From: mayer@hplnpm1.hpl.hp.com (Niels P. Mayer)
Subject: Comments/Experiences/Recommendations on Emu EIIIxp
Date: Wed, 23 Sep 1992 07:39:18 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Labs, Media Technology Lab, Palo Alto, CA.


At $3995.00 list, and $3200 retail, this seems like a very nice "sampler".
I played w/ one for a few hours the other day. Didn't seem to have alot of
fancy waveform editing capabilities, but it did seem like it would be a
good workhorse w/ the right software front-end (which I'll be writing, soon
as I get my HP9000s720 talking MIDI... ).

Advantages:
	* 8Mb RAM standard, expandable up to 32Mb w/ SIMMs
	* RS422 I/O (you may not need this, but MIDI sample dumps to a computer
			take alot of time, esp. for 32 Mb).
	* SCSI standard (you can supposedly even have it share a SCSI bus w/ a mac.)
	* Digital I/O via AES/EBU standard
	* Sounds good (IMHO) -- uses Proteus "G-Chip" technology & digital
	  resonant filters.
	* Cool & fun digital "V"CF, "V"CA, aux. envelope, etc.

Disadvantages:
	* It doesn't have an A/D converter. The manual claims that most people
	  don't sample their own sounds with a sampler. And that most studios
	  will have an extra A/D converter or a DAT machine w/ digital i/o.
	  Well, I guess I'm not most people, since I do want to do my own
	  sampling, don't have an extra A/D converter or DAT!
	* It's useless unless you hook up a SCSI disc, CD-Rom, opti-disk, etc.
          -- you can't load in samples using the built-in mini-disk (sounds
	  like a stupid decision -- you can't use commercial Emax II disks!)
	* Doesn't seem to have "resampling" capability (??).
	* Emu's patented "user-interface designer, what's that?" UI. Though
	  it's a bit better than the Emax II's crappy interface.

Questions:
	* Can it load samples from hard disc or RS422 while playing others?
	* Does anybody know anything about "dual-porting" SCSI so that the
	  sampler and a computer (HP9000s700 running HPUX) can share a hard
	  disk? The manual for the EIIIxp claims this will work for the
	  Macintosh, but I doubt it'll work w/ a unix filesystem :-).
          (I don't know diddly about SCSI, other than plugging in the cables
          and setting the device number... I'm a software guy...)
	* Is $3200.00 a reasonable price?
	* Any recommendations on decent-sounding and cheap (< $1000.00)
          A/D converter w/ AES/EBU output.

PS: any other samplers you recommend? I need something with alot of memory,
>= 16Mb that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.
	* The Ensoniq ASR-10 sounds cool, but it seems to be vaporware
	  (most music stores just ask "who leaked that?"), and it always
	  seems like a good idea to wait a few months for them to get the
	  bugs out. (Or does Ensoniq no longer beta test gear on customers?)
	* the Akai S1000/S1100 and Roland S750/S770 are nifty but too expensive
          and they seem to lack RS-422 interfaces.
	* the Akai DD1000i gives me wet dreams but it's really expensive.
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	    Niels Mayer -- hplabs!mayer -- mayer@hplabs.hp.com
                     Collaborative Multimedia Project
		       Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
			      Palo Alto, CA.
				   *