@@HipixOFFICIAL This is true, but I guess for the sake of the lore, we'll imagine that Ferris' well off parents bought him all those things, but refused to allow him to have a car.
I like the added effort with video special effects thrown in, such as the way the sounds seemed to change on their own to the next ones. Unless, he went ahead and midi mapped the entire performance to change patches at exact numbers or pitch of key used, which can't entirely be ruled out.
God I miss my old E II. Even though it would not sample, it played back samples that were already recorded. I bought mine used from Mark Yeary, a good friend of mine who played keyboard and piano for Merle Haggard for 21 years.
I really have to give my love to the Roland S50 (which I still have and it works great) that I got in 1987. The LoFi sounds from the samplers in the 80's is so great.
All I want for Christmas is for any company to make a dirt-simple, low-bitrate hardware sampler with a keyboard - an Emulator I or II clone, I suppose.
I loved the way this video just ended with the banjo fumbling. Made my afternoon! 😀 Definitely the least realistic sound of the lot. Those Mellotron strings though....
Ha! Yes :) Another cool thing is that the patch sounds quite realistically "electro-mechanical" because of the low resolution (by today's standards) of the EII...
Both are great! DX7 is a classic, must-have synth of the 80s. I would recommend getting one before too long. A nice used one runs about $500 (some really beat up ones for cheaper), but I would imagine the price will only raise with time! Emulators cost $3000+.
Dexed is a free software emulator of a DX7. Runs on Linux, Windows and I ported it to RPi3 - works good. You can load DX patches. I not managed to build it on PiOS4. Might give it a go on a cheap Linux SBC. But if you go down this route please try ZynAddSubFX ... a beast of a free polysynth.
@@stephenhookings1985 Yes, Dexed is great! Even though I have a Yamaha DX7 Mk. 1, it’s nice to have Dexed so that you can load patches easily and demo out the sounds on computer, however it lacks the fuzz and buzz of the analog outputs of the DX7. Some people prefer it though, as the sound is very pure and noise-free. I use Dexed on Mac, by the way. There is an iOS version of Dexed for iPhone/iPad, but it cost $3.99 and is very buggy/temperamental. The free version for computer is much better and free!
@@andrewhalvorson I hear you - having said that by the time it is recorded and played back via MP3 I think the difference is harder to hear - especially as I get more deaf with age :-( Where possible I prefer hardware - I used to buy broken kit and try to fix it. Often just contact spray, soldering new trace or bent connector. Some are beyond repair - use the enclosure to house some embedded processor project.
@@stephenhookings1985 I think you are right. I have heard some amazing songs made with Dexed and other DX7 emulations and can hardly tell the difference. I think it’s mainly if you hearing a solo synth line with no accompaniment and are listening with headphones (and have great hearing, lol). I wish I was more handy with synth repair! My DX7 has a partially burnt out LCD(?) It’s the red light that displays patch number. One of the bars is burnt out, I’ve had no luck trying to find how to fix or replace that. The keyboard still works just fine, but bothers me something is burnt out.
I had a sound card that the sounds on general midi was emu chipset. Beautiful atmospheric sounds especially the goblins . After a firmware upgrade I lost emu sounds and replaced by others very poor ones.
Me to - Creative Labs used EMU chips. IIRC it had default GM and a mode to switch- similar to XG sounds on Yamaha, that were certainly on a par with EMU - decent FX chips too. A cheap PSR with Mountain View XG software and you got a decent synth for little money.
Ps.... why does it still sound a million times better than pretty much any patch synths now? What did they do so differently then which can’t be replicated now? Can’t just be the bit rate etc
In a sense it is the sampler rate - or lack of it plus lack of memory. Not sure if you know Mothers Talk by Tears for Fears - you notice the note is held on and you can hear the loop points. In the early days the engineers took their time to create such loops that didn't just jar. The lower sampling rate plus analog filters gave a lofi warmth. There again modern digital filters are getting darn close. Something I dont fully get (and I am old and deaf ish now) - in my day we have the analog synths that continually lost tune (but the sound was the Zeitgeist) and hissy analog recording onto vinyl or magnetic tape - how we yearned for noiseless gaps. One could argue the analog was purer than digital etc etc etc. We listen to our old music - it was better in those days etc etc ... But now I listen to my old music on MP3 of an ADD CD and I can still hear the fat analog sound ... in effect I am listening to a sampler - one that is quite compromised in terms of loss ... and actually it sounds ok (which is the very aim of the MP3 algorithms - they are doing their job) In other words even listen to Synthmania now via RUclips - the sound will be quite different to what he gets in his cans directly from the synth and yet we all seem to agree the old synths sound better ... through a heavily digitised and compromised signal :-) It dont make sense ... its just digitised analog ... sampled ... into a sampler :-)
As a constant E-MU fan I would like to see if you would one day test Dave ROSSUM's products. Modular, I'm not in that theme unfortunately, but it seems that "The E-MU Man" is innovative & inventive in that, too- like in his E-MU history :)
But it accept channel pressure (mono aftertouch) via midi. I only have an ESi and keep forgetting it doesn't handle poly aftertouch from my GEM s2. I find the Kawai K4 better controller for it (coupled with software I wrote for Ardunio to give me Zoning etc to emulate EMU features including arpegiator and limited step sequencing).
That first voice patch at the start of the video is used in several oldskool hardcore tracks. Rather like this a lot. Are these default samples on a ROM or are these all your own ?
I came so close to owning one of these 😩 I actually won it on eBay and paid... then it seems like the seller had his foreign wife responding who then cancelled the sale & sent my money back 🤦♂️ one day I will get there... annoyingly I still have the HxC flash with the whole emulator library, allegedly... next job is to figure out how to extract them all. If anyone has any bright ideas or helpful tips I’d be very grateful
HxC Floppy Emulator A Universal Floppy Disk Drive Emulator Last Update : October 8, 2020 Copy n paste that into your search engine, that should allow you to see a webpage that offers a software download to get at your emulator sound stash. There might be free versions of the software, i didn't go as far as to download and verify, however, hope that helps produce that heavy new record that causes everyone to get tattoos and airbrush artwork on their vehicles of the bands name.
@@truetech4158 have you tried EMXP? www.emxp.net/ This is an amazing a free software. Likely you can raw dump what is on your memory stick and use this to get at the files. There are software emulators of an Emulator :-) I have ESi 4000 with 128M ram and SCSI card reader. I got a couple of small 1GB SD cards and used Linux to dd cdrom onto these 1GB - stick it in uSd to SD and SD to CF - can read them. Use a second 8GB stick to copy banks to. The more modern EMU samplers used IDE so was even easier to do what I said. I think they understand EMU format. You can find the samples on the Internet if you know where to look. Majority of the companies are no longer around. No advocating piracy or condoning - just saying many of the eBay sellers are just cashing in.
Some instruments work really well for sampling while others do not. Changing timbre, and starting always with the same attack dont work well for brass and non plucked strings, while plucked strings and synthetic sounds are great
Hey Synthmania, I have actually acquired an Emulator ll now so I no longer am trying to purchase yours but do you offer help at all? I know you know the ins and outs of this machine but there are some things that are confusing me. For example, how do you make it so that each sound doesn't cut the sound before it off?
Was in a band with someone who brough a emulator to jam with away from the school that paid the friggin QUARTER OF A MILLION DOLLAR$ to purchase the obscenely expensive sound card that had a built in keyboard. It looks built strong, like the dashboard from the set of a klingon warship, only with english letterset chosen for the silk screen that was used though it sounded out of this world at the time. I used to crank my first proper synth, the poly 61 with its groovy abilities for arps. It had a factory sound that was rather impressive: Helicopter. That sound, fed into a 4/12 cabinet was all it took to convince people in the courtyard of the townhouses to keep looking up at the sky, as they waited for a glimpse of a figment of their own imagination, encouraged by the 16 bit realism. It's the little things like those that made the throwing the wallet into the music store's boiler fire all the worth while.
Reminds me of sampler times.
I love your sense of humor, man! :D
@@SynthManiaDotCom Hoping to get the Emmy for Dad jokes for 2020. It's my year. 🤞
@@AlexBallMusic Good start, I'd vote for ya!
The way you played "Double Bass" was so perfect to illustrate it. you're "flicky finger" on the bass hand was cool to watch! thanks as always
Thanks a lot!
my vote is for the accordeon, not the patch but the piece played. sounded like a real one!
These demos are always a pleasure for the ear and mind
I love the Emu even since I saw it in Ferris Bueller's Day Off!
Funny thing is Ferris could have definitely bought himself a car if he didn't spend his money on an Emu that he used to play noises to act sick!!
@@HipixOFFICIAL He also had a super expensive stereo as well.
classic memories haha! Nice
@@HipixOFFICIAL This is true, but I guess for the sake of the lore, we'll imagine that Ferris' well off parents bought him all those things, but refused to allow him to have a car.
@@bala4fa No wonder his sister hated him.
One of my favorite synthesizers... mostly because so many bands I love used it. Such a brilliant sound...
I'm always happy to see an EMU
You are on a roll lately, keep up the great videos
I like the added effort with video special effects thrown in, such as the way the sounds seemed to change on their own to the next ones.
Unless, he went ahead and midi mapped the entire performance to change patches at exact numbers or pitch of key used, which can't entirely be ruled out.
Another Musical Museum piece from the SynthMania Synth Museum...
Outstanding!
Absolutely love that Dancing Drops patch.
Someday, I'm gonna make a game with my own soundtracks! I love to imagine a scene and create a soundtracks from it.
Just heard the first few seconds and already got that 'Yeah, Depeche Mode' feel :)
Holy crap, the Tron Strings sound extremely close to a Mellotron
They sampled that very well
Love all those sounds! Still aound great, I think.
Who else was autocompleting Pet Shop Boys riffs in their head? Only me? I'll see myself out.
You're not alone, pal. Let's go have a drink and leave the unappreciative alone in their sad, dark corner ;)
Pet Shop Boys also used Fairlight CM, which has a similar sound of early samplers
Ha ha yeah. West End Girls all day long in my head.
God I miss my old E II. Even though it would not sample, it played back samples that were already recorded. I bought mine used from Mark Yeary, a good friend of mine who played keyboard and piano for Merle Haggard for 21 years.
I really have to give my love to the Roland S50 (which I still have and it works great) that I got in 1987. The LoFi sounds from the samplers in the 80's is so great.
The S50 is awesome. Sounds cool, and the interface is second only to the Fairlight.
Love my S50 and 550.
@@brianglock3099 i have one of each too!
I want one simply for the voices patch at the start of the video
The E-mu has such a unique and nostalgic sound!
I love my EII. It's a keeper!
Awesome sampler and a guy who knows how to use it! 😎👍🏼
Right off the bat, every Residents album from 1982 until around 2000.
Thats a damn good Mellotron sample for the time.
“This may take a while.....”
Amazing classical sounds. Very good sounds.
This makes me so E-mu-tional
Fantastic sounds! Takes me back to the 80s!
All I want for Christmas is for any company to make a dirt-simple, low-bitrate hardware sampler with a keyboard - an Emulator I or II clone, I suppose.
Emax comes to mind. Check it out.
E-mu just a trailblazer at the time.
More evocative to my 1972 born ears than a mellotron - great playing - many thanks.
2:40 Double Bass sounds like a Minute Physics video.
Incredible sounds!
Nothing quite like that 8 bit sound. Even all these years later. It's on it's own.
That Cello was surprisingly well sounding, with the age in mind.
This emulator II looks in mint condition, like if you bought it last month.
Oh my god! That double bass sound! Not to mention the orchestral patch. and Tron Strings I'm guessing there's sustain capability on this. I want one.
The double bass, cello and banjo are impressive and you too 😁 as usual...
Glad you like them!
Love those voices
Wow. The 'Tron Strings' sound like a Mellotron.
I loved the way this video just ended with the banjo fumbling. Made my afternoon! 😀 Definitely the least realistic sound of the lot.
Those Mellotron strings though....
Ciao Paolo 👍 great video
Very fresh wake up music. Waltz mania!
Mellotron strings, a sampler sampling a sampler. Mind blown.
Ha! Yes :) Another cool thing is that the patch sounds quite realistically "electro-mechanical" because of the low resolution (by today's standards) of the EII...
I wish I had this synth as much as I wish had the Yamaha DX7.
Both are great! DX7 is a classic, must-have synth of the 80s. I would recommend getting one before too long. A nice used one runs about $500 (some really beat up ones for cheaper), but I would imagine the price will only raise with time! Emulators cost $3000+.
Dexed is a free software emulator of a DX7. Runs on Linux, Windows and I ported it to RPi3 - works good. You can load DX patches. I not managed to build it on PiOS4. Might give it a go on a cheap Linux SBC. But if you go down this route please try ZynAddSubFX ... a beast of a free polysynth.
@@stephenhookings1985 Yes, Dexed is great! Even though I have a Yamaha DX7 Mk. 1, it’s nice to have Dexed so that you can load patches easily and demo out the sounds on computer, however it lacks the fuzz and buzz of the analog outputs of the DX7. Some people prefer it though, as the sound is very pure and noise-free. I use Dexed on Mac, by the way. There is an iOS version of Dexed for iPhone/iPad, but it cost $3.99 and is very buggy/temperamental. The free version for computer is much better and free!
@@andrewhalvorson I hear you - having said that by the time it is recorded and played back via MP3 I think the difference is harder to hear - especially as I get more deaf with age :-(
Where possible I prefer hardware - I used to buy broken kit and try to fix it. Often just contact spray, soldering new trace or bent connector. Some are beyond repair - use the enclosure to house some embedded processor project.
@@stephenhookings1985 I think you are right. I have heard some amazing songs made with Dexed and other DX7 emulations and can hardly tell the difference. I think it’s mainly if you hearing a solo synth line with no accompaniment and are listening with headphones (and have great hearing, lol).
I wish I was more handy with synth repair! My DX7 has a partially burnt out LCD(?) It’s the red light that displays patch number. One of the bars is burnt out, I’ve had no luck trying to find how to fix or replace that. The keyboard still works just fine, but bothers me something is burnt out.
I love that banjo!
I had a sound card that the sounds on general midi was emu chipset. Beautiful atmospheric sounds especially the goblins . After a firmware upgrade I lost emu sounds and replaced by others very poor ones.
Me to - Creative Labs used EMU chips. IIRC it had default GM and a mode to switch- similar to XG sounds on Yamaha, that were certainly on a par with EMU - decent FX chips too. A cheap PSR with Mountain View XG software and you got a decent synth for little money.
Ps.... why does it still sound a million times better than pretty much any patch synths now? What did they do so differently then which can’t be replicated now? Can’t just be the bit rate etc
VCA and VCF?
Less samples more punch
No soft synth sounds as good as any real synth
In a sense it is the sampler rate - or lack of it plus lack of memory. Not sure if you know Mothers Talk by Tears for Fears - you notice the note is held on and you can hear the loop points. In the early days the engineers took their time to create such loops that didn't just jar. The lower sampling rate plus analog filters gave a lofi warmth. There again modern digital filters are getting darn close.
Something I dont fully get (and I am old and deaf ish now) - in my day we have the analog synths that continually lost tune (but the sound was the Zeitgeist) and hissy analog recording onto vinyl or magnetic tape - how we yearned for noiseless gaps. One could argue the analog was purer than digital etc etc etc. We listen to our old music - it was better in those days etc etc ...
But now I listen to my old music on MP3 of an ADD CD and I can still hear the fat analog sound ... in effect I am listening to a sampler - one that is quite compromised in terms of loss ... and actually it sounds ok (which is the very aim of the MP3 algorithms - they are doing their job)
In other words even listen to Synthmania now via RUclips - the sound will be quite different to what he gets in his cans directly from the synth and yet we all seem to agree the old synths sound better ... through a heavily digitised and compromised signal :-)
It dont make sense ... its just digitised analog ... sampled ... into a sampler :-)
Every time I see a EII video, I regret selling my EII+ with the 3,5”-disk drive upgrade.
First patch is the opening of Force Ten by Rush
Thanks for sharing ♡
Thanks for watching!
As a constant E-MU fan I would like to see if you would one day test Dave ROSSUM's products. Modular, I'm not in that theme unfortunately, but it seems that "The E-MU Man" is innovative & inventive in that, too- like in his E-MU history :)
I agree that the 2 Daves (Rossum and Smith) were real trailblazers in the synth world.
So cool 😎
thanks that was very great to listen to :)
My pleasure!
I love that you don’t play it like a piano… You play it like the instrument it’s sampling which is how it supposed to be, played.
Muito show esse equipamento
Emulator may look like a toy in 2020, but it was a remarkable and inspiring instrument in the 80's
Michael Cretu - Samurai !!!
Gammelfarfar och sista färden på Emulator 2. Cool.......
Well, now with the arturia emulator, it's possible to import eii disk images. Maybe some libraries will start to reappear online.
Banjo appears on New Order’s Every Little Counts from the Brotherhood album (almost the entire track is EII)
Please post video link to the appearance (with min/sec location)
Still waiting on you to post the video link to the banjo appearance - with min/sec location in the video
Still waiting for you to post the min/sec video link
4:30 You need to play the accordion riff at the end of Jarre's Équinoxe :D
The very first sound reminds me of "enjoy the silence"
The lack of aftertouch is really throwing me off
But it accept channel pressure (mono aftertouch) via midi. I only have an ESi and keep forgetting it doesn't handle poly aftertouch from my GEM s2. I find the Kawai K4 better controller for it (coupled with software I wrote for Ardunio to give me Zoning etc to emulate EMU features including arpegiator and limited step sequencing).
Funny thing is, after buying into all of these "realistic" string libraries I prefer the Tron strings.
No Ferris coughs? 😜
Wow! Neither disk bay replaced w/ a floppy emulator???
Love the banjo part. Do you have to load those sounds from floppy disk each time you power on the synth ?
That is correct
Or from computer / hard drive
That first voice patch at the start of the video is used in several oldskool hardcore tracks. Rather like this a lot. Are these default samples on a ROM or are these all your own ?
I believe these are all from the library, I'd have to check but the voices especially, yes
Record the first sound and loop it in a 10 hours long video, name it deep white noise for sleep. You will get + 100 thousands views
I came so close to owning one of these 😩 I actually won it on eBay and paid... then it seems like the seller had his foreign wife responding who then cancelled the sale & sent my money back 🤦♂️ one day I will get there... annoyingly I still have the HxC flash with the whole emulator library, allegedly... next job is to figure out how to extract them all. If anyone has any bright ideas or helpful tips I’d be very grateful
HxC Floppy Emulator
A Universal Floppy Disk Drive Emulator
Last Update : October 8, 2020
Copy n paste that into your search engine, that should allow you to see a webpage that offers a software download to get at your emulator sound stash.
There might be free versions of the software, i didn't go as far as to download and verify, however, hope that helps produce that heavy new record that causes everyone to get tattoos and airbrush artwork on their vehicles of the bands name.
@@truetech4158 have you tried EMXP?
www.emxp.net/
This is an amazing a free software. Likely you can raw dump what is on your memory stick and use this to get at the files.
There are software emulators of an Emulator :-)
I have ESi 4000 with 128M ram and SCSI card reader. I got a couple of small 1GB SD cards and used Linux to dd cdrom onto these 1GB - stick it in uSd to SD and SD to CF - can read them. Use a second 8GB stick to copy banks to. The more modern EMU samplers used IDE so was even easier to do what I said. I think they understand EMU format.
You can find the samples on the Internet if you know where to look. Majority of the companies are no longer around. No advocating piracy or condoning - just saying many of the eBay sellers are just cashing in.
Why are 12 and 8 bit instruments are so rich sounding ...
Some instruments work really well for sampling while others do not. Changing timbre, and starting always with the same attack dont work well for brass and non plucked strings, while plucked strings and synthetic sounds are great
Have you tried the Arturia version? Would be interesting to know how it compares.
Hey Synthmania, I have actually acquired an Emulator ll now so I no longer am trying to purchase yours but do you offer help at all? I know you know the ins and outs of this machine but there are some things that are confusing me. For example, how do you make it so that each sound doesn't cut the sound before it off?
Me lembra um filme q foi usado ele em curtindo a vida adoidado
Would you mind to share your own patches in hxc format?
Can you put your own samples in to it? What is the polyphony on this thing?
Its not a E11 demo if there is no Loon garden!
💙 Best synth ever 💙
Whats the song at cello? I know its a famous classical piece
is it 12 bit?
Was in a band with someone who brough a emulator to jam with away from the school that paid the friggin QUARTER OF A MILLION DOLLAR$ to purchase the obscenely expensive sound card that had a built in keyboard. It looks built strong, like the dashboard from the set of a klingon warship, only with english letterset chosen for the silk screen that was used though it sounded out of this world at the time.
I used to crank my first proper synth, the poly 61 with its groovy abilities for arps. It had a factory sound that was rather impressive: Helicopter. That sound, fed into a 4/12 cabinet was all it took to convince people in the courtyard of the townhouses to keep looking up at the sky, as they waited for a glimpse of a figment of their own imagination, encouraged by the 16 bit realism. It's the little things like those that made the throwing the wallet into the music store's boiler fire all the worth while.
Ok, how hard was it to NOT play Dueling Banjo's at the end? :D
How much do these sell for?
05:07 What song is that?
improv
Then as now: wanted. @behringer can u read me? :-)
The video should be called: "How to sound worse than General MIDI using a vintage Sampler"
No it shouldn't