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

Hi there

Chicken Systems will release a new product in which you can map samples and lots more..and save it into any Sampler format.

Check out here!

Let's hope the EIII format is supportet too..you can then use CF Card for fast transferring your banks..would be nice :)

http://www.chickensys.com/products/sw_iteminfo.php?sw_name=Constructor

Forum discussion here:

http://www.samplerzone.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=118&highlight=constructor



fingers crossed..

You know about EMXP, don't you?
It features wav to EIII and EIII to wav by now, and in April the new version (hopefully) will arrive... with full EIII support (?)... 
The best tool in the world...  I really CANT'T wait for it..

PRAISE E-SYNTHESIST ;)

fingers crossed here too...

Greets,
Elm.

Hi

Yeah I've seen it but not used it yet..however do you say its possible to map samples in it too? I thought one can safe banks but not map samples.. It's windows only though..


Do you know what features comes with full EIII support in emxp?





Greets

You're right, you can't map in EMXP.
But maybe the "full EIII" support / next version includes this, as it is included for the Emax (i guess).
I use EIII remote on my Mac SE to map my exported EMXP Banks.

Greetz,
Elm.

Hi guys, here's some news from the EMXP lab  ;)

"Full support for EIII" means: the same features as the ones EMXP already supports for EMAX and EMULATOR-II.

In general, for both EIII and EIIIXP/EIIIXS, this means:
- all parameters of all objects can be displayed (bank/preset/voice/sample/zone)
- reading/writing banks to removable harddisks + backup/restore features (already supported in current version)
- translation between Wav - Emax - Emax2 - EmulatorII - EmulatorIII - EmulatorIIIX (this is the key part of the next version)
The current EIII translation features of EMXP v2.04 are just WAV <--> EIII (not EIIIX)
But I have to admit there are a few small problems with this function (to name them: you can select 100 samples but EIII only supports 99 samples, and more important: there may arise possible transposition issues). These errors will of course be removed in the next version, and I hope the WAV translation will also include EIIIX by then, in fact this is the last thing I have to add before releasing the next version. The only problem is that my job is taking too much time from me so I almost have no time left for working on EMXP.

By the way: following features will NOT be part of the April release:
- support for EIII(X) floppy disks
- support for EIII(X) operating systems.

I hope to add SoundFont2 sample format support in version 2.06. This will "boost" the usefulness of the EMXP translation capabilities towards/from Emulator III, since SoundFont2 is widely supported by other samplers/translation softwares.
But version 2.06 will probably not be released in 2008 anymore.

Despite my lack of "EMXP time", the new version is for 99% ready. In fact I'm using the new version 2.05 already for one month now in my own studio and all translations between Emax/EmulatorII/EmulatorIII/EIIIX seem to be successful. By the way: EMXP will also be able to translate EIIIX banks to EIII, even if the EIIIX banks are larger than 8 MB; in that case EMXP will create multiple EIII banks and spread the presets over the banks. Max. target samplerates and banksizes are user definable.

Note: version 2.05 can not be downloaded yet. I think it will be released in the middle of april, maybe earlier. For free of course.

Some of you are talking about "sample maps" (?). If you mean translations like the ones mentioned above, then EMXP will support "sample maps". If you mean something else, EMXP will most probably not support "sample maps".

e-synthesist,
you are a true genius, and your work can't be appreciated enough.

I think "sample mapping" - in this context - should mean:
Okay, I've got a bunch of wav files, now I want to create a EIII bank with them. Can I tell EMXP to put the first wav to let's say A#3, the second wav to maybe F4 and so on...

Anyway, I just can't wait for it.....   The possibility to convert between EII and EIII - incredible!!!

Greets,
Elm.

We are ramping this up and hopefully it will be available this summer.

lol ...hope it works better than the crappy S-7xx translation we know from cs-Translator...

I find your answer intruiging. Several questions and a comment:

1) Who is "we"?
2) What do you find problematic about the Roland S-7x conversions, and what are you converting to?
3) How is this relevant on a E3 forum?

I have been converting Roland-> into all types of samplers, including Emu stuff (not E3 yet). It always sounds great.

If you are a user and you want to report a problem, by all means do so. Better to be part of a solution and not part of the problem. Bug Reports www.chickensys.com/translator/bugreports (http://www.chickensys.com/translator/bugreports)

to 1.& 2.) WE are a couple of S-7xx users in europe. We made different tests with the free-version of "translater".
We've made some translations from *.wav, S-1000 & soundfont-format to Roland S-7xx, but nothing worked in a Sp-700, S-750 or S-760.
We are no customers, so some of us postet the problems in the former "translator"-forum - then there was a couple of answers from angry US-Roland & Translator users an the cs-moderators killed the threads. No rumor, it's true - perhaps i have some old mails from angry US-Users. CS said we should send files to the bugreport, we've done this (2006) but have no answers and no solutions until now.

So WE (a handful Roland S-users) let our fingers from chickensys-products - not less, not more!

This is no bashing, only a "test"-user opinion

to 3.) this is a discussion about a commercial product in a EIII-forum, i only said in my words "community be careful with this product, there can be some bugs"

Can you make a loyalty oath, that a xyz to Roland S-7xx works absolutly fine?

Since I don't know about the occasion you speak of, I can't comment on it, but what I can say is that we have a Bug Report system in place that if a person finds a file that doesn't convert correctly, they can supply it into Bug Reports and it gets addressed within 24-48 hours.

Unfortunately, and I don't want to be judgemental about this but it's true, but many people fail to follow the simple instructions and they do not supply any source files, nor compelte a Bug Report, but rather just complain on a forum. We try to steer people to be constructive, but many times people fail to follow through.

We then try the next best thing, which is to try to simulate what they describe, and it works for us.

We then try other things we may have not thought of, and they usually work.

We THEN try to persuade the original complainer to submit their file (the file they are trying to convert), but by that time they flake out and disappear - with their original complaint unresolved, sitting on the forum site.

(Then, maybe a year later, some person revives the thread and we go back to square one.)

On the postitive, though, most of the time people follow through, and we satisfy their concern.

So if you know of any issues, our ears are open and we'll address anything immediately and quickly.

We've been around for 20+ years, Translator has been around for 10 or so. There's been plenty of time for people to get the right idea about us, and also the wrong idea.

But we always can be contacted - 320-235-9798, or support@chickensys.com.

ok, i tried now the latest trlfree 2.9.114

Roland S7xx still doesn't work correct! I tried your "bugreport" to show the details,
but this report is also really "buggy" -> i wrote there
Translator Version 2.9 and Build Number: 114 (with the correct syntax)

thats the message after submitting
The version you entered is not the latest version and build of Translator, which is 2.9.114 for Windows and 2.9.114 for Mac.

Please try the latest version first before you submit a bug report.



thats the things which make me (us) tired :(

@ chickeneps: Do you wan't to know the problems or not?

...sorry forum for this off topic...

It's not "buggy".

The latest version is build 115, not Build 114. That is mentioned on the Bug Report page (read the clear paragraph above).

We get the Bug Reports anyway, and you also didn't provide a file, like the the instructions ask you to do. We tried a Akai->Roland and it worked for us. So we need your example.

Thanks for the Bug Report - just fill out another one, with an Akai file that demonstrates what you are speaking of, and put in Build 115 like the instructions say. We do want to help you out.

Sorry, thats not true - i'm not able to download and use build 115

thats the version i can access (27-Aug-2008-7:26pm MEZ):

...Translator Free Version 2.9, Build 114 Full Setup PC
A Free version of Translator Windows; limited functionality. Same...  

where can i download build 115?

Usual place:

www.chickensys.com/downloads/translator_free.php (http://www.chickensys.com/downloads/translator_free.php)

Again, we are interested in any issues, so when you have some, submit the source file in question with a short explaination to Bug Reports www.chickensys.com/translator/bugreports (http://www.chickensys.com/translator/bugreports) and we'll check it out.

Strange things are happening here.

- Immediately after the new Translator was announced a few weeks ago I downloaded the latest free version which was - as I far as I remember - described as build 115 august 2008 on the download website.

- But after reading the eiiiforum messages half an hour ago, I checked the Chickensys website and it indeed mentioned build 114 of june 2008 again (the one Micromoog also observed).
Maybe Chickensys did a restore of the old website after some server crash...

- Big surprise however: while typing this very message, Garth is also typing a reply and he says that build 115 can be found on the usual place. So I check their website again and guess what... the website mentions build 115 again. So it seems that the Chickensys webmaster changed something during the last hour to correct the problem (if this is true it would of course be nice to at least admit this)

By the way I downloaded the free version which was mentioned on the "114" download page half an hour ago and I compared that one with the "115" I downloaded a few weeks ago: they are definitely different files with different sizes so they are different builds (114 and 115 that is).

Now I'm not really a user of this software, but I have to admit that at least the free version is behaving strange and giving quite low-level technical errors when I try to use it. But I only tried Emu-related conversions and I didn't read any manual or help file (by the way, Emax seems still not to work correctly on the level of sample data). I also never submitted any bug report because I'm not considering to actually "use" Translator in my studio - I just take a quick look at each version - so my opinion is probably not very important :-)

On the other hand there also seems to be a group of very satisfied users (see comments on the web, even the last messages on samplerzone) so perhaps satisfaction or anger depends on the way people use this software...

The listing on the Downloads section of Translator Free did say earlier today build 114, we changed it this afternoon, you are correct. That's just text; the download has been build 115 for sometime. Browser and system caching can show old things, perhaps, I don't know what the issues would be.

Nevertheless, even if the users got build 114, there isn't that much difference; 114 should be just as well as b115.

There are a lot of variables dealing with Emax stuff: floppy or hard drive or CD, Emax 1 or 2, homemade stuff or factory floppies/CD's, multi-part floppies, and so on.

Files and disks have so many unusual things about them that we try to handle everything we know about. If there is something that is funny, we simply ask anyone willing to share that info if they would share it, and we attack it immediately.

We only support 12 or 16-bit Emax stuff, which is Emax II. We don't have support yet for Emax 1 8-bit compounded, so that will error or just give noise.

We had emailed you a couple times on the 8-bit sample interpretation but we had not gotten a reply; it wasn't required of course since this is your info, so we understand that.

Hi Garth

You're right, I remember you e-mailed me once about the Emax encoding, sorry for not answering that one.
Anyway - as you may indeed have guessed - I'm not publishing any specs, creating them took me too much effort :-)

Those Emu samplers are not the most easy ones to support in sampler software, so I understand what you're saying. My specs also still contain some unresolved issues, but fortunately they don't seem to be real blocking ones...

But I'm getting a bit off-topic here on the EIII forum...
Anyway I hope a lot of EIII users enjoy Translator !

still no bashing! But...


Chickecneps wrote: [...] we have a Bug Report system in place that if a person finds a file that doesn't convert correctly, they can supply it into Bug Reports and it gets addressed within 24-48 hours.

Now 7 weeks after my offical "bug reporting" i'm still waiting for an answer (i don't expect a solution, only an answer)!

Thats the point for me to ask:
Is Chickensys a serious trading partner?

It was taken care of a long time ago in Build 116. We've updated your Bug Report.

  ;D  hello, just trying to educate myself on what's available.
what is the bottom line on this company's software?
which product do they offer for us EIII user's with modern computers?
thanks to all. ;) 

We (Chicken Systems) have finished our output driver for E3/ESi, which means we can convert to E3/ESi format and write E3/ESi files. It wasn't too difficult but getting the time to do it was a struggle.

This will be put into our Translator program this week. Translator is a Mac and Windows conversion and sampler tool program that converts any format (like Giga, EXS24, Kontakt, Akai, Roland, anything really) to Emu E3/ESi format. This greatly expands the usefulness of your E3/ESi, allowing it to load any format, not just stuff made available in E3/ESi format.

It will also be attached to our new Constructor program, which is a generic Instrument Builder for Mac and Windows. This allows you to build Presets and Bank from scratch or from any starting point (SoundFont, Kontakt file, whatever), then write them to a Emu disk.

Any questions - check www.chickensys.com (http://www.chickensys.com) out, or email me at support@chickensys.com, or ask here on this forum.

thanks for the quick reply!
constructor? is this something i can use to build 1) virtual sampler/synth then 2)the sounds i create with it can 3)be written into any sampler format ? is this the basic idea?
and if so ,how do i get the sample from my computer to the EIII?
even when using  translator how do i get the sample from my computer to the EIII?
let me make it clear that i know how to move samples with the old macs-zip-scsi method
i am talking about  using this software  with newer computers.  ??? thanks

Yes, what Constructor is, is a generic Instrument/Bank builder.

You open a new Bank document. This is a blank slate where you develop a Bank of Presets (Constructor calls them Instruments).

You open a new Instrument document. You start filling it up with .wav or AIFF files, and you program the keyrange and velocity range and pitch settings etc. etc. You can audition your work at anytime with a MIDI keyboard or the onscreen keyboard.

You then assign the Instrument to the Bank document you have open.

Once you are done, you can save it to a Emu disk (if you have it hooked up to your computer) or a "Virtual Drive", which is just a big file that is intended to be written to a CD.

Then, hook the SCSI Drive or new Emu CD to your Emu, and load it in. Done.

 ;D thank you-thank you! Danke!  Gracias!
your software has moved to the top of my next shopping list for my EIII !
doing actual synthesis with a sampler is one of the areas i want to explore with the EIII.
do any members know if any other  emu sampler besides the emax-se actually has a secrect synthesis engine waiting to be exploited?