E-mu Emulator Sampler User Forum for the EIII EII EI and EIII XP

whell I have original CD roms for EII

I have all 3 disks but NO CD ROM!!!!!  :(

how can we translate that u SD4EII or some other format wich EII can access over RS 424 port ..any idea

 

I'm pretty sure it's easy to convert the original CDS3 CD-ROMs to SD4EII format with a little piece of software code.
Another guy (at the yahoo group) already asked me to try to create this converter but he didn't manage to provide me with a file containing the raw CD disk copy image of one of his CD-ROMs. And without this file or CD I can't investigate the source format of course :-)
But if you can manage to upload somewhere (or torrent) a raw image of one of your CD's then I can still give it a try. Who knows, maybe it's only a few minutes of work to create the converter software.

hey Esynthesist that was me

I tried several times but had problem with file transfer

PLEASE send me your adres to PM and I will send you Copies of CD roms

OR we can try again with file transfers over net!!!!!!

Best regards


Damir

BIG FAN OF your software

( still can you do librarian for SP 12 :))
THAt would rock to exchange sp 12 sounds

DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT!!!!
Would love to have all banks of the OMI set...

Hey Damir,

Yes, you're right, you too asked for this on yahoo. But also a certain Martin Dubka, unless that's an alias for you too :-) I didn't receive files from him either.

Anyway, let's try to get your files to me - I'll send you a PM on eiiiforum.

Kris
///E

YEAH!
Please let us know in case of any success!

OK guys,

I figured out the full addressing structure of the OMI CDS3 cdroms.
It seems not difficult so I'll definitely be able to use a small piece of quick & dirty code to translate those CDs to a set of individual EII bank files that can be used in SoundDesigner. Complete with an index of which bank belongs to which OMI soundcategory.
Indeed, the CDS3 system seemed to have a feature of categories which e.g. clustered all piano banks on the CD to a category called "keyboard"; this was probably used to make navigation through the banks more easy.
Well, that was necessary too because the first two CDs contain 538 and 510 banks, and there's even a third CD !
Strange that Emu didn't think about this kind of navigation feature on its later models like the Emax and EIII...

Anyway, no time to loose, I'll write that converter during the weekend but I have to paint my livingroom doors first (one has to know his priorities  :D )
 

News flash.

The conversion tool is ready and I succeeded in converting the first two OMI CDs to a set of EII files for SoundDesigner.

///E-Synthesist

Dear E-Synthesist!

You are a genious!
Have I told you yet?  :D

Dunno what to say. I already have quite a lot banks from those OMI CDs, but many are still missing...

Will you guys be willing to share the library with us in any way?

(please.....)

Greetz,
Elm.

HI folks I will be very happy if you will share the sounds.
I also got the 3 cds but my omi drive is broken .
Offcourse i will pay for the banks.
cheers
Jonas

I would pay for them, too - of course!

(not the original retail price though...  ;) )

Does anyone have a track list of the banks that are on the 3 CD-ROM's?

I'd like to know if they contain more or different banks than the floppy library for the EII.

If they're different than the floppy library then count me in as an interested party :-)

David

FYI,

I temporarily uploaded the table of contents of the three CDs to this url:
http://users.skynet.be/emxp/CDS3_EMULATORII_CONTENTS.zip

The files in de ZIP package have been directly generated from the CDs themselves, which explains the somewhat strange format of the contents.

One note: the title of the first two CDs is "Universe of Sounds" (volumes 1 and 2) while the third one is called "Northstar Gold Universe volume 3". It's totally unclear if this third CD is the official "Universe of Sounds volume 3" or a third volume of some Northstar series. Roginator told me there were only three CDS3 cdroms ever released for Emulator II. The Northstar website gives an overview of all EII banks they ever released. At first sight almost all banks on the third CD are also mentioned on their site. Since the same site mentions that Northstar has created a total of 507 soundbanks for the EII, and since the "volume 3" CD already contains 436 banks, I guess it can never be the third volume of a Northstar-only series of CD-roms. So probably Northstar was asked to create the third OMI Universe Of Sounds CD, and afterwards added some 80 additional soundbanks to their catalogue. Can anyone confirm this ?
I just would like to know if there are even more CDS3 cdroms for the Emulator II out there.

///E-Synthesist

Yes you did, thanks thanks  ;D

Hi Guys!

It seems to be the original OMI CD-Rom library to a 100%, as I have compared E-synthesists listings to (possibly) original OMI Sheets I've got.

This is a dream coming true... I've always gassed for the Banks that are still missing in my OMI - "collection", for example all the sound efx and lots of orchestral banks...

Greetz,
Elm.

And for those who have no idea about this library:

IT'S THE TITS!! IT'S JUST INCREDIBLE!!!

It's the most perfect collection of sampled instruments ever, honestly!!
It goes like this:
You get an idea, anything (just ANYTHING...) -> just browse the OMI listing and you'll find a bank that fits your idea perfectly! It's so huge...

Coming out of the EII: priceless..

F... Hell:D

thoose disk what i wanted for long time ago...
Xpander,Oberheim and stuffs.
how can i convert that without sound designer?
i need to buy some old floppy drive to connect with my PC and write the translate to the floppys?
cheers awesome group:D

btw i asked Northstar about the disk long ago.
they very helpful and still not expensive.

To be perfectly honest:

You NEED a Mac -> EII Setup to get full advantage of the library.

To transfer all banks to floppies would take you forever (plus, you would still have to buy ca. 1500 floppy disks, format them, and copy the banks somehow...). Then, even if you managed to do this (and if your drives still worked after all this  :-\ ), you still would have to load each bank from drive to really get to know what's on it etc... (the banks are so distinctive that there are several similar which only vary in fine nuances  ::)  )

With SD on Mac, you send the banks to the EII in much less time AND without wearing your drives.
It's really essential to have a SD4EII setup!

greetz,
Elm.

thx ELM,

i understand. and i though i ve got quite lot EII disks:D  ( 43. diks and all original from 1984-88)

it wouldnt be easy to have it thoose mac isnt it?
the other thing do you know guys any chance to have it EII HW packs anywhere?(cpu,ram,chips, etc)
i saqw once on ebay for 200 euro(was quite friendly price) but i lost them.
my EII need to be service cause the sounds has gone only some electric noise coming up if i push any keys.
i read yours guide about it and seems i have to pick up all the chips and put it back.
i wanted to use my darling after founding one of that great sampler which i wanted almost 10 years ago...(actually since DM violator album)

sorry for the off!
and thank you guys the best forum is here:)
S

Would it be possible to convert the EII files from the CDROM's to Wave or AIFF?

If I open an EII file in Sound Designer it sounds like sh*t. I can see and hear that there's a header but the samples that follow are distorted.

I know that the EII uses some kind of compression algorithm to store its samples in memory so I understand that just reading the raw EII files won't be suffcient.

Is there a conversion program out there that lets me extract the wave data out of the EII files?

Actually it would be great if there was a program that would just convert the EII files to, for example, a Kontakt patch with the right keymapping.

UPDATE: Never mind, I just used the excellent EMXP program for the first time and it does an excellent job.


David

?!??
SHAME ON YOU!!!

 ;D ;D ;D  Just kidding...

Yeah, definitely shame on me.  :D

I never had the need to try the program since I have a Mac with Alchemy and Sound Designer hooked up to my EIII. That way I can visualy edit the EIII's samples and transfer everything smoothly.

Up until now I never realised how powerful EMXP is. It's going to save me a lot of time when I'll convert some EII banks to the EIII.

David

Hi everyone,

I'm new to this forum. I have an EII with a working CDS3 and all 3 Universe of Sound CDs. I also have the original factory sound disks. I've been transfering the all of the banks (1 bank at a time) via the EII to an old mac. I have also used the wonderful EXMP program to convert individual samples to .wav files, and the I reassign them into Vsampler presets. This is taking me alot of time. Another method I want to try is to convert all the EII banks to EIII banks and use a sample translator tool (such as chicken systems or extream sample converter) to import all the preset information and voice assignments to a modern software sampler. I would also like to possible do a bult translation of all the EII banks. Does anyone have any tips of suggestions of that has worked well for them?

Rod

Hi,

great job converting the old OMI CDs.
I just have one question concerning the conversion process for esynthesist.
I remember that you told me the sequencer data will be lost when using EMXP. Is this the same with the OMI EII banks? Since I dont know if they contain sequencer data at all...correct me. Are they still intact?

Cheers

Sequencer data is only lost when converting EII banks to other samplerformats in EMXP.
The OMI conversion was not done with EMXP of course, it was done with a custom-built little program which 'simply' extracted the soundbank files from the OMI CD-ROMs. No interpretation was done on the contents of the banks, so they are 100% the same as the original ones. If there were sequences in the original ones, they must also be present in the extracted banks.
That being said, it seems to me that most (or all?) of these OMI banks don't have sequences at all.
Can it be true that only Emu themselves invested in adding sequences in their factory banks ?

///E-Synthesist

I'm sure I still remember some of the NorthStar / OMI Banks with some presets named "play sequence"..
Or am I wrong and mixed that up with the emu banks?!

I know some Burmer Disks containing sequences but I have no idea about OMI. Is there someone who can verify this?

Hi Everyone,

I believe that there are several banks on the OMI disks that have sequences. In fact, I seem to recall on the original listing documents, if there was a * charactor next to the bank name, it indicated that there was a sequence recorded on the named bank.
On another note, it looked like esynthesist was developing a way to read the Cdroms on a computer and developing a interface to transfer banks, to and from a computer to the eII. I believe there was still an issue with the RS422 integration between the two devices.
Questions for Esynthesist
1. Is that going to be available via an update to EMXP? I tried reading the disks via the virtual drive option on the translator, but I could only see the directory.
2. If that option is available, some up us could help make a stab at the hardware integration. I have a RS422 breakout box, scope, and tools to try to troubleshoot clock, grounds, signal, ect. I'm a little rusty at this, but I try.

One more thing, I believe I speak for all of us on this forum who really appreciate esynthesist hard work that still makes playing with our old emu samplers so much fun!!! Thank you so much!

You're welcome...
1. The code I wrote until now 'technically works', so it could be included in EMXP but I think it would be better to only release it if it reaches a performance which is similar to the Mac<-->EII communication. People would have to buy a PC device of about 50-80 USD, which is in the same (or even higher) price range as buying a second hand Mac Classic. If the performance would be too low, people may be disappointed...
2. Based on some hardware measurements, I think that the differential amplitude voltage level of the PC transmitted data is about 16% lower than the one sent by the Mac. The EII refuses quite a lot of the commands sent by the PC. This results in re-handshaking, which takes a lot of communication time of course. I was thinking that this could be caused by different voltage levels between the Mac Serial port and the PC RS422 port. But sometimes the communication goes quite well (almost no refused commands): strange !
I also know that my software is sending the commands at a quarter of the speed of the Mac. I'm looking into that right now, but there's almost no overhead code in my program so it will be a challenge to increase this speed. The third possible reason is that the PC and EII are using their own, independent clocks of 500 kHz. The Mac however is externally clocked by the EII clock, which guarantees that they are in sync all the time. Of course I would like the PC RS422 port to be externally clocked by the EII too, but this (as always) is one of those typical Mac features which is not available on standard "PC devices". Of course someone could build a USB-serial PC board with external clocking features but having to buy a non-standard device is not a very attractive idea for most EII users so I think that's not an option.
Well... I'll still do some experiments. If I need exact voltage or timing measurements with a (digital) scope, I'll let you know !

///E-Synthesist
 

Guys, I think I'll give up this experiment.
I succeeded in transferring banks from the EII to the PC at a very acceptable speed (about 20 seconds).
But the opposite direction is a complete disaster (sending banks from PC to EII, which unfortunately is much more interesting than receiving banks from the EII).
I'm pretty sure it is caused by the low output level of the transmit pin at PC side. The Mac's transmit signal is very high in comparison to the one of the PC RS422 port. As a result the EII is probably confused about the data it is receiving from the PC, the signal level is simply too low to be reliable.
I could switch to a USB<-->RS232 device instead of an RS422 one, since RS232 uses much higher voltage levels. But this will probably cause problems too: in fact the output signal may be too high and destroy the interface port of the EII (max allowed is 15V while some RS232 can generate 25V). And at the receive side of the RS232 the EII transmitted signal may be too weak to be valid for the RS232 receiver.

So i guess we will have to stick to the old Macs...

 :'( :'(

I also didn't succeed in uprading my second EII to RS 422. I plugged in the interface, soldered the connections, but: no success. "Cannot communicate with the EII".

Wintermute advised me of checking if all kludges mentioned in the service manual have been done (page 127 and following) - which I haven't in fact. I just wanted to give it a try, but it seems that these kludges indeed HAVE to be done ... which at this time - to me - REALLY is impossible (I mean just READING the details about what has to be done is giving me headaches).

Nevermind, it works as it did before, and I still got my primary EII which is my macs best friend  ;)
It would have been nice though to have a second one that can communicate..

E-synthesist, keep up the good work, don't let it get you down. Maybe you wake up one night with a flash of genious... You will, I bet  ;)

Greetz,
Elm.

I didn't even know that there were some kluges required before installing the RS422 board...
Just having taken a look at these pages of the service manual I instantly got a headache too  :D
The same kind of headache which attacked me when I was reading the "installation" procedure for adding SCSI support to the Rev2 EMAX-I samplers... as a result I still don't have SCSI on that Emax...

About my PC-EII communication efforts: today I was in a shop and found a USB<-->RS232 converter which could be clocked at 500kbaud, so I bought it and tried it out immediately. Although its voltage levels are much higher than the ones on the RS422 port, the communication is even worse with the EII  ??? In fact the EII is not reacting at all on any command it receives from my PC...
Maybe I will try to find another USB<-->RS422 converter (which would be my third one already) and hope that its signals will be somewhat higher...

@elm
Sorry to hear your conversion project did not work well.
The kludges are necessary indeed. When I received my EII I checked all the kludges and luckily had been done already (the EII was well serviced from what I saw). Doing those kludges requires some basic understanding of soldering and electronics. But its not that hard to do those fixes.

@all
I had the chance to try out some OMI EII banks with sequences. And I can now confirm that the converted OMI banks include them and that they are working. Some of them are a little boring while others are great 80s sequences only missing some Van Halen guitar riff :).

@e-synthesist
I'm happy you did not give up that easily! Hope the new interface will work out. Btw. did you try some old PC with a build in RS232 interface? I think I saw some dongle to convert RS232 to RS422 for the parallel port.

Dear E-Synthesist.

Any chance this software can be downloaded from somewhere ?
I'd like to convert all three of my OMI discs.

Thanks;

Kenneth

No.
Check your e-mail for some explanation...

///E-Synthesist

Hi Wintermute,
No, I didn't try a built-in RS232 on an old PC. The reason is double: (1) I have no old PC with RS232 which is capable of running Windows XP... (2) Traditional RS232 ports do not support high speed communication at 500kbaud. Only the most recent ones, based on new IC design, can handle the full range between about 200 bps and 1 Mbps.
I'm thinking now about buying a digital scope to trace exactly what's going on (and to use it for other purposes too I hope, given the price of such equipment  :) )
But again: if the conclusion would be that some custom hardware or customisation of the EII port is required, I don't think a lot of EII or Emax users will be interested anymore... 

I think so, too. I would be interested, but I'm just no electrician at all, and I'm left handed in modding electronics  :D

And yet again The master did it !

I would have loved such utility a few years ago when i did the translation of the thrid cds manually with floppies....

it took about one month, few hours a day to do it !! a true nightmare ! ::)

Hi all

I just want to give some information about a problem I detected with the OMI UOS 1 cdrom this week.

This CD-ROM (or some versions of it) seems to contain inconsistencies.
Starting from bank ELECTRIC PIANO 2 until bank HARP GLISSES MAJOR 9 U/D,  the name of the bank does not match the actual bank behind it. The actual bank is in fact the one belonging to the next bank entry.
E.g. the bank index contains bank 31 ELECTRIC PIANO 2 followed by bank 32 Clavinet. If you select the Electric Piano 2 bank, the Clavinet bank will be loaded. And this goes on like this until bank 158.

This also means that the actual ELECTRIC PIANO 2 bank is missing on the CDROM, while the actual HARP GLISSES MAJOR 9 U/D bank has been burned twice on the CDROM by OMI.

As a consequence, my little extraction program which I provided to some members of this forum will extract all 540 banks from the CDROM, but all files between the one named "ELECTRIC PIANO 2" (numbered 33 by my program) and the one named "HARP GLISSES MAJOR 9 U/D" (numbered 160 by my program) contain bank data which belongs to the "next" file.

I checked this problem with Ron on this board who owned these CDROMs too and he confirmed that there was indeed a problem with his UOS1 CD also.
So to my opinion this problem lies in the original CDROM... but if anyone on this board owns a UOS1 CDROM which seems not to have this problem, I'd like to hear from you !

To all people who already used my extraction software: the generated banks are 100 pct OK but you'll just have to live with the inconsistent file naming in about 130 bank files. Or you could rename them all :-)

///E-Synthesist
  

Hi

      a bit new here and looking for cdrom image sof the emulator libraries , can anyone share these ? i can share back a huge resource of samples - ive spent the last 2 years hiring and sampling synths including some unsual stuff like a novamod sh101  , really interested in trading sounds.Please message me  , i am really after the old factory and classic emulator sounds , in particular 'green ' ethnic sounds

cheers

marty

Update from the RS422 PC <--> Emulator II front:

This weekend I finally succeeded in getting a custom built USB/RS422 device work between my Emax and my PC. The device and its firmware have been designed in a way that it should also be compatible with the Emulator II.
Anyway it works great with the Emax: I can succesfully transfer complete soundbanks between my Windows laptop and my Emax-I now.

So I hope the signal levels of the device are OK for the Emulator II too. But the even more important clock synchronization problems which I encountered during all my previous RS422 attempts are for sure gone with this new device !
I will do some tests as soon as possible with my Emulator II and will report the results on this forum.
If it works, this rather inexpensive device will be a nice extension for EII enthousiasts. In that case EMXP will be upgraded to support the bank transfer of course...

///E-Synthesist

 ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH

O H   M Y   G O D ! ! ! ! !

I knew it!
U are a genious!

 :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :P :P :P :P :P :P

I have tested the device with the Emulator-II today.

And it works !

I succeeded in transferring sound banks between my PC and the EII in both directions.

There's just a small problem left with respect to the maximum supported datapacket size in the communication. This doesn't have any impact on the reliability of the transfer, but it makes the transfer slower than on the Mac.
But I hope to resolve this issue in the firmware of the device.

FYI: current throughput statistics are:
- send bank from EII to PC: about 22 seconds  (about 13 seconds on Mac)
- send bank from PC to EII: about 18 seconds  (about 13 seconds on Mac)
It's acceptable I guess, but it would be nice if I could increase the speed.
We'll see.

I'll take a break now.

///E-Synthesist

Update:

The firmware is OK now and supports the full packet size.
The speed gain is pretty low though (1 to 2 seconds better) so I will now check the test software I have written on the PC side. It's either a "programmed delay" (which can be solved) or "USB communication overhead" (with which we would have to live...).

In general, banktransfers in about 20 seconds are possible at this moment.

YOU ARE KING esynthesist!!!

This is more than amazing!
You planned this for x-mas, didn't you?!
 8) 8) ;) ;D

A M A Z I N G ! ! !

I read about it in the yahoo group, too. That stand alone usb stick device would be .........
you did it man!
cheers!

E-Synthesist, this is incredible! The irony being that I spent six months (literally) refurbishing a Macintosh SE/30 that I bought second-hand. Needless to say, I can't wait to work directly off my Windows XP PC.

By the way, I'm a noob to the EMXP software, and I must say it's fantastic. Brilliant work!

Best,
DBM

Hello Guys, i have almost all optical media for the EII. However, there's something wrong with them. The OMI libraries spread across many CDs (EG VOL 1A,1B,1D and im missing 1C for example). I need these, especially VOL2.

I can give serious EII stuff in return in optical format or i'd pay.

Can someone help pls?

Guys, I don't have an Emulator synth, but if I have the original OMI library CDs and make an image of them, will I be able to eventually use/convert the sounds in some other format?

By the way, what is SoundDesigner? Is that some kind of software?

You might be jumping the gun a little here.
Those libraries are for the EII. SD is another entity in itself. There is a guy on eBay selling EII sounds in other formats but you need to do your homework on this first. Your questions are just too general for precise answers.
If you look through this forum, you will find all of the info and resources you will need.
Be sure to look at the Emulator Archive as well. It will give you a general overview of everything.

well said!

Holaaaa :) Since years I search for the complete factory library from emulator 1 + 2 + 3, and emax. Can anyone help me ? Best format to use this great samples on my korg Kronos is soundfont. For converting sessions I can use the "chickensys translator" and "emxp", that's all I have... Have anyone all this libraries ? Best regards !!! marc