Emu XL-7 & MP-7 User's Group

>>>>>Man, you got me really interested in the rom! Are percussion 
sounds (like congas, bongos, etc...) a lot better too?

"I'm not super familar with the RIFF patterns on the XL-7 ROM, but it 
does 
appear that there are quite few new ones in the DRUM Rom. Hitting 
Audition and scrolling through the Presets is actually a pretty good 
way 
to get the best feel for what the new Presets sound like. Especially 
the 
KIT Presets, which sound very modern with the new RIFFs triggering 
them."


>>>> What do you mean by Riff? Are those the drum patterns? Do they 
come with the machine? If the do I'm definitelly getting it! BTW what 
do you mean by modern sounding?


Thanks for the review!







--- In xl7@yahoogroups.com, erik_magrini@B... wrote:
> Strengths - 
> 
> The acoustic drums samples.  The biggest improvement that you can 
hear 
> right away is in the cymbals. They now sound really smooth and 
bright and 
> the decay times are SOOO much longer than the previous ROMs. 
There's all 
> kinds of new drum sounds on the ROM, from acoustic kits to new 
dance kits, 
> and all of them sound much better. The real drum sounds from actual 
kits 
> are sweet, some of them have a nice room sound on them that would 
keep you 
> form having to waste an effect send on some simple drum ambience. 
Good 
> snares too.
> 
> Some of the Presets have some cool pseudo stereo tricks being used 
to make 
> them sound huge or unique, the kinda of thing that would really 
help the 
> drum tracks to stand out in a XX-7 only composition. Additionally, 
there's 
> a lot of velocity layered samples too, which make many of the kits 
a lot 
> more expressive. Good stuff all the way around. This is the first 
time 
> I've heard drum presets that would make me want to use them as is, 
instead 
> of making my own like I normally would.
> 
> 
> Weaknesses - 
> 
> Those into trance and techno styles will like the new kits and 
instruments 
> too, but if you someone who mainly depends on things like 909 
sounds, you 
> could probably get by with just layering the drum sounds in the 
ROMs you 
> have now. Not saying the new 909-like kits aren't impressive, but 
that the 
> difference in quality isn't as noticeable as it is the with real 
> instruments (which is huge).
> 
> Also, some of the individual instrument hits are VERY quiet 
compared to 
> the XL-7 ROM.  Emu has some very nice velocity crossfaded samples 
now, but 
> if you're just scrolling through the instruments to find an 
appropriate 
> sound, there's a lot of hits that are just too quiet to cut through 
> anything but the sparsest of mixes. Not a biggy though, you just 
need to 
> keep scrolling until you find the louder velocity instruments.
> 
> 
> Additional -
> 
> - 806 base instrument (samples)
> - New Instrument categories: "kik:", "gen:", "cym:', and "plr:"
> - New Preset categories: "zzz:", "lnk:". and "cmb:"(depending on 
what ROMs 
> you have installed in your machine, these may not all be new for 
you)
> 
> The Presets on the Rom are roughly organized thus:
> 
> Bank 0 - All new Kit's, complete Drum kits.
> Bank 1 - More Kits, the new ARP Presets, and some key and synth 
Presets.
> Bank 2 - All of the individual percussion Presets, some more Kits.
> Bank 3 - Bass Presets, plenty of Hits and other random Presets, the 
Link 
> and ZZZ Presets as well.
> 
> I'm not super familar with the RIFF patterns on the XL-7 ROM, but 
it does 
> appear that there are quite few new ones in the DRUM Rom. Hitting 
> Audition and scrolling through the Presets is actually a pretty 
good way 
> to get the best feel for what the new Presets sound like. 
Especially the 
> KIT Presets, which sound very modern with the new RIFFs triggering 
them.
> 
> The Arp Banks 0-2 are seemingly identical to the arps in the XL-7 
and the 
> P2500 Roms. HOWEVER, there's also another Bank (3) in the DRUM Rom, 
and 
> this contains a bunch of new Arps. A lot of these are very similar 
> sounding, and all have a "DA" prefix so I'm guessing they're for a 
> specific purpose. However, I didn't receive and documentation with 
my ROM 
> (only because it's a pre-release, documentation will be included 
with all 
> regular orders I would imagine) so I couldn't check this out. 
Strangely, 
> there are Arps labelled "Empty" in locations 70:3 - 99:3, too bad 
they 
> couldn't have filled up these last 30 locations.
> 
> 
> rEalm
> 
> 
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]