emulatorII-list

Hi everyone,

My history with the EII is I bought one in 1986 (with factory disks) and purchased the CDS3 drive with the first 2 Universe of Sounds CDs in 1987. I picked up Northstar gold Universe of sounds CD (vol. 3) in the early 90s and then bought a mac and the SD package with cable and FMS, burmer library and 100 factory disk library from emulator archive in the late 1990s. By putting the Mac in center position (connected to both the EII and the CDS3), I would load one bank at a time from the CDS3 drive to the EII, then to the mac and then save the EII files in SD format. I took the whole EII library to PC and used the fantastic program by Esynthesis called EMXP. The conversion to soundfont 2 went quickly by selecting all files for translation. It isn't a batch interface but it translated all the banks and sample assignments (1 bank at time) pretty quickly. The sample bank quality playback varies from bank to bank using a SF player like SFZ. I also retranslated
 the sound font banks to kompakt 3.5 using the UI in kompakt. I agree the hardware to play the EII samples is amazing. I have used the translated soundfont 2 banks in recordings and it is hard to tell the difference from the original EII sound.This is not true for every bank but it was definitely worth my while to have EII banks that have unlimited polyphony and that could be used with MIDI sequencing with multiple channels. I have several sample softsynths and it is interesting to compare each from the originals (NI B4 to original hammond B3, korg polysix to korg analog collection, ect) I know this debate can continue forever talking about the warmth of the sound of analog vs. the harshness of digital. I guess the point I'm making is it is great to have the option of using original hardware with the sounds we all know and love but it is great to have the additional options of finding new applications of the old samples to reuse in new projects as well.
 I think there is still a market out there to appeal to both.

Thanks,
Rod




________________________________
From: sugawolf_jeezy <captainjc@gmail.com>
To: emulatorII-list@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wed, February 10, 2010 10:04:30 AM
Subject: [emulatorII-list] Re: Emulator sounds for sale

  
Wow, fantastic news! Thank you for the detailed explanation of the file formats too. 

--- In emulatorII-list@ yahoogroups. com, "esynthesist" <esynthesist@ ...> wrote:
>
> These are the formats discussed until now:
> - SoundDesigner: this is a fileformat for files containing only sample information, used by some SoundDesigner software versions. It is one of the "more compatible" SoundDesigner formats for sample/audio interchange between various SoundDesigner sofware packages. But no preset or voice parameter information is available in these files.
> - SoundDesigner for EII: this is a fileformat for files containing full Emulator II banks. So all sample info, preset info, sequencer info and so on is stored in these files. But these files are unique for use with the EII and are (as far as I know) only supported by the SoundDesigner for EII variant.
> - CDS3: is a diskformat used on CDROMs by OMI/Northstar in the eighties. It's like a FAT system, but then different :-) CDS3 disks contain full Emax or Emulator II soundbanks. The fileformat of the individual banks stored on a CDS3 cdrom is very comparable with the SoundDesigner for EII fileformat. 
> 
> Note that the SoundDesigner for EII fileformat is in fact just a dump of the memory of the Emulator II.
> 
> All EII soundbanks on a CDS3 cdrom can be extracted to individual SoundDesigner for EII files. I have a small utility for that, but I didn't make it public available yet because it's so basic (not robust let's say) that I expect too many support questions if I simply make it available to everyone. I'm planning to include native CDS3 support in EMXP in the near future though. Perhaps I will also slightly improve the small utility in order to make it asap available for download - yes, why wouldn't I do that :-)
> 
> The (extracted) SoundDesigner for EII files can be used on a Mac with SoundDesigner for EII, or can be translated to some other filelayouts (like SoundFont2) with e.g. EMXP. The next version of EMXP will also allow to upload/download these files directly between Windows PC and Emulator II, but a special USB/RS422 adapter will be required.
> 
> ///E-Synthesist
> 
> 
> --- In emulatorII-list@ yahoogroups. com, "sugawolf_jeezy" <captainjc@> wrote:
> >
> > > Correct - Doug has both the SD and CDS3 banks, but not the SD for EII 
> > > banks.
> > 
> > I guess I'm getting a little lost in these file formats. So I gather that CDS3 is the format used in the CD Rom drive that OMI produced. These must contain all the bank/preset info right? There is no way to convert them?
> >
>