Help on the preset library

[omissis]

Hi all
I just made an unexpected and great finding while searching for other things in some archives: closed in a cardboard box I found a set of cds representing the whole preset library of the EII, including the OMI ones; I must thank R.Keeble who sold them to me many years ago; it was quite a shock to me because I was sure I did sell them or lost, so I completely forgot they still were at home!
Now I'd like to use them but I'm facing two big problems:
1. the cds are made in Mac format, I'm on windows machine
2. the samples are saved as SD4EII format, so I think it could be quite difficult to convert them into wavs.
 unless I get an old MAc and an EII with its RS422 cable.
Is anybody able to hint me to something I could do about them? I'd be glad to share all of them for free with anybody asking in this forum, just let me know how I can get them into plain wavs.
Thanks for help
M

[Elmbeatz]

You can access the cds on a pc using some macdisc (or similar) software.
Then, you can use esynthesist's FREE software EMXP to convert all banks (or those you want) into wavs (and much more).
That's it.

[omissis]

You can access the cds on a pc using some macdisc (or similar) software.
Then, you can use esynthesist's FREE software EMXP to convert all banks (or those you want) into wavs (and much more).
That's it.

Hi Elmbeatz
Some update: I installed MacDrive on my machine then copied the files in several folders (discs are named OMI, from 1A to 3C); by the way these files look the same even without Mac Drive: some files are named after the preset names, while some others are gave a number as filename (looks like 201...204, 205 and so on, maybe loop point infos?).
Now I tried to use EMXP but it seems it doesnt recognise where are the presets; I mean, these saved are single samples I guess, so maybe EMXP has to recognize the whole bank.
Any alternative?
Thanks

[Elmbeatz]

IIRC, you have to "tell" macdrive, what type of files the cds contain. Somewhere in the preferences, you have to add a filetype with the following specs:

Emulator II Sound Designer Files:

File Type = "E2BK", Creator = "XFER", MS DOS Extension = ".EII"

This will help the system recognise the files correctly and automatically add the extension (as I said IIRC...)

Then EMXP should work flawlessly.

[omissis]

Hi again
I followed your instructions and created the .eII extension; now the files show their extensions in Macdrive.
On the other hand EMXP wasn't able to detect the files on the discs.
By the way, should I extract them first?
Also, what is FMS?
thx for your reply
M

[Elmbeatz]

Hi again
I followed your instructions and created the .eII extension; now the files show their extensions in Macdrive.
On the other hand EMXP wasn't able to detect the files on the discs.
By the way, should I extract them first?
Also, what is FMS?
thx for your reply
M

Yeah, I think you should copy the files from the disks to your harddrive. I can't remember exactly (as it's been quite some time I've been doing all that..), but I even think you have to copy all the banks to a specific folder that's used by emxp. Please have a quick look in emxp's manual for that.

FMS? What you mean ??

[Samp]

Your must  copy the banks in your hard disk and renane the files with EII extention and copy all  in the images directory of Emxp.
FMS is a  Third party library for EII

[Elmbeatz]

Your must  copy the banks in your hard disk and renane the files with EII extention and copy all  in the images directory of Emxp.

Yeah, that's it.

FMS is a  Third party library for EII

Ahh, that FMS    Bloody good library though

[omissis]

Hi
Thanks to you all; I eventually set up the file type in the macdrive application, copied the files into the "images" folder, and now EMXP does recognize the sample banks!
One last couple of questions so I can let you rest at last: do I need to pass through the SF2 conversion to get wavs or Akai type files ? This because I tried to convert one sample bank (named "Acoustic guitar") into Soundfont bank; there EMXP tells me "1 presets have NOT been translated"; by looking at the report there is a "chorus guitar" preset which has not been converted; do I have any chance to get it?
THanks again for your invaluable help!
M

[Elmbeatz]

No idea. 

[esynthesist]

Converting EII samples to WAV files does not require a SoundFont2 conversion; you can simply ask EMXP to show all samples of the selected bank, then select all of them at once, and finally ask EMXP to make WAV files from them.
If you want to convert to Akai, you can indeed do this by converting the banks to SF2 first, and then using another conversion software to convert the SF2 files to Akai.
If you want to use EMXP to create Akai S1000 files, you don't have to convert the EII files to SF2, but rather to Emax format. Then, as a next step, you can convert the Emax files to AkaiS1000 programs and samples. These files can only be loaded into an Akai sampler by writing them to an Akai floppy disk...
(EMXP does not fully support Akai S1000, it only supports conversion from Emax to Akai S1000)

BTW: what "Acoustic Guitar" bank did you try to convert to SF2 ? I just tried the Emu factory one, and the Burmer one. Only in the Burmer EII bank conversion, 1 preset is not being translated: P99, which is an empty preset.
FYTI: If EMXP does not convert a preset into SF2, this is typically because either the preset is empty (e.g. a preset which is only being used to give credits to the sound designers) , or because it is invalid (errors in its voices, presets, samples).

[omissis]

Thx esynthethis
Yes the problem happens on the Burmer collection, so far I'm happy that the issue was known because the preset is empty, I was suspecting something wrong when ripping the cd-roms.
I'll check all the files in the next days and will be ready to share them if you want
Thx again!
M

[ahaigh01]

Hi,

I would be very interested in getting the SD4EII versions of the banks that you have.  I have disk images of these CDs which can be read by CDXtract, but can't get them into my EII.  Is there a way-anyone?  I do have a Mac Classic with SD for getting banks into the EII.  I've made a dozen or more banks for the EII recently if folks are interested.  I think came out really well...