emulatorII-list

Was it always Oberheim's intent to release a sample player or was it
an oblique strategy because of some R&D problem? Anyone who could
really look at the boards with some insight could probably tell
whether or not it was a botched sampler. Code must have been so hard
to write in those days. [w]

well, you may not agree, but IMHO opinion the DPX-1 IS a sampler: you
can record your samples with a pc, edit 'em and then send 'em to the
machine via midi with sample dump standard...

so you aren't forced to use it just as a sample player for other
machines' libraries...

just my 0,2...

http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/oberheim_dpx1/


Fabio


--- In emulatorII-list@yahoogroups.com, "][" <ingsoc_1979@...> wrote:
>
> Was it always Oberheim's intent to release a sample player or was it
> an oblique strategy because of some R&D problem? Anyone who could
> really look at the boards with some insight could probably tell
> whether or not it was a botched sampler. Code must have been so hard
> to write in those days. [w]
>

Hi
Oberheim spotted a market gap in 1986, an EII rack mount. E-mu Systems
weren't going to produce one, but pro users wanted them for touring. Have a
look at Yes in 1986 with Tony Kaye and his banks of DPX-1s. The DPX-1 is a
black box re-engineering job, without the same electronics that Dave used.
Actually sounds rather nice. Oberheim wisely added other formats and focused
on replay to keep the electronics down in size.Quite remarkable how they got
the size down without using surface mount technology. They added hard disk,
CDROM and SCSI. If they had just used a LCD interface....
 
Designed as a sample player for the live musician, there is not enough room
for the sampling electronics and it takes more effort and code to get to
market. 
 
Then Akai entered the market with 16bit samples and the rest was history...
E-mu Systems kept with TTL technology with the oversized Emulator III, until
they finally had enough money in the bank to get customer chips made for the
complete sampler chain (F and G chips in the Emax II and EIIIX).
 
Regards
Rob
www.emulatorarchive.com

 

Was it always Oberheim's intent to release a sample player or was it
an oblique strategy because of some R&D problem? Anyone who could
really look at the boards with some insight could probably tell
whether or not it was a botched sampler. Code must have been so hard
to write in those days. [w]



 



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Thanks for clearing up that bit about the DPX-1. 

 finally had enough money in the bank to get
> customer chips made for the
> complete sampler chain (F and G chips in the Emax II
> and EIIIX).

I have heard somewheres that the "E" chip is an "EII
on a chip" and such... is that in fact actually true?
I am assuming there were no VHDL-like facilities to
perform this at the time, so how did they pull it off?
Any help from Japan? [w]


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Hi
The E-chip is a custom DSP chip which manipulates 16 channels of digital
audio. The chip performs three main jobs:

 

.         Replays the samples from memory and pitch shifting them as
necessary using a fixed sample replay rate that adds and drops samples as
necessary

.         Translates the 8-bit samples that are held in sample memory back
into 12-bit samples ready for conversion back into an audio signal

.         Adjusting the volume of the sample as required by the patch,
although the final VCA and all the VCF is in the analog filter chip

 

The E-chip reads 8-bit sample data and outputs 12-bits for the DAC's and
analog filters. The E-chip consists of 50,000 transistors and it was
developed internally by E-mu Systems as their first digital chip, Dave had
previously developed a range of analog chips (SSM). There was NO help from
Japan or any other manufacturer - all done in the E-mu Systems lab which by
1984 was quite sophisticated with its own UNIX computers for sample
manipulation and chip design. This lab eventually become the basis for the
Creative Advanced Technology Labs, which gave birth to Audigy chips more
recently.

 

The E-chip is NOT a clone of the Emulator II sample microcontroller and
sample companding technqiues which is all done in TTL logic. However there
are some simulairities. The sample transpoiution technique in the E-chip is
rather crude.....drop sampling no interpolation. The later G chip could do
sample transposition much better than the E-chip, thanks to much higher
transistor count and interpolation (8 way?). Dave Rossum developed much of
the ideas in the early 80's but had to wait for silicon fabs and cash flow
to catch up with him. He is a genius..and its this engineering excellence
that Creative bought in 1993, not a music synthesizer company.

 

If E-mu Systems had made more cash in the mid-80's (and been better managed
operationally) they might well have got to the Emulator Four 5 years
earlier.

In 1988 they did hit 10 million dollar revenue (not profit), but Akai were
selling ten times any E-mu product...and could keep the R&D budget up.

 

Regards

Rob

www.emulatorarchive.com

 

 



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