Introduce Yourself

[sbmayer99]

Hey all-

I'm Steve Mayer. I work in L.A. doing various kinds of music for hire, mostly game music, as well as TV and the occasional film. I'm an avid Emu fan and the EIII is the capstone to my collection. I've read a lot of posts and this is an extremely helpful and intelligent forum, glad to be a member.

[seamonkey]

Welcome to the forum. Looking forward to your comments and any helpful contributions you can add for the rest of us.

[matou]

Hello,

I'm Rodolphe from Switzerland.
I played in a black metal band 1993 to 1996.

I start with E-mu buying a Emax II but, it burn :-(
I replace it with a EIIIXS 24 Mb before tourning with the band.

I have bought a second hand MPC-60 Akai for replace my Atari ST.

I stop music for more than 10 years, and i restarded view years ago.
I already have my EIIIX and my MPC-60 :-)
I bought 2 E4 Platium (one without RFX).

And finaly view months ago a beautifull EIII 8Mb keyboards.
I have already a TX-802 Yamaha.
I use a A&H mixer Zed-R16 and Genelec 6010.

All the best at everybody, for this new year.

Rod

PS I find 8Mb for my EIIIXS views days ago (feb 2014) and now have a 32Mb

[Tygrr]

Hello All -

Tom from Boston, MA USA. broadcast/ audio engineer by trade, music hobbyist as time permits.   I was fortunate  to buy on the cheap two EIII Rack units in 2000 from a state of the art digital ( DASH !!) recording studio that operated in the late 1980's and had the two samplers in service for about 18 mos. before shutting down and shelving them. Btw the studio controlled the samplers  with "a wicked fast" Mac IIfx back in the day. Studio 4 midi  and all the Mac Software mentioned in the Forum here.  I imagine that studio's  investment in their EMU system was close to $45K when all said and done! Smaller potatoes, then a Synclavier or Fairlight , I guess.

When I first got the rack units there was very little helpful information about these. I could not find any samples that were reasonably priced or a working version of Alchemy or why  my HD 3.5 disks kept corrupting. And also Classic Macs were still not throwaways all over Ebay and a nubus Audiomedia II card was $500.  So I sold one and put one aside cause I remembered how amazing it sounded  playing The few Northstar samples that were still left on the HD with a KX88 I that studio included  for $100!

 I Just  recently started  using my remaining EIII rack this week.  After reseating the cards and backing up the OS to  the correct DS/DD 3.5 floppies.  Now I have a running unit. The sound  is  really beautiful and this Forum is a Godsend.  Thank to all for kind information and helpful posts. 


T

EIII Rack  w/ 2.4 OS, 2.0 Firmware, Stock HD, Stock RAM, SCSI ports
Stock EMU III Systems manuals  in binders ( 2)
Mac IIci OS 7.06 80 MB Drive
Alchemy 3.0 ( Thank you for the posts!)
Opcode Editor Librarian original disks

[ghunter]

My name is Graham Hunter, and I've been an e-mu fan from the day I first played an Emax 2 in a little music store in downtown Calgary in the late 80's.  I couldn't afford it then, but every chance I could I'd sneak down and experiment more with what that keyboard could do.  My first e-mu was an E6400 in the mid-90's, which was quickly followed by a Morpheus.

Now, many years later I live in the Seattle area and I'm employed in the software industry and I've been collecting these wonderful instruments from the past.  Today I received my EIII 8MB rack and am absolutely in love with the pure, rich, smooth, warm, and sheer incredible sound quality.  The EIII libraries that I've owned for decades have new life in them, and on many banks that I loaded today I prefer the sound of the EIII over my E4XT Ultra.

[monkeyman]

Hi
My name is Marc.
I've been fiddling with samplers ever since I bought a 1 second luxsound sampler way back.
I have a studio built into a recycled shipping container run entirely on solar power.
I own a wonderfull EIII that myself and my tech have put many many hours into. A true labour of love. One day I'll write about it more to help others here. My EIII has a reconditioned power supply and 2 cf-card readers, new screen and is one of the best I've seen. And yes.. Its a love hate relationship. And... well of course.. Nothing sounds like it! Truly 3d possibly 4d.
The centre of my studio is my Akai MPC 3000 which is my all time favourite bit of gear. I also have a Studio Electronics ATC-1, ASR10, S900, S1100, Publison Infernal Machine, Space Echo and a few other bits n pieces.
I also own a broken EII
Ill rebuild the power supply soon. In fact Im pretty convinced that most of the issues with the EII and EIII are power supply related.
Anyhow.
So good to have all this knowledge around for this incredible sampler.
M

[Manghitsuo]

Hi, I'm Luca from Italy.

The EIIIXP is my second sampler, bought it in the early 90's.
Featurewise compared to the Mirage the step up was huge as was its price.
Gigging around with it the backlight went awol after a year or so and sometimes the sampler didn't recognize the HDD. So I had to take it apart, like a minute before the show, disconnect and reconnect the SCSI ribbon cable to make it work again. Terrible moments but in a way or another the weird procedure always worked. I almost got used to it... 
Never understood what the problem was but the situation settled for the good with the third HDD I used in there. That led me to believe the E-MU didn't like some drives or some brands or maybe the problem had something to do with the SCSI termination.
Anyways, wasn't all perfect but I loved it and still love it to this day mainly for the powerful warm voice not too boxy or shiny.

Sometime ago someone was selling an Emax II for cheap, I couldn't resist but I've yet to spend some quality time with it. The analog clock is tempting to me.

It's so good to have this forum, thank you.
Cheers   

[Alex G]

Hi All,

Alex from the band Propellerheads here, based in the UK. It's a pleasure to come aboard.

I'm looking to revive the E-III Rack I used for our early productions back in '96-97 which has been languishing in a corner ever since its hard drive fell on its sword sometime around the turn of the century.

The current state of the E-IIIR is that it powers up, announces that it's sporting firmware v2.00 and then goes into the endless SCSI port checking loop that I've seen described in various threads on this forum. I get the impression that the way forward is to replace the internal HDD with a CF card via a SCSI to CF reader adapter, and then reinstall the OS from floppy, assuming the floppy drive still works.

I would be very grateful to hear or be pointed at the latest wisdom in this regard, specifically the following:

• The best currently available options for the CF reader adapter and card.
• A source of a bootable OS floppy (I'm a Mac user, which I gather is an issue when it comes to making floppies from a disc image).
• Any other useful insight that anyone may feel moved to share.

I realize that there is a lot of information encoded in the forum already, but I'd really appreciate an overview from someone who has already ingested, filtered and reassembled the raw data into a convenient, bite-sized chunk which might enable me to get up and running again without being entirely sucked into the yawning vortex...  

Great to see that the machines are still being loved and cherished, and I look forward to chatting with you guys.

Alex

[Elmbeatz]

.....

• A source of a bootable OS floppy (I'm a Mac user, which I gather is an issue when it comes to making floppies from a disc image).

.....

Hi Alex!

One of the Mega-Heads around here (Dr.C) states that every EIII has its "own" boot floppy disc.  I forgot the exact reasons for that, but I think it has something to do with filter trimming or so. Nevertheless, I guess that any EIII should boot with any working boot floppy disc. You may try to find someone with an old win XP PC and a floppy drive. Using EMXP, you can then create a EIII boot disc using the OS Disc image which can also be found on the emxp site.

If that doesn't work for you, I guess there'll be someone here to just send you a physical copy of his EIII OS disc...

Greetz,
Elm.

[Alex G]

Hi Alex!

One of the Mega-Heads around here (Dr.C) states that every EIII has its "own" boot floppy disc.  I forgot the exact reasons for that, but I think it has something to do with filter trimming or so. Nevertheless, I guess that any EIII should boot with any working boot floppy disc. You may try to find someone with an old win XP PC and a floppy drive. Using EMXP, you can then create a EIII boot disc using the OS Disc image which can also be found on the emxp site.

If that doesn't work for you, I guess there'll be someone here to just send you a physical copy of his EIII OS disc...

Greetz,
Elm.

Hi Elm, and thanks for the info! The "unique boot floppy" concept is interesting, especially if the floppy includes alignment parameters. I recall that there is some variation in filter cutoff frequency across the sixteen voices (two are noticeably less bright than the others) ? I wonder if that might have been the result of the HD boot files being installed from a non-original floppy at some point, or are such parameters known to drift over time?

I will investigate the EMXP site, thanks for the pointer!

Alex

[krisk]

Hi, registered today with this forum while fiddling with EMXP. Reason : I got an ESI-4000 already years ago, but now I only have the time to deal with it in more detail. I had added an SCSI2CD module and I'm trying to dump all the 20 CDs that came with the ESI-4000 when I bought it from a guy in Hungary - reason I bought it at that time was to test out the Tehtubes B3 samples, which were quite nice at that time. Today there are better Hammond B3 emulators around. Anyway for my special problem today I'll go into a forum thread for this.

--
Christoph
(living near the Belgian frontier - Aachen, Aken, Aix-La-Chapelle)

[gianfra53]

Hi All,
I am Gianfranco from Milan, Italy.
I own an EIII keyboard (4MB, firmware 1.0) that was in its Fly case for 20 years. Now I want to revive it.
The original HDD was a Seagate ST251N 40MB and was broken. Unfortunately, my sons had a brilliant idea to trash out all software, disks and samples. So, I must to start from zero.
I have bought a disk with the latest OS available (2.42) and the floppy function well, I need suggestions on how to buy a proper SCSI boot drive or perhaps a SCSI2SD solution.
Many thanks to all of you that would help me.
Best regards
Gianfra53

[Panwork23]

Hi everyone here,

Im PIERRE From PARIS. A guy who start sampling synth on 1993 at thirteen yo with FM and TX81Z and on 1995 year after JC, at the time Im only fifteen and bought a K2000 Kurzweil for 10.000 francs I remember... After while, I start to make a lot of music with lot of different people as a teenage do, lot of styles fully nineties spirit - some techno trip hop jazz electronic sample funk etc...

I progress slowly but surely, gear after gear, read books of machine ... because at the time for a young boy, informations was not easy to collect and gear was pretty expansive. At ninteen, my father help me to study by paying a Cinema AV school in Paris. And the second year, I prefer to spend the money of the school to bought a Powermac 8600/250 - and go in the meanwhile at University (because in France, Big University is free of charge for French). So I continue to work music a lot and to study at college both. I have the chance to sign with my first label Techno in 1999; I bought a lot of things with the budget. Start to enjoy analog stuff... and big sampler too like old 12 beats, my first mixer, compresser, my first lexicon, my first DAW etc..

Few years of happiness : I make music, win some money to create stuff at home, could have great time, make what I want... but Support crisis of Download are killing a lot of professional aera... Vinyls sales are going down but in fact at beginning for me, it could be a kind of opportunity. At the time, maybe your remember, a lot of big studio are on the edge and close door. Lot of gears on the market to dig : I bought a lot of professional studio stuff and start to work as Sound Engineer Free lance, with a lot of gear, neve, Manley, GLM, 1176, EMT, Lexicon... I bought my old springs BX20.

The work of SOUND ENGINEER at the time (2004-2010) very boring job in fact.... because making sound for deaf producers who only loves ultra limited hip hop... progressively, I loose faith, work fully in the box with plugs (hardware work need time patience and love, sodtware work is perfect for modern work)... I quit on 2010.

But with covid crisis and for me, the middle age crisis too, I come back to music on 2020. But differently... Im looking for some kind of sounds. So i test thousands of gears, bought sale many synths...

I try maybe all the samplers acessibles : akai Ensoniq Roland Yam, .....

And three weeks before , I have a revelation like I see Jesus in the sky with Violins :

I bought an E3 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This thing is HUGE. Is not a sampler. Its an electronic Stardivarius !

So im here to exchange, help and bein help about tips tricks technics and what ever else about E 3....

[lowpass77]

Hello, i am Chris from Germany. I traded something for a EIII Rack, about which i got some questions - big THANK YOU in advance!
 I make electronic music which i would describe rather on the the dark, dubby experimental side ,)
Other equipment are things like Wave 2.0, Analog Rytm MK2, Waldorf M, T??R? etc.

[AvD]

Hello from Belgium,

First of all, congratulations to all of you maintaining this forum, an incredible resource!

I started my journey with E-mu samplers in the 90s (Emax), and later I had the opportunity to buy an EIII keyboard. Unfortunately, my activities (studies, bass playing, life...) prevented me from spending time on the EIII, and it remained in my attic for more than 20 years.

A few weeks ago, I decided to restart it. After a deep cleaning of the contacts, reseating the boards and a few components (everything went pretty well), I was able to access my old banks, but the hard drive had a few bad sectors and all my floppies were unreadable. So I installed a new SCSI2SD and now I am enjoying EIII banks that are easily available nowadays.

I am really motivated to make it 100% functional so here I am with a few questions... and this forum is encouraging, I hope I can find some help.
Please note that I have a BSc in computing, but I am not versed in electronics.

All the best!