EII sound quality following conversions

[JMP]

Hi all... since selling my EII a few years back and recently missing being able to play my favourite banks, I bought an Emax II rack and converted them using EMXP. Noting that loop points got messed up and wasn't that happy with the sound, I sold it.

Now have a DPX-1 with HxC in the 3.5" bay. Converted banks to DPX using DPX Utilities then to hfe format for the HxC unit and no more loop altering issues, but pad sounds are notably different, a much muddier filter/thinner sound IMO which I think is gonna bug me. 

Last option before buying another EII (!) one day is putting HxC in the 5.25" bay which I presume reduces conversion, maybe just .EII to hfe (using EMXP)? Just wondering if anyone here has done this already and can comment on the sound quality compared to the EII playing the original files. If it's the DPX itself, there's no point me doing it. 

Cheers. 

[esynthesist]

While the DPX-1's sound is great, it can be pretty different compared with the EII. It depends on the presets.
I compared some EII banks a few years ago, playing them both on the EII and the DPX-1 in my studio, and I noticed quite some differences, especially with respect to the filters and the modulation. But it had its own character and sometimes I even liked the DPX-1 sound more than the original EII sound.

I don't think the sound differences you experience (e.g. thinner sound...) are the consequence of the conversion done by the E2DPX software in the DPXTOOLS. Because the only conversion done by this software which can affect the sound is the expansion of the 8 bit compressed sample bytes to 12 bit linear PCM sample bytes. None of the preset/voice/sample parameters are interpreted or changed, because that's done by the DPX-1 itself after loading the bank, no matter if the bank is loaded from the 3.5 drive or the 5.25 drive. The only differences between an EII bank on a 3.5 DPX disk and the same EII bank on an original 5.25 EII disk is (1) the filesystem of the disk (2) the disk layout and (3) the resolution of the sample data stored on the disk (12 bit linear versus 8 bit companded).
There might be a slight difference between the 12/8 bit converter used by the DPX-1 itself and the one used by E2DPX (which is the same as the one used by EMXP), but those differences won't result in e.g. thinner sounds.

If your DPX-1 has an RS422 port and you have an EmuSer, you could load the original EII bank into the DPX-1 via RS422 instead of via HxC, to check if the original EII version of the bank sounds indeed different than the DPXTOOLS version.

If you like, you can also send me one of your banks via e-mail. I can load it into my DPX-1 via RS422 (or create a floppy disk from it with my EII and load it from the resulting 5.25 floppy disk into my DPX-1). And then let my DPX-1 save it to a 3.5 disk and send you the resulting .IMG or .HFE file.
That .HFE file will sound exactly the same on the DPX-1 as the original EII disk would sound on the DPX-1, because in both cases the conversion would have been done by the DPX-1.

You can PM me or send me a mail on my esynthesist at yahoo dot com account.

[JMP]

Hi again Only just seen your message, thanks. I must not have email reply notifications on !?

Having lost some motivation here with all the converting and stuff, I've just put the unit up for sale.... I really don't have the time these days to do all the converting and comparing etc. Think I just need another EII and my old SD setup to get back what I had, that or more spare time again maybe.

Thanks for info and your offer anyway, I suspect it's the DPX-1 unit as some banks sound the same, others don't, most notably the pads. If it doesn't sell may get back to you, cheers for the insight. 

John.

[dfiorucci]

I gigged for sometime in the 90's using a DPX-1 as a substitute for my EII  and I'll second that the DPX-1 was close on some sounds but noticeably duller on some.
I always chalked it up to differences in the converters or the way that the filters tracked.
Most people weren't able to notice the difference i.e. the other members in the band and most of it was lost in the mix anyway.
I'd have the sound man out front add a bit more highs to the DXP-1 where I would mostly EQ the EII flat.

[JMP]

Well I got myself another EII, quicker than expected and much happier now. Sound is more punchy and bright and no dullness in those pads anymore.

Think you're right in that most wouldn't notice, particularly as part of a mix but when played solo and having had one before, you notice the difference.