E-MU Proteus MPS+/Orchestral

Boot-Up Version 1.22
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The MPS+/Orchestral comes loaded with about 300 presets,
with the last ROM bank duplicated in the 100-slot user area.

Some of the patches are great. Preset 008 (Heaven Sake) and I
have used it intensely since I purchased it new in 1995.

I wish, being a Mac user, that there had been a patch editor made
for this keyboard. There was one for Windows called "Polyphony"
but none for the Mac. I'm sure it would have been great because
I find the little two-line screen very cumbersome and annoying to
maneuver through. It is by no means difficult to understand, and when
you have questions the manual answers them.

The manual is well-written. There is a lot of humor injected into it
as well, which makes for an entertaining read. It's weakness is in
technical info. I tried to create an editor myself on the Mac using
a freeware program called MidiControl, back in 1995. I found the
MIDI implementation charts in the back of the manual to be seriously
lacking. I do however acknowledge that it may be my own lack of
knowledge in the field of midi programming that held me back.

Still, the manual is for the MPS, there is no second version for the
MPS+/Orchestral. Much of the MIDI info was for the classic
Proteus Rack Module. But there are some serious differences between
the Proteus/1,2 and 3 and the MPS in setup and design.

---Features 32-voice polyphony
---Performance Maps <excellent for live shows>
---Ability to link up to three other presets to each preset.

I've been using this as my sole keyboard for six years, so here I go:

Each preset consists of up to two samples. The MPS+ has 204 samples
in ROM. Unfortunately there is absolutely no way to ever expand that
amount. The 204 samples it comes with are all you'll ever have in
this board.
.... So you can assign two samples to each preset. Then you can edit
a huge assortment of paramters. You've got delay-to-start for each
sample in the preset, a double+detune option that doubles the voice
cost of the preset but deepens a sample by doubling it and then detuning
it a specific number. You can set any sample to play forwards or
backwards. Transpose, crossfade, assign from two banks of quality effects.

Everything is mappable to internal or external controllers.. There are
two regular LFO's with an auxillary envelope. Every preset can be
assigned it's own unique tuning table, from standard 12-note tunings to
exotic asian 19-tone tunings.

Even greater, you can link up to three presets to any other preset.
So if you've got three links on a preset to links that also use two
samples each, when you hit one key you get eight voices coming out all
doing different stuff! You can make some amazing sounds.

Another great thing you can do is spin the convenient jog-dial whilst
on the link page, while playing, and constantly change the sounds
while you are playing. There are no cut-outs or drops because the
effects settings are not used on the linked presets. It's great!
Don't know if any other keyboards can pull this off.

There is no sequencer. It has a huge array of controller capabilites,
and that's basically what this is designed for.

All the great E-MU samples from the Proteus series and Orchestral model.
Actually not ALL of them but selections from all of them.

The orchestral section is some of the best I think I've heard.
The grand piano sample sounds great to me too, better than anything
I have been able to find save a Kurzweil.

The keys are velocity and pressure sensitive. In the master control
settings, amongst other things, you can set a variety of velocity
curves for the sensitivities of both the aftertouch and velocity.

It is fully implimented with MIDI, but there are some things I've never figured out.
Sadly for me, because I like to spin the jog dial a lot, it does not
send those patch changes over MIDI. It has a neat display in the master
menu where you can watch all the incoming MIDI data.

It let's you set a custom name that it will display in a very flashy
way when you first turn on the unit.

You can turn MIDI and various feature on and off based on individual
channels.

The two effects processors can be mixed together or used completely
separately. The include stereo chorus, stereo delay, cross delay,
a host of reverb-type stuff, ring modulation, fuzz and distortions,
phasers, EQs, and more.

There is a row of keys numbered 0-9 just above the keys. You can
assign these enormous and complex parameter settings to each key.
These are called performance maps. When you press the button, the
entire keyboard changes to all the different settings you have lined up.
Split keyboard, midi signals, volumes, the works with the touch of
one single button. I can't explain how beautiful a feature this is
when you are doing lots of varied stuff live on stage and you just
hit one button.

There is ZERO expandability accept for these Proteus RAM cards.
The batteries die every couple years.. Which was a big disaster
before I had the ability to back them up on a computer. All they
hold are an additional 100 presets. It's nice to have the card
because they fill the card bank, 200-299. If you don't have it in
there that bank just doesn't exist. You can write to them, and there
were about four cards full of presets put out by E-MU.

I personally bought one, volume 2 "texture

You have a pitch wheel with spring-centering and a loose modulation
wheel. Both wheels though can be assigned within a preset to control
any aspect of the sounds LFO, or whatever. Everything on this machine
is very freely assignable.

It has an input for a sustain footswitch and an input for an expression
pedal, which defaults to a volume control but is also completely
assignable. In case I haven't made it clear, the sustain switch pedal
is also completely assignable.

Since the aftertouch/velocity have calibration and settings functions
in the master controls menu, you can set them up in a way that works
for you. It is perfectly adjustable to the user in this regard.

The onboard effects are not vast by today's standards, but are quite
good sounding.

I've always been bitter that with so few samples in this board that
so many of them are whiny useless sounds. Some sounds are so high
pitched they are practically inaudible, even if you drop the pitch
down as far as allowed. I'm not sure what you would ever do with
that stuff?

The organs I find quite ear-piercing and unpleasant.

There are a lot of actualy ROM samples that have different names
but sound exactly the same. Only two flute samples "soft flute" and
"synth flute". Repeated testing and I can't tell the difference at
all between them, and there are lots of sounds on this board like that.

The pianos are very good though, as are the strings.
You are also able to pull, with effects and creative programming, some
pretty neat synth sounds out of this board.

Because of the limited number of samples available to use in presets,
it doesn't take a long time to get jaded to the sound of this board.
It reallly kills the inspiration over the years if it's the only thing
you've got. It's a real shame that there was no expandability, no way
to bring real new sounds into the machine.

It doesn't have much but the things it has that are good are REALLY
good.

I used it as my sole keyboard from 1995 right up until now...
Which is July of 2001.

Unfortunately the right-main output emits a very loud horrible hum
now. I'm not sure what has caused this problem, it came on quite suddenly.
I have as of yet been unable to get it repaired, so I'm getting a new
board in the meantime.

It really is a solid machine. Once while carrying it to the site of
a gig the strap of the gig-bag broke and it crashed onto the concrete.
I thought I was going to die. But... Nothing broke, although it
did slightly dent and crack one corner. Very negligable, it could
have been way worse, but this keyboard is metal and super-reinforced
plastic. It can take a lot of abuse and keep ticking.

It's totally dependable I would say. It has gotten me through years
of daily heavy playing. My playing style is crazy, I'm all over the
keyboard sliding, pounding, banging, speeding away like crazy and
no key has ever gone bad or quit working, or stuck, or anything like
that. They have gotten a bit wobbly and loose over the years.

I've used it without a backup for alll these years.

E-MU's website didn't even list this as one of their past products
for a long time. Now though they have a little page with downloadable
factory presets and some tips and tricks. I think there's even an
on-line version of the manual now as well.

I would give them a 10 on customer support, but recently I had a not
so great experience... But I'll start with the best.

I wrote to them when a couple of keys were broken off of my keyboard
in transportation. (Hey folks, forget those soft cases they are
worthless, spend the dough and get a hard case)

They asked me for my address and I had two new replacement keys in
the space of three days. Totally free, no parts cost, no shipping
fee.

That's amazing and there's little I could do to express how incredibly
greatful I was to them for that. They saved my butt and they did it
without drive for profit.

The bad experience is this.. When the right-output died I called and
asked them for an authorized repair person in my city. They gave me
the name and number. The guy had it fixed in ONE DAY and only charged
$33 for parts and labor. Wow! Too good to be true! Yes, it certainly
was. The problem was back in a day and a half, and the repair will
not return my calls or anything. This is awful! So now I'm having
to buy a whole new keyboard.
The guy also drilled four holes in the back of the board and said I had
screws that had fallen out. There were never any screws there. He
thought he knew more about the keyboard then me, who has loved it like
you wouldn't believe for so many years.

So I'm left with a broken keyboard with ugly big screws drilled into
it.

Unable to rectify the problem with the repair guy, I called E-MU back.
This was two months later.

The guy at the other end tells me that there is no authorized repair
person is my state. When I tell him my story of what had happened,
and that I had taken it to the guy in the first place they said that
wasn't possible because there is no service center there and "we would
never have told you that".

Insanity!

So in order to fix it, and it MUST be fixed as I have just released
an album I am doing shows to support. The keyboarding on the album
is all done exclusively with THIS KEYBOARD and I cannot duplicate
some of tricks like the link-shifting and specific effects setups.

But now I'm gonna have to pay tons of shipping and $100/hr service
fee for E-MU, and it's going to be gone for a couple of months, unless
I send an extra $50 which will cause them to fix it in half the time.

Also when I write e-mails to support it sometimes takes weeks to get
a response.