right and keep the locking screw on at all times when shipping/moving the machine or keeping it in storage. I find even the room temperature (if it is too cold) causes some problems with reliable disk access. Nothing harmful, just a little alien to most of us nowadays.

I rate a "seven" for this category, because while it is a reasonably reliable instrument, instruments of this age should not see the sort of use they did when they were considerably newer. Since, they do become temperamental on well "beaten in" examples, I would recommend people try to keep it "looking spiffy and pretty" if you want this machine to work for yet another ten to fifteen years.

The company obviously hasn't dealt much with this machine since it was released fourteen or so years ago (1984-1986). But, as mentioned, some of the original suppliers can still provide new floppy drives and LCD screens and repair the odd floppy or hard drive if it ever fails, so for the immediate moment, you are in the last era of a "green zone" where repairs are actually still feasible and do-able (not by E-mu of course).

I rate a "four" for this category, because support especially over the last few years is rapidly deteriorating. Costs for "repair" is proportionally expensive, considering age and the parts available. Support is decent, but also deteriorating fast. I recommend both current and potential owners browse 'www.emulatorarchive.com' for care and the full story of this instrument. At the very least, it might actually be interesting.

Overall, I find this a grand instrument to play, and while my criticism may have been a little harsh at times, I love this instrument a lot. I find the eight voice polyphony a little lean, but actually acceptable. I am actually looking into acquiring a second Emulator II+ in addition to this one, so there is little that really bothers me about this instrument. I find the sequencer and the synchronizations options for an instrument this age really neat, despite that it is not as useful as it probably once was. There is no doubt, that I will have this one with me for awhile, as I very pleased with it, and I am most comfortable working with this instrument. The only other instrument that actually rivals this one in terms of my taste for machines of this type, is the Emulator III ("EIII"), which is another fine and absolutely wicked machine from E-mu. I would imagine that is another machine on my "must get" list in the near future as well.

Remarkable machine, even if the the bulk of the $8000 it cost brand new in its day was for the price of the sampling technology which has radically exploded into "affordable" limits (and been WAY surpassed) in the last five years. Check with me concerning second-hand prices, if you are interested.

My current lineup of machines (EII+ excluded) consists of the Kurzweil MIDIBOARD master controller, three Kawai K5000R's, the Kurzweil K150, the Yamaha TX81Z, and a DKI Synergy (which I bought second-hand very recently, and isn't here quite yet).

I invite anyone with questions concerning this machine (or any of my others) to contact me, as I really love to talk about this machine. So, feel free. =)