Sound Designer for Emax files supported by EMXP now
2008-11-23 by esynthesist
Something I forgot to say: the newest version of EMXP supports the Sound Designer for Emax file format now (version 2.06). But you still have to copy the files between your PC and your Mac in order to transfer the banks to or from the Emax, just like with the Sound Designer for EII files. FYI: 1/ Sound Designer for Emax files are almost the same as EMX files, but they contain additional bytes. EMXP allows direct copy between EMX (.EMX), Sound Designer for Emax (.EMS), Emax Banks (.EB1) and Emax floppy disks. But all other conversions are also possible in an indirect way by using the .EB1 file as an intermediary. 2/ One interesting technical note: Sound Designer for Emax files also contain 8 bytes from the operating system part of the Emax memory. This due to the communication protocol which requires data packet sizes of 120 bytes and which results in "having to transfer" 8 additional bytes which do not belong to the sound bank itself. Unfortunately these 8 bytes differ between the OS versions. I did some tests though and it seems that the Emax doesn't care about these bytes... So EMXP is filling them with blanks. I assume this is OK since Digidesign must have the same problem if they wanted the saved banks to be portable across many Emax versions. Anyway, if in the future some instabilities may occur on the Emax, I will add an option in EMXP which can replace the 8 bytes by the ones which belong to your Emax OS. 3/ On the EMXP website (http://users.skynet.be/emxp) you can also download the modified emax operating systems which make bank transfer between the Mac and the Emax possible. Use is at own risk (but it works fine in my setup). 4/ I'm wondering how many Emax users actually have a copy of Sound Designer for Emax. Perhaps Wayne and I are the only ones :-) Have fun. ///E-Synthesist