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

> No-I mean 'don't'. As far as I know, you can assign certain groups
> of presets in the E4 to certain groups- but it dosen't work like say
> the Yamaha A3000 or Access Virus- where they single out what notes
> it thinks you can hear and what you can't.-

That's all very well if the system actually gets it right. A lot of
the instruments I've used with dynamic voice allocation don't. (The
XL-7 doesn't appear to either - it'll steal decay portions of voices
quite eagerly even if not much else is going on.) I've not played much
with the allocation grouping the XL offers.

> The Emu system just dosen't work like that. You also have to
> remember that Emu mainly made instruments for fat-bellied
> prog-rockers

Oh - I thought they started off with analogue synthesisers and then
decided to take a pot-shot at Fairlight and NED with the Emulator 1.

> So many of their instruments were 
> supposed to work in 'Single' mode as opposed to 'Multi'- hence the snap, 
> crackle and pop problems.

E-mu have been making samplers for many years - these are multitimbral
almost by nature - and their sound modules have been multitimbral at
least since the original Proteus 1.

I think the popping is filter overloading - the whole point of having
*fixed* filter programs was to try and avoid this.

> I think emu are in trouble right now because they hadn't expected
> that dance/electronic music would take off in the way that it has
> done- especially in the States. The XL-7 looks like a really good
> product, but it is still is a load of their old ideas squeezed into
> a more up to date package.

I don't mind the feature set too much, but wish the timing were
tighter and the software more reliable.

> As for USB, it will always be a great big pile of poo- I'm just
> really surprised why no music gear manufacturers have taken the
> Firewire challange?

Every computer in the world (or every computer that matters) has
USB. Few have Firewire yet. Also, the world of high-speed networking
in the audio industry has been littered with marketing failures
(MediaLan anyone? SMDI?) - and then there's stuff like MLAN out there
already.

> Anyway, no one has answered my question about quantise yet?!

Never use it - sorry.

-- 

  nick rothwell -- composition, systems, performance -- http://www.cassiel.com