Date: Mon, 20 Feb 1995 14:42 UT From: Subject: RE: magical mystery SE (and OS versions) Hi, > when i bought my emax (no HD, no SE) a couple years ago, the seller gave > me a mess of disks, most of which i never looked at very carefully. well > lo and behold, today i noticed one of them was labelled "SE". sure > enough, it has the SE OS, version 1.1 I did the same - when I bought my Emax SE second hand I was given a pile of old disks and one of them was the SE OS 1.1. You won't be able to use those facilities unless you have either an Emax SE or have the SE upgrade. > i checked out the extra digital effects: change sample rate, change > pitch, transform multi, and spectrum synthesis. will someone please run > down these and explain what each does and how to use it? (if someone will > copy the relevant manual pages for me, i'd be grateful, and would of > course pay copying and postage). Change sample rate - this means once you have a sample you can change the data to work at any other sample rate (not just the 10,16,20,28kHz etc). This is useful if you want to transfer Emax samples onto another sampler which wants data at a different sample rate. Change pitch - this means what it says - when you sample a sound on the Emax you can only transpose it a certain number of notes upwards (for example at full bandwidth you can only transpose up a semitone or two). Transposing down doesn't appear to be a problem, except that you get horrible (or nice, depending on your point of view) distortion. The Change pitch facility means you can process your sample to be transposed up further than the standard real-time limit. This is great if you need a few higher notes of a sample but can't re-sample them any higher. Transform multiplication - this is an intruiging technique whereby you can transform two sounds together (kind of like integrating over the sample length multiplying the samples from each sound). It's rather experimental, and unfortunately the Emax SE doesn't really have the memory or power to fully exploit this feature. There are some interesting factory samples using this technique, combining for example guitar and flute sounds. Very strange! Spectral Synthesis - this is fun to play with - you're basically creating your own sound from scratch here, no actual sampling is involved. You build up a sound piece by piece (for example a 1 second sound could be made up of 10 'timeslices'). For each piece (timeslice) you can define a set of harmonics in the form of a bar graph on the screen, and then the Emax will interpolate between these harmonic settings. You can get some truly wacky sounds like this - very fluid, pure, evolving sounds. But you will need the SE upgrade....*8( Neil Durant Date: Mon, 20 Feb 1995 20:23:16 -0600 (CST) From: To: Subject: Re: magical mystery SE (and OS versions) Hi, I don't have my Emax manual anymore (or the SE manuals) but the only thing I can think of that I might ever need them for is maybe to see the various velocity curves. Anyway, Gain/Attenuation: You can use this to add digital distortion to a sound - fun... The attenuation I think works the same as in Analog Processing except that it doesn't take up memory and permanently alters the sample. Reverse sound: Same sort of thing. It does the same as in backwards loop except that it alters the actual data. Sample rate conversion: Never used this one, personally. I think you might need to do this if, for example, you wanted to splice or combine two sounds of different sample rates. It doesn't seem like you'd need to do that but I'm really not sure. I know that you can change the sample rate of a sample so it takes up less space, but I suspect it doesn't work the same in reverse unless it does some sort of compression on the data you're not using. If it *does* keep the extra data, this would be a neat feature. Pitch conversion: This is quite useful. As you know, you can't transpose a sample up very far on the original Emax. You can use this to transpose up a lot higher. You have to copy the original data before you alter it if you are extending the range of a sample. This worked real well on the factory pop brass sounds and on a strings sample of my own. Transform multiplication: Now here's a whacked idea. Instead of adding (combining) sounds, why not multiply them? That's actually what this does. It's such a complex operation (relative to the other functions of the Emax) that it can only be done on very short samples and takes about 45 minutes. You can get some odd percussion sounds and the whole idea is very novel, but after the initial gimmick wore off I never used it because of how long it took. Spectrum Synthesis: This section can be used to synthesize sounds using additive synthesis. With this feature, the Emax can actually make sound all on its own (!). If you know what Fourier transforms are, it helps to understand this a little. In order to use this module, you have to start with blank sample data unless you really want to change the harmonic structure of a sample. Just go into the sample module and start sampling with no input. Frequency spectrum - this defines a waveshape for the current spectrum. You can draw the waveshape with the slider or manually enter in the values for the harmonics. You can copy the spectrum to another spectrum or copy it to a time slice. Time slice - this lets you edit time slices. You can do all the functions as above but instead of copying a spectrum to a spectrum, you'd be copying a timeslice to a spectrum. Amplitude contour - contours the loudness of the data (permanent) Pitch contour - contours the pitch permanently Pitch ratios - defines the fundamental frequency as far as I can remember. Interpolate - interpolates between two time slices. For example, if you draw the spectrum of a sine wave (1 harmonic) and copy it to timeslice one, then draw a spectrum of a square wave (fund., 0, 1/3, 0, 1/5, 0, 1/7, 0 etc.) and copy it to time slice 24, you can then interpolate between timeslices 1 and 24. What you will get is the sound of a sine wave turning into a square wave. The time it takes for that to happen is the sample length *at the original pitch*. When you play lower notes it takes longer to hear all the timeslices. Load/Save backup - I can't remember if this deals with spectra or what, but it probably does. Erase - erases backups, spectra, or everything. Synthesize - you *have* to use this function to hear any results you've programmed. Have fun. Do you know what kind of RAM to use in this machine? I'd like to eventually expand the memory in mine. It's still really great for percussion sounds. I also wonder what kind of sysex messages the Emax understands. Know anything about this? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Date: Tue, 21 Feb 1995 13:29:07 -0800 (PST) From: To: Subject: Re: SE more than software? The SE upgrade is just software. It's Spectrum Interpolation Digital Synthesis. When I first bought my Emax I went down to E-MU Systems (they are 15 minutes from my house) and went on a tour of the facillity when I left I asked about the SE upgrade and they said all I needed was this and handed me a packet (for free even) when I got home all the package contained was a manual, disk and 2 stickers. I copied the software to my HD and put the stickers on the front. 1 sticker goes next to the Emax logo, it says SE and the other goes underneath the PRESET MANAGEMENT choices on the front and has the extended DIGITAL PROCESSING options. You can order the entire kit from E-MU for $20.00 (I think.) They said that it really wasn't a great thing (SE), but it did allow you to create some bizarre metallic sounds and increased the HD bank storage to 36 banks (I believe earlier operating systems had 34 banks) _____________________________________________________________________________ Date: Tue, 21 Feb 1995 16:23:39 -0600 (CST) From: To: Subject: Re: SE more than software? It's definitely not more than just software. I got my update kit and all it had was 3 disks, a manual, and some stickers. Only one disk was the upgrade, the others were transform multiplication experiments and spectrum synthesis experiments. Anyway, you have to use Special 1 in the Master module to copy the new operating system. I think it modifies some proms inside or something because I don't remember having to do anything more than that. After it's done, you should be able to look under Master/Special and at the top of the slider there will be a rev. #. It should say Emax SE rev. 1.1. If you see that you should have all the new features. I think the SE upgrade also added some other stuff. You can assign a global MIDI channel & do some other things under the Master module. Take a look at those when you get it working. Let me know what's up. - Andy