Details :
- currency: GBP
- delivery: Local Delivery
- price_display: £275
- private_party: Yes
FOR SALE
EXCELLENT EXAMPLE OF THE CLASSIC EMU EMAX 1
SAMPLING KEYBOARD FROM CIRCA 1988.
INCLUDES ORIGINAL USER MANUAL, ALL ORIGINAL FACTORY SAMPLE DISKS PLUS
A MASSIVE SAMPLE LIBRARY CONSISTING OF SEVERAL THOUSAND SUPERB
SAMPLES OVER SOME 110 FLOPPY DISKS, HOUSED IN TWO LARGE DISK CADDIES.
I have for sale an excellent
condition and totally original Emu Emax I Sampling keyboard dating from circa
1988. It is in exceptional condition for its age unlike most other Emax’s
offered for sale nowadays with barely a mark anywhere and all buttons and
decals are totally intact and unmarked. It is fully functional throughout with
a perfect keyboard, disk drive perfect, display is crisp, clear and with good
contrast in both in artificial or natural light (N.B. LCD back light has now dimmed
as is usual with a classic keyboard of this age but can be replaced for
around £20.00 if required). It has been very well looked after in a pet free and
smoke free environment and has had only light use in home studios throughout
its lifetime.
As I stated this Emax is totally
original with its full 144 page owners manual, all 10 of the original factory
sample floppy disks from Emu plus a huge sample library, consisting of several
thousand superbly reproduced samples on a further 110 floppy discs supplied in two large disk
caddies. All disks feature the latest version of the Emu operating system. Emax
samples are freely available on the Internet from many sites and forums and can
easily be downloaded and copied onto floppy discs if required.
This is a very versatile sampler
and multiple samples can be allocated to different parts of the keyboard
simultaneously or layered upon one another for more complex and evolving sounds.
The supplied samples cover almost every imaginable sound including Mellotron
like choirs, strings, orchestral sounds and all of the classic keyboards and Synthesisers ie Hammonds, Prophets, Fairlights, Moogs,
Oberhiems, Synclaviers to name but a minute selection.
Emax’s have a distinctive sound
of their own which many modern synthesisers would simply fail to match and
which have a huge following; they were widely adopted and used by many big name
bands; in particular they are largely attributable for the sound of Depeche
Mode during the late 80’s and early 90’s.
This is a reluctant sale but I
currently possess 3 Emax’s in total along with other classic keyboards and
really need to free up some space and so have decided to let the Emax 1 go to
another good home. This is a very rare opportunity to obtain an excellent
example of this most famous and classic of all sampling keyboards. The Emax 1
was a very advanced and revolutionary keyboard in its day costing around
$3000.00 when new and today you can obtain one with a modest start price and
reserve.
Paypal or cash on collection are my preferred methods of
payment and the keyboard; sample disks and manual will have to be collected in
person (from Ipswich, Suffolk) as the entire consignment would be just too
heavy and bulky to post economically plus I wouldn't want to risk damaging the keyboard in transit.
Many thanks for looking and happy
bidding.
Full technical specifications now
follow :-
The Emax is a classic sampler workstation from E-mu. It is
sort of a next generation Emulator II, it's not as good as an Emulator III but
it's more powerful than previous EII's. The Emax can be found in several forms:
the Emax, the Emax Rack, the Emax HD (built-in 20MB hard disk, pictured above),
the Emax HD Rack and the Emax SE (Synthesis Enhanced) with a built-in
synthesizer section. The Emax's editing system will be familiar to users of
E-mu's excellent ESI series.
The Emax has an extensive library collection of samples that
can be loaded via the built-in 3.5" hard drive. Or you can sample your own
sounds. The Sampler is powerful, but lo-fi. It samples at 12-bit resolution
with variable sample-rates up to 42kHz. The built-in memory is 512K which only
gives you a few good seconds really. Sampling and editing is easy, complete and
intuitive with auto sample placement, auto-looping, truncating, reversing,
velocity cross-fade, etc. The Emax also features individual channel outputs and
stereo outputs and extensive MIDI implementation.
The Emax features many common analog synth-type controls for
easily shaping your samples. Tune, filter and shape the envelope or use LFO's and
chorus to liven up your samples. There's also an on-board sequencer section. A
real-time only 16-track, non-quantizable sequencer for basic scratch-pad use or
simple arpeggios or patterns. It has been used by U2, Orbital, Astral
Projection, Skinny Puppy, Meat Beat Manifesto, Nine Inch Nails, Mouse on Mars,
Richard Barbieri and Depeche Mode.
The Emax is a 12 bit sampler and changed alot over the
course of it's production run. Because of this there are 5 different Operating
Systems. It is still very desirable because it contains true SSM analog filters
creating a warmth and punch most modern samplers don't have.
Operating Systems
*
Emax 3.2 - for base model
*
Emax HD 1.1 - for models with internal hard drives
*
Emax SE 1.1 - adds SE functionality to non-HD models
*
Emax HD SE 1.1 - adds SE functionality on HD models.
*
Emax Plus 1.0 - adds the ability to select a SCSI ID for an external HD.
The Basics
*
5 Octave velocity sensitive keyboard C to C or 3 space rack
*
512k of proprietary memory (not expandable)
*
3.5 inch floppy disk drive (uses double sided, double density (DSDD) 720k
floppy disks)
*
14 Velocity curves
*
Velocity can control VCA level, VCA attack, VCF cutoff, VCF attack, VCF Q.
*
32 Character Backlit LCD
*
RS-422 connection
*
MIDI In connection
*
MIDI Out/Thru connection
*
Programmable Arpeggiator
*
16 track "scratchpad" sequencer
*
Clock In (Clock In can accept 24, 48, or 96 ppq, the pulses should be at least
1ms
wide and 1 to 5
volts.
*
Clock Out (Clock Out sends a 24 ppq which is 5 volts and about 6ms wide)
*
2 Programmable wheels for real-time control over pitch, filter cutoff, AHDSR
attack rate, level, LFO
modulation index, etc.
*
2 Footswitch sockets
*
1 Footpedal socket
Audio Out and In
*
Right / Mono Output
*
Left / Stereo (headphone) Output
*
8 Individual mono outputs (individually assignable)
*
Sample In (mono)
Sample Rates Time
10kHz 52.0
secs.
16kHz 33.5
secs.
20kHz 26.0
secs.
28kHz 18.8
secs.
31kHz 16.6
secs.
42kHz 12.4
secs.
Voice Architecture
Each of the 8 voices has it's own set of the following
analog processors:
*
Lowpass voltage-controlled filter (VCF) with AHDSR envelope generators
*
Voltage-controlled amplifier (VCA) with AHDSR envelope generators
*
8 LFO's with adjustable rate, delay, and speed variation
The Emax CAN chorus its voices without loss of polyphony.
Digital Processing
*
Truncation
*
Looping (Crossfade and Equal Power)
*
Digital combine
*
Sample reversal, as well as rate and pitch conversion
*
Splicing
*
Advanced Split and Layer
*
Velocity controlled crossfading between samples
*
Individual tuning and attenuation for each sample
Synthesis (requires SE or SE HD OS)
Transform Multiplication
Transform Multiplication is a digital effect which merges
together 2 sounds in such a way that frequencies common to both sounds are
accentuated while uncommon frequencies are discarded. It works best on
harmonically rich sounds.
Spectrum Synthesis
Spectrum Synthesis (SE) allows you to specify up to 24
complex waveforms, (called Spectrums) and to either step or fade through them
during the course of a sound. The 24-waveform locations are called Time Slices,
since they represent the waveform at that slice of the sound. This method
allows more complex and interesting sounds to be created. In addition, each
partial (sine wave) can have a 24 point envelope that determines the pitch of
that partial over the course of the sound.
Each Emax SE voice can consist of two synthesized timbres, a
synthesized timbre and a sampled sound, or two sampled sounds. The resulting
voice can then be processed using the Dynamic Processing features and placed
anywhere in the stereo field.
