E-MU Proteus X

Quirks, but works

Missed opprotunity for EMU.
Now it's just one of billion products, EMU si not interesting for me anymore.
Hardware 2500 sounds even less hi-fi, but that's what could be interesting.

Uninspiring and boring.
When I need some classic E-MU sound I use Proteus 2500 hardware (as it's lower fidelity at the end).
When I need really 24 bit quality there are mant way better offers on the market.

LATEST V1.8 SOFTWARE.... the presets are ok unlike some of you other users who really rated them I was not excited by them., a few good sounds in a dull array. editing is possible< that says everything the patch editor I have not yet tested... the manual sucks., The bloke who wrote it wants to get a job emptying trash cans.

the built in Fx are very average the reverbs are not a good rendition of reverb with too few reflections and sounds clangy. The polyphony is a joke Im running a very smoky fast pc and it falls over in Logic yet without Proteus i can get 200 audio channels!! the expansion facilities are fine,the midi facs are ok but one hell of a job to get the whole thing to synch

I would say that some of the instuments are really good but many average in fact I found my old maxi studio isis card more satisfiyin as it worked !!!

this is not a reliable product i have spent over #30 on phone calls to emu loads of updates and still not a happy bunny

the customer support were very freindly and tried to be helpful ...what cahnce have thety go on a naff product???

If it worked properly it would be a good product but not excellent as the user interface and manuals are terrible. i own a vast array of recording equipment and have recorded many film scores this just aint a happening device., mainly because of compatibility problems, I wanted to love this but it aint gonna happen
emu proteus in the rack form was awsome in this card form its awful

Read the manual, as it is not your standard module. Once you've spent some time reading, it's pretty straightforwar. Certain things (like load time when you brwose the library) could be improved, but it's really easy to navigate once you understand the module's architecture.

Fetures rival that of my hardware synths (Motif, Triton, XV-5050), and then some, when you think about the Translator that lets you convert sample library formats (S1000, Gigasampler, etc.) so that they can be used with Proteus X. I love the multisetup storage, which works like a Performance in Roland talk or a Multi in Yamaha language. You can Merge sounds from all your libraries into a single one. You can browse sounds by category, but I suggest you rename them, as E-MU's categories are a bit funny, i.e. "Keyboard 2" or "Keyboard 3" instead of "Organ" or "E Piano". 32 MIDI chanels means you never run out of slots to load your nex Mo'Phat or Planet Earth or even Virtuosu sound, all in the same module.

Some hits, some miss. Don't rely on how much they capture you or fail to do so. Give them a try in a full mix. They shine. And the sheer variety of sounds makes it a definitive go-to tool box for that special, slightly odd acoustic or synth sound. It ships with the Proteus 2000 sound bank and you can add the software versions of the Planet Earth bank, the Mo'Phatt, etc.

Well, I had to be patient and learn how well it plays with the other hardware installed on my PC. Be nice to it, and it'll play nice. When it lodas, it doesn't crash. Stick to the software version included with the product. The updates did me more harm than good.

They're ok. I got to speak with a live person in not too long. They were helpful and knew everything about the product.

A strong part of my setup. Glad I took the time to make it work with my DAW.

Version 1.71 Current as at 1/7/05.

Presets vary. The Studio Grand is not too bad but not up to roland/yamaha. Drums and bass are phenomenal. I love the hip hop producer bank. The drums I have to say again are great.

Using it was easy for me as Creamware uses a VERY similar philosphy in how a virtual mixer/hardware routes everything.

I haven't ventured into editing as yet. I have a Roland Fantom XR Version 2, Yamaha PSR3000, Creamware PowerSampler with SFP 4.0 and STS3000 along with MANY plug ins. I haven't had enough time to just check all the presets yet (let alone the manuals).

Manual looks ok and the pdf version is clear when you use full screen. I hate with ROland how when you check their pdf manual in full screen the writing is so small.

Most I have achieved out of it so far is about 80 notes but my system doesn't handle that too well. About 40-50 stabley.

The effects are many but haven't heard enough to be happy with them.

Expansion options are awesome. New sounds, Sync card. This is a great unit for the price.

Standard midi features.

Drums Fantastic! (Have I said that already)
Bass awesome as well.

The studio grand isn't bad at all. It is a 615mb sample set of just pianos.

Hip hop producer set is great as well.

Hip hop, dance, pop all suited. Probably others as well. It is a versatile card and although there are some crap sounds in there, you can get a freat sound out of it.

So far so good. Like anything though when you first set it up there are teething problems. Otherwise it seems stable enough for gig use although I NEVER use software based products at a gig, only my PSR3000.

No idea and wont find out. I normally fix things myself or research it/ I can't stress to the many people who have problem that reading a manual from start to finish can do wonders.

I would buy it again if it was stolen I mean come on, it is SO CHEAP!!!!

Worth every cent. The proteus 2000 module was $2000 when it was on the market. The ability to add MoPhatt to it for just $49 US ludicrous!

Loce everything except the amount it taxes the CPU. My pulsar sampler utilises the sound card DSP chip for polyphony to save the CPU and to be honest I thought this card would be the same but it isn't. It only uses DSP chips for mixing and effects, which still is fantastic compared to almost EVERY SINGLE OTHER CARD on the market, it could have had more DSP power for polyphony as well. I also have a Korg Oasys PCI card and I have to say still the polyphony on the Proteus leaves the Korg for dead.

It is a great start for more hip hop / pop orientated music with it's great drums, bass and loops.

Stick with it. It is a phenominal card for the money. I had a M Audio 24/96 and it was simply a sound card. This is a module in a card. It plays AKAI sample cds as well as many others and all this for under $150US. WHy not. I am sure EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU (me included) has wasted more then that on a big night out! hehehe

I'd like to make a correction on my review of this product (I was the first guy who reviewed the Proteus X). After fiddling around with the software for what's felt like ages, I finally decided to take off the sample streaming function and load all my sounds directly into my RAM (I loaded the entire P2K soundset into my computer's RAM). With Cakewalk opened, I noticed that I wasn't getting those skips and in the music during playback. It turned out that it wasn't MIDI latency, the Proteus was just a killer on my hard disk (it's interesting to note that it only seemed to skip when I used drums when I enabled sample streaming before). After loading the sounds into my computer's RAM, the Proteus ran like a dream! I was able to use 6 instruments (drumkit, stereo grand, OBXSaws, DX organ, sound effect, Juno bass) and my CPU meter only hit 50%. So my advice to anyone who has 1 gig or more of RAM is to build your own banks of all the sounds you want to use for that particular track and load them into your RAM and jam away. For things like the Studio Grand, enable sample streaming and record only with that one patch so you don't get skipping and bounce that track to audio, then go from there.

As for the effects, well... I didn't know how to use them. The effects are actually very good - if you know how to use them. I don't, but I've heard people who do and they get some very satisfying results.

So this thing wasn't a waste of money afterall. It just took a little creativity to work around its extremely high system requirements. I'm even beginning to love this soundset. With a little programming and when I buy the Virtuoso 2K sample CD, this Proteus will probably be the centerpiece of my home studio.

Driver version and Patchmix versions are the latest available at this time of writing (v1.71 for both).
Presets sounds are those ones found on Proteus 2000: i agree with the guys that wrote reviews earlier: taking them the way they are, they sounds like end 90's presets.
Anyway i found the editing not bad, it's easy to tweak sounds but sometimes, slashing into mid/high values (especially on the filter and amp envelopes, also on cutoff tracking), polyphony really AGONIZES!!! This area should be improved for sure, as the machines we all use are into the recommended machines suggested by E-mu.
Manual is just as fine, a real E-mu"ese" piece of paper, well written with lots of pictures.

Polyphony COULD be high, if E-mu would have been more clear in this aspect of the manual... Let me explain better. I think the best thing do to, despite of what written in the manual, is to use the Sample Streaming function, rather than load ALL the samples into the memory of the computer. I use an Ultra160 SCSI card and a 10.000 rpm SCSI drive and i found it is much more difficult to hit the poluphony's ceiling with this kind of setup. Because of hard drive speed, i can push complex midi arrangements and obtain many polyphony channels with no fuss.
Expansion capabilities are at its best: i use this board in a racked pc (and that kind of setup is the one i play live) and i slap E-mu and Akai formatted CD-ROMs in the board... That way i can obtain very good quality sounds and linking them to obtain big, fat stacked sounds.
BTW, the "PROteus X" application is nothing but an Emulator 4 running on a PC. You can compare both manuals (ProX and E4's EOS) and notice that there isn't a single difference...

The supplied sounds are mixed bag, but all of them sounds old. Sure a good sound can be found now and then but it's WAY MUCH better to slap CD-ROMs from E-mu and Akai libraries... Believe me your Proteus X comes into a new life! As a sample player, the quality varies from the material you just load in and, relatively, the genre of music is influenced from that too...
Onboard FX are quite dull... Some nice chouruses and a terrible-to-near-acceptable reverbs. The boards reacts terrific to what you play, thanks to its incredible matrix modulation capabilities.

Had a couple of hiccups while playing, but it was at an early stage. Now, after trial-and-erroring, i found a quite stable setup.
I STILL have my E4 right in a corner... Always ready to get the place... Just in case ;) .

After Creative's acquisition E-mu had never been the same anymore. Sure the guys are helpful but they reply in a 2 days... Unacceptable.

I guess that if i didn't own an E4, i would buy this board again. I repeat, playing it live is a good use option. The price is fair right too. I love that "EOS" feel... I feel like i'm using my E4 with a bigger display. Indeed this board is a real resources HOG! It can really take your CPU down to the ground!!! My 2 cents: buy a fast SCSI drive and an Ulra2Wide board up: use the disk streaming function and the board will be more reliable.

Since the PoteusX package contains two products: 1. The ProteusX VSTi softsynth instrument set, and 2. The E-MU 0404 Sound card, I will review these products seperately below.

PROTEUSX

Using ProteusX v1.5 (current patches installed as of January 2005). The presets are a joke. Almost all need to be tweaked right away. For the longest I thought I was experiencing signal drop out, later I found it was the default filter applying a drop. Editing patches is rather difficult with this tool simply because the manual doesn't do a good job explaining how each parameter effects tone. If you're experienced with softsynths you'll have less of a problem, but overall I was very unhappy with the learning curve required. The manuals are geared towards an intermediate users (someone who has had past experience with tools such as this) it's not for a beginner.

Regardless of your experience level expect to invest serveral hours with the ProteusX user interface.


E-MU 0404

The E-MU 0404 is a solid 24-bit audio card. There's nothing quite like it in it's price range, at first I wasn't so happy with the ASIO drivers, but after applying the lastest driver update (circa Dec 2004) I can find no flaws in this card. It includes an excellent set of hardware based effects (EQ, Stereo reverb, various delays, vocal morpher, etc...) and an an excellent UI control panel app called PatchMix DSP. Using PatchMix DSP you can visually route effects in and out of the pipeline. It comes with many presets that are outstanding, and you can save your own settings (everything). You can a "getting started guide" printed manual, the real manual is a PDF file on the packaged CD-ROM disc. The manual does a good job explaining PatchMix DSP, but you may have to invest an hour or two playing with it to "Get it".

Overall I'd give the E-MU 0404 card an 8 for "ease of use"
I'd give ProteusX a 4. Combined I give this package a 5

My system specs are as follows:

Dell 2.4 Ghz CPU.
768-MB RAM (2700 DDR)
Windows XP SP2
40 GIG 7200 hard drive.

System is dedicated, no unneeded services running.

This (feature) review applies only to the ProteusX softsynth. The E-MU 0404 card I would rate very high for features.

The polyphony isn't rated on this product (as far as I can tell) I believe it's quite high, one of my biggest complaints is that the polyphony isn't adjustable as is it is on other softsynths I've tried (comparing it to Sonar 4's EDIROL VSC and Cakewalk/Roland TTS-1 softsynths), the advantage of being able to drop the polyphony is that you can dramaticly increase performance. Using ProteusX I could only sequence one track at a time (yes, it's that resource intensive) and I cold only achieve that after rasing the ASIO latency up to 60ms, maxing out the buffer size and stipping out all the samples except for the one I was working with (Studio Grand).

The ProteusX software came with Cubase VST (Lite) and Cubase WaveEditor, neither of which I care for much (I'm more of a Sonar kind of guy). I did give Cubase VST a try just to see if my problems would be reproducable, the performance was the same (bad).

When I could get it to work, the sound quality varied. For Pianos, Basses and Drums I would rate ProteusX as excellent. For Strings, and Guitars, and wood instruments average (at best).

The EMU 0404 card sounds fantastic, playback of 24-bit audio is amazing, sounds as if the recording is live in the room with you.

I would never gig with ProteusX, the software balks under pressure and wants a super computer to run.

The E-MU 0404 card is awsome.

Customer support was available to help and they answered all my e-mails promptly, I felt their techs were a bit arrogant. When I made some suggestions the response I got back was (verbatem) "our satisfied customer base has proven itself by a low rate of returned product".

E-MU has been good about providing updated drivers.

I've already returned ProteusX and exchanged it for an E-MU 0404 card (stand alone), I didn't feel it was worth the extra $50 for the ProteusX softsynth when Sonar 4's TTS-1 softsynth blows this out of the water.

The E-MU 0404 is the best in its class. The only other card you could really consider is the M-Audio AudioPhile 2496, but when I questioned M-Audio about comparing the 2496 to the 0404 they responded back and told me the 0404 was more in line with their (higher end) Delta series.
I love the E-MU 0404, wish I could say the same about ProteusX, but I can't.

At the time of this review, software version 1.71 is the latest. Installing it was simple; just insert the discs and click "okay" a few times.

The presets are terrible; this synth sounds worse than some soundfonts I've used (like Cadenza strings, for example). The sounds included are some sounds from the Mo Phat module, all of the Proteus 2000 presets, Saint Thomas Strings, a few drumkits and a Studio Grand piano sample that sounds exactly like the Dynamic Grand sample found in the Proteus 2000. Maybe the sounds were good back in 1999 when the Proteus 2000 first came out, but now they're like a bad joke. Then again, you have virtually an unlimited amount of user sounds and banks, so there's no real point in using the presets after you've gotten a feel for the synth. Also, don't forget that this an Emu, and Emu generally has really bad presets.

The Proteus X has a needlessly complex interface. When you first open it up, you'll be pretty clueless when it comes to finding the other windows, and the manual won't help you, which I'll get to later. Loading a bank is easy enough. Playing around with the presets is easy enough. Inserting filters and effects is easy enough. Setting up the 32 MIDI channels is easy enough. But those are just globals. Try finding the window to edit individual presets or even create your own sound - chances are you won't have much luck, because you have to click on the preset in the sample tree, only to eventually backtrack to the main window (which doesn't seem like a big deal, but to me it felt really awkward).

Creating your own patch is also awkward, too. Each sample has been sampled at a different note (irritating...), so you have to somehow tune each sample, which I didn't even get much into. I did open up an existing preset to see how it was done, but it didn't teach me anything. I couldn't figure it out and the manual doesn't go into creating presets from scratch *at all*.

The manual does a decent job of explaining what most of the parameters do - it just doesn't tell you how to get to the other windows they're in, and it doesn't always explain everything in a "down to earth" fashion. The layout of the manual is kind of weird, too, with the sections on controls and synthesizer basics at the very end of the manual just before the appendix. Not to mention that the paperback manual included is only three chapters long, with the full manual available only in PDF format (why? I get most of my reading done when I'm away from the computer, but that's just me being petty).

The Proteus X comes with the Emu 0404 soundcard. The soundcard's interface is more user-friendly than the Proteus X, but it's by no means fun to use. The manual seemed helpful, but I didn't read it much, because I was too busy fiddling around with the Proteus X. Also, I experienced a lot of MIDI problems with the 0404, which I'll explain under "Reliability."

Overall I'd say the Proteus X is a nightmare when you first get it, but I suppose if you spent enough time with it you'd understand it enough to use it really well. The question is, why would you? You have to work really hard at this thing and go through frustration after frustration, when you can use a hardware synth (I'd suggest Korg, Roland or Yamaha, depending on the type of sound you like) and get better results more quickly without all the fuss.

The polyphony is dependant on your system, I guess. I run a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 with 1 gig of RAM and Windows XP with a hard drive operating at 7200 RPM with a 2MB cache. I didn't experience any problems, except the CPU meter went into the red a lot, so I had to set the CPU percentage to maximum (80%). Sometimes the disk meter would go into the red when I would play stringed instruments from the synth, too, but overall it was fine. I don't think anyone should use this with a system that's any less powerful than the one I have.

The included 0404 is everything you'd expect from a 100 dollar audio card. MIDI interface, bundled software (like Cubasis VST), etc. It also comes with a built-in mixer, but like I said before, it's not fun to use.

This thing has so many built-in effects. The problem? The effects are so lackluster you don't even realize they're there, even when you turn them up all the way. I'm used to Roland effects, though, so to me these effects are terrible.

This comes with the Proteus X file converter, which can convert a lot of sample formats (Akai S3000 and Gigastudio to name a couple). This is this synth's redeeming quality - it can sample, and loading the samples into it is easy. Fantastic.

32 MIDI channels, all identical (none set specifically for drums). I like that, too.

Filters are very good. Very flexible.

The features get a 6 because of the horrible effects and the fact this thing eats up your CPU so much, but the 32 MIDI channels, the Z-plane filters and the sampling ability raises the score a couple of points.

Two words: general MIDI. Take bad microphones and sample a bunch of drums, some instruments from the orchestra, some guitars, etc. and you have the Proteus X's soundset. The sounds get painfully harsh up in the higher registers, too.

Strings: very mellotron in my opinion. Incredibly unrealistic, considering these are samples of the real things. Emu must've used really crappy mikes.

Brass: mixed bag. Some are really good (trumpet, for instance) some are okay (the only french horn patch in the entire library), others are just lifeless.

Woodwinds: another mixed bag. The oboes are laughable, the piccolo sounds really nice, the panpipes are acceptable, the flute patches are amazing.

Keyboards: pianos are dull, harpsichord is unrealistic, the organs are unusable, you can find better Rhodes on a Roland... you get the idea.

Synth leads: pretty good. The filters make them shine.

Basses: Incredible! The basses on this synth are amazing! They sound warm and full! By far, these are the best sounds on this synth.

Guitars/plucked stringed instruments: the electric guitars aren't bad when played at the lower registers of the keyboard. The acoustic guitars sound acceptable, like the real thing - just with poor mikes. The shamisen patch is stunning, but when will you need a shamisen?

Drums: the drums sound really good, too. You get a *lot* of variety and some ethnic kits, which is always welcome.

If it weren't for the bad microphones, this synth would be so much better, I bet.

This is what makes the synth completely useless to me! I was recording with it in Cakewalk Home Studio 2 and I kept getting MIDI latency! Latency! On a professional audio card! What gives, Emu!? I also read that with Cubase, the Emu 0404 doesn't perform well at all.

Haven't dealt with them... ever. I don't plan to. So far I've heard good and bad things about them, but mostly bad.

I also own an expanded Roland XP-30, Cakewalk Home Studio 2, Nuendo (I forgot the version), an M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 soundcard, Samson monitors and some other programs that I never use. I have a modest home studio that I'm very happy with.

I record on almost a daily basis, and the Proteus X made me want to record *less*. It's completely uninspiring. I didn't even go through that "I have a new toy, yippee!" phase. It's a disappointment, plain and simple. It did teach me one thing, though - it taught me why so many people just stick to a single hardware synthesizer.

Emu markets the Proteus X towards professionals, but I don't think any professional in their right mind would use this thing. It seems too hard to be used by a beginner, too, and this leaves the question: who exactly is Emu targeting with this piece of equipment?

It's sad, I was really looking forward to using a Proteus after hearing so many good things about them. I got my hopes up and was shot down, but oh well, I still have my beloved Roland.