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In regards to Geektech's reply: "Is the emax REALLY going to help your studio workflow, or help you write that song you are just dying to get out of your head? If you don't have a passion for troublesome vintage machines and the elusive 12-bit sound then maybe it's just best to hang it up and sell / donate it to someone that does and try to recoup whatever investment you made, as best as you can.";

Bottom line, this machine is worth it to me but only in as much as I can update it with HxC from Lotharek or find another PCD-50B and drop it in. It saves the hassle of having to deal with FDD's and old 20 MB noisy as the day is long SCSI hard drives that fail when you do as much as bump the stand the Emax is sitting on. If anything the modern upgrade to the memory storage platform on new machines has improved while sound quality on a lot of romplers and synths has gone to shite...You just can't replace the EMU sound with anything modern that I have come across and I have been buying synths and samplers since 1981.

As far as using a softsynth as opposed to a hardware sampler as opposed to a whatever...in the end, its how good the music you write is, that matters. If you write crap it doesn't matter if you use a wall full of modular analogs and all the best SSL consoles, your music still sucks.......If you want to just mess around and have those old school DM sounds on a sampler that was used by them back in the day, and MUST have the machines they used, then there is no substitute to the EII or Emax sound. If you want to kind of get close to a 'general 80's vibe' ;and use something that has that vintage flavor and you don't have a need to sample and import your own sounds, UVI Emulation I and II will do you just fine within your DAW.

But IMHO, If you want to use the equipment used back in the 80's to make music today that sounds like the 80's, You NEED the real deal when it comes to the EMU sound. With Analogs, a different story. I can get my Subphatty to sound like my old Moog Source but I can't get Kontakt to sound like an EMU Emax, No way, no how....

If you are a younger person, writing music that is retro in nature, and want to send us old timers back to nostalia land with your new songs, you are gonna have to use gear from the era we grew up in...or something that you cannot simply tell the difference with (again, My DSI Mopho can mimic and Dave Smith (Sequential Circuit) Pro-1 from 1982 pretty darned well) .

I venture to say if you are not of the age (40 YO plus) to which you can remember what a Emulator II and Emax cost brand new, then you won't have the appreciation, or wherewithall to see it through and stick to your guns until you get the damned thing working--- cause to me, finding an Emax for 125$ US (inlcuding shipping mind you!) is worth the effort to get it running again. No VST can do what it can do and its sounds like an SP12

http://www.vintagesynth.com/emu/sp12.php but plays scales!..for that, its a freaking steal.

On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 9:31 AM, <geektech207@...> wrote:

As an addendum to my first post, I've also seen "TIMEOUT ERROR" with a nonworking disk. I'm not sure the disk conditions that cause that as opposed to the other read errors though.

And as far as the frustrated replies goes:

FDD setups are no delight, that is a certainty. But like anything in life, it comes down to "How much do you want it?", and risk vs. reward.

Is the emax REALLY going to help your studio workflow, or help you write that song you are just dying to get out of your head? If you don't have a passion for troublesome vintage machines and the elusive 12-bit sound then maybe it's just best to hang it up and sell / donate it to someone that does and try to recoup whatever investment you made, as best as you can. Maybe some bandpass / overdrive VST on your emu Kontakt library would be just as good for your projects. And I don't mean that as a character judgment. Really.

Maybe it just ISN'T worth all the hassle. That's not for anyone to decide except for the end user on a case-by-case basis. I certainly can empathize with anyone with a non-working machine, because I have had them in various forms. Sometimes it's just not worth the headache, and it's time to accept the situation and just get on with making the music.

But at least we've got this mailing list. We';ve got worldwide help and parts at our disposal, and we have new technology like the HxC to get the most out of our vintage gear. And if you do decide to go separate ways with your old equipment then I can guarantee someone else out there is dying to fork over some $$$ to take it off your hands. That's the plus side.

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Le Sociere Des Oscillateurs Mystere

Emax

Re: [emax] RE: Emax OS creation primer

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