Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 11:26:48 +0100
From: 
To: emax%flobalob.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com


Hi Juan (and everyone else).

Juan sent me a note, and my reply turned into potentially useful information
for the list, so I sent it back out to everyone.  Hope you don't mind too
much, Juan !

> 	Mike, didn't you have an EMU III too?

Er, 'fraid not.  I helped a friend install one into his studio, though, so I
had a chance to futz around with it a bit.

> 	Anyway, I've always heard that the ESI' s filters were quite a bit 
> lacking compared Emax II's ones. What's your impression? This is just about
> the only reason that could prevent me from upgrading my old emax too.

Well, the jury's out here.  To me, the EIII filters sound different to the
Emax II - neither better nor worse.  I had my first play with the ESI filters
last night, and they sounded great to me.... I sampled a single note of an
airy pad from my Wavestation, doubled it up, detuned and panned to make the
preset stereo, and then did a good old filter sweep with the resonance up and
the cutoff frequency down.  Sounded better than the Wavestation original !!
(but then the WS doesn't have resonant filters).

Once trick I used to pull on the Emax II is to just nudge the Q up on the
filter to give it an extra bit of presence.  This doesn't seem to work in the
same way on the ESI-32, although I may just need to play with this a little
more.

My impression on the ESI-32, though, is that it is a definite step up from my
poor old Emax II.  Here's some reasons why:

	- it sounds, to me, a lot clearer than the Emax II.  Perhaps it's my
	  speakers and amp, but sometimes the Emax II would sound muddy to me.
	  The ESI sparkles - probably something to do with the higher sampling
	  rate (44.1KHz).
	- parameters like filter cutoff, envelope times, etc are all
	  calibrated.  ie, the cutoff is in Hz, times are in seconds.  This
	  makes everything a lot more precise, and a lot less like guesswork.
	  Resolution is also better on these parameters.
	- samples have an individual, named existence.  This is bad, in that
	  you have to name everything, now.  However, it is way easier to keep
	  track of your samples, and as you can load individual samples (and,
	  indeed, zones) from hard disc, it makes life a lot easier.  (as a
	  side note, I think I might do some hacking next week and come up
	  with a little Windows program that takes QWERTY keystrokes, and
	  turns them into the appropriate MIDI note numbers for the ESI/Emax
	  to understand.  That way you can type these names out on the
	  keyboard.)
	- disc formatting is a lot, lot, lot, lot, lot quicker than the Emax
	  II.  'nuff said.
	- the tools to help with looping on the ESI are much better.  I tried
	  and failed in the past to sample my Wavestation pads on the Emax II.
	  I could never get the loops to sound right - I always ended up
	  crossfading them, and consequently getting pumping on the looped
	  portion.  Last night, on the ESI, I managed it first go.  When
	  you've set a loop point on the ESI, you get asked if you want to
	  auto-correlate (Y/N).  If you decline, you get asked if you want to
	  compress the loop (Y/N) - it is this stage, I think, that really
	  helps out with my pad sounds, but I have to read the manual to find
	  out what this actually does !  Finally, you get asked if you want to
	  crossfade, with the usual linear/equalpower choice.  Note that this
	  all happens from the looping page - no need to dip into other menu
	  pages to run these functions.  It certainly makes looping feel a
	  whole lot more coherent to me.
	- alpha dial on the front is a godsend.  I hate sliders - especially
	  for tweaking loop points on large samples, where one nudge of the
	  slider can send you 100000 samples away from where you are.  The
	  wheel allows single sample increments, and I think it is velocity
	  sensitive a la UltraProteus - the faster you twiddle it, the larger
	  the increments added to the value you're adjusting.
	- auxiliary envelope, that you can route to pitch.  I always wanted a
	  pitch envelope.
	- stereo samples are really stereo samples, not a primary and
	  secondary sample that happen to be panned left and right.
	  Consequently, digital tools can be used on the sample as a stereo
	  sample - no more noting down loop points so I can hack the secondary
	  side of a stereo pair.

Well, that's about it so far.  I'd also note that the sounds supplied with the
unit are pretty damn good, too - no shovelware here.  I especially like the
electric piano sounds, which are very expressive to play and come over crystal
clear.  BTW, anyone got a really dirty Rhodes sound they'd like to share with
me ?? :-)

If you're all interested, I'll post up further comments on the great Emax
II/ESI-32 debate in the future, as I get more into my new machine.

At the moment, I'd give it a thumbs up - well, apart from it not having any
sysex controls for front panel operations.  But hopefully E-mu are working on
that one.....

Cheers,