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Old 09.05.2015, 09:57 AM
evilgus evilgus is offline
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Default Emu Extreme Lead

Hey folks,

I've been struggling with my Snows 4 channel limit for a little while now, so I finally decided to add something else to my home setup. I couldn't afford another Virus, just yet, so I settled for an Emu Extreme Lead XL-1. Would have preferred a Roland JD-990, but man, those bad boys are pricey!

Anyway, I'm currently doing some basic sound tests and comparisons and figuring out what it's good for. It certainly doesn't have the immediate warmth or versatility of the Snow, and it does seem to be a bit limited, dynamics wise, but so far, I'm liking the bite and crispness it's bringing to the table. As an example, I'm using UK Bass (Rom 2 7-6?) patch on the Snow for my Blue Monday bass and have found an equivalent on the XL. The Emu patch doesn't have the meat of the Snow patch, but man, when you mix the two together....WOW!

Anyone else have any experience with any of the Emu Proteus ROMplers? Just starting to get into tweaking and programming, so any advice appreciated!

P.S: Might also buy the Composer ROM for it, so I also have basic piano, strings, guitar-type sounds.

Cheers,

EG
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Old 09.05.2015, 01:17 PM
MBTC MBTC is offline
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I'm not big into ROMplers, but I do use Nexus sometimes as a CPU saving tactic when I need a strong sound but don't have a lot of CPU cycles to spend on it and I'm willing to give up some versatility/programmability.

Along the lines of Proteus, you might try the free Proteus plug-in. I haven't loaded it in many years but last time I did, I felt it was true to the original Proteus.

http://www.creative.com/emu/proteusvx/

As I recall it was one of those freebies that was definitely worth the download.
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Old 10.05.2015, 02:20 AM
evilgus evilgus is offline
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Hey MBTC,

I've actually got the Proteus VX plugin, but my laptop is really old, so it's pretty glitchy and unusable. Until I can afford or justify a MacBook Pro, I'll just run an iPad and hardware setup.

To that end, I just upgraded my iPad 2 to a new Air 2, as the old one was struggling. Now I can use GMS and Cubasis to control the Snow, Emu and Electribe, plus hook in iOS apps like Caustic, Sample Tank, Arturia iMini and iProphet.

Cheers,

EG
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Old 10.05.2015, 03:50 PM
MBTC MBTC is offline
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Just some advice -- avoid laptops for a home studio unless you truly need the portability of it on a regular basis and are willing to pay the premium.

To get the most bang for your buck, you need a desktop-grade chip in a case with proper airflow and thermal handling. Anything less will always be faced with some combination of (a) not performing well enough (b) running hot (c) reduced life span becoming glitch over time as you said (d) high cost of replacement components (e) poor expandability. Maybe not all of those at one time, but they all greatly impact the viability of a laptop or slim profile case of any sort for a home studio.

You need a fast CPU to get the most out of modern soft synths, and fast CPUs require airflow that only desktop cases and cooling mechanisms can provide. Laptops are designed for portability and battery life optimization, not maximum performance.

Sure Mac Pros are nice but they are ridiculously priced. For about a grand you can get a PC that will deliver better performance than the most expensive Mac Pros. Remember Apple makes their money off of hardware -- to survive they have to find ways to keep you buying more of it.
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Old 11.05.2015, 11:06 PM
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Berni Berni is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MBTC View Post
Just some advice -- avoid laptops for a home studio unless you truly need the portability of it on a regular basis and are willing to pay the premium.

To get the most bang for your buck, you need a desktop-grade chip in a case with proper airflow and thermal handling. Anything less will always be faced with some combination of (a) not performing well enough (b) running hot (c) reduced life span becoming glitch over time as you said (d) high cost of replacement components (e) poor expandability. Maybe not all of those at one time, but they all greatly impact the viability of a laptop or slim profile case of any sort for a home studio.

You need a fast CPU to get the most out of modern soft synths, and fast CPUs require airflow that only desktop cases and cooling mechanisms can provide. Laptops are designed for portability and battery life optimization, not maximum performance.

Sure Mac Pros are nice but they are ridiculously priced. For about a grand you can get a PC that will deliver better performance than the most expensive Mac Pros. Remember Apple makes their money off of hardware -- to survive they have to find ways to keep you buying more of it.
OK enough of the apple bashing, get back behind your curtain. I personally need a laptop because like a lot of people I also use it for DJing/playing out but it is quite capable of running my studio as well. Sure they are expensive compared to a PC laptop but you get what you pay for. If I could afford both a studio computer & a gigging laptop then I would probably get one of the new iMacs for the studio.
Not wanting to start a platform flare but Apple do not just make there money from selling hardware. OSX & iOS are two of the biggest operating systems on the planet not to mention all the app's they produce.
Sure you can get a PC with better spec's for less money but it has to run on windows pretty much which I gave up on in 98 & nothing I've seen since has made me regret the decision. There is a reason why pretty much every DJ in the world uses the Macbook pro.
I did own an E-MU extreme lead several years ago but found the sounds quite dated even back then & being a ROMpler there's not much room for programming new sounds. It could be quite usefull if you are going for a retro kind of feel & for the money they are now there a pretty good deal.
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Old 12.05.2015, 01:58 AM
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OK enough of the apple bashing, get back behind your curtain. I personally need a laptop because like a lot of people I also use it for DJing/playing out but it is quite capable of running my studio as well.
Not Apple bashing - I have a Mac and I write software for Apple's devices. I don't use it for my primary studio machine because I need CPU power that requires a desktop case for cooling, and I don't want to spend $5k to get a Mac Pro that I would be happy with. No other Apple offering offers proper airflow and cooling.

Once again, *IF* you need portability (which you do if you're a DJ by profession, so my earlier message is not for you) then you pretty much have no choice but to have a laptop. Evilgus said his has gone tits up, which is what happens to laptops when you push them beyond their thermal boundaries for an extended period of time, which is why I made the recommendation.

My message was really more about laptop vs. desktop and generally about getting the most bang for the buck since he mentioned financial limitations. I can build a PC for a few hundred bucks that hangs with a Mac Pro costing several grand. Apple makes their money on hardware profit margins and that's just a fact of life. There are some things about the platform I like and things I don't. Bang for buck is not Apple's strong point. But if you have an Apple and like it, why change it? If it ain't broke, don't fix. But if it is broke, and it's Apple, it may be increasingly difficult to fix or upgrade yourself, because they go out of their way to keep their walled garden a secret.

Again it was a legitimate recommendation for one particular case. I don't recommend the exact same setup to everyone. If I were DJ'ing I would probably just go with a MacBook, because portability would be the main feature I need, and I probably would not be pushing the thermal limits with it running lots of CPU heavy synths live during a set. Samples and pre-mixed sets don't exactly require a horse of a computer to get the job done.

Also I don't think you want an iMac or any slim profile case -- not good enough airflow to be a good fit for a home setup, it will just always be running hot if you use a lot of soft synths, thus the life will be shortened and you'll have to drop it off at the damn shopping mall or ship it back to Apple to have it worked on. Aside from the Mac Pro most of Apple's stuff notoriously runs hot.
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Old 25.05.2015, 10:48 PM
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Personally I'd avoid the E-mu. I had the Audity 2000 and Mophat. My friend had the XL1. It was 1 of our first bits of hardware after the Novation Drumstation. I sold mine after buying most of the disk versions locked to the E-Mu sound card. Thanks to Creative (Soundblaster) it all got very messy with drivers etc. Good luck with that Proteus VST thing, did they ever get it to work properly with newer Windows and archive disks? Still annoys me to this day how Creative killed E-MU.


If you like The Virus style of doing things go for an older 1, a Nord or a Novation. If you're trying to budget and want more Hardware, the Novation KS Rack. I prefer these over the Super Nova and they go for much cheaper on ebay. They came out just before the VST explosion so never got the chance to make their mark. Unlike The Nord and previous Novation synths.

The only romplayer I've kept is an Expanded JV1080 but my VA synths I wont sell.
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Old 14.06.2015, 11:05 AM
evilgus evilgus is offline
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Thanks for all the comments, interesting stuff!

I guess no-one will be surprised to hear that I'm struggling to get good, usable sounds out of the XL, that complement what the Snow can do so easily. There's plenty of samples to make use of, good filtering and plenty of arpegiator features, but I'm pretty time-poor, so just haven't got hours each week, to program every single sound I need.

Haven't decided to sell it yet, but guess I'd better give it some thought.

Cheers,

EG
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Old 16.06.2015, 02:55 PM
TweakHead TweakHead is offline
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It's funny. My own experience with this mac vs pc thing may be good fuel for thought to some of you. My understanding of things is: both Berni and MBTC are right, for different reasons.

I've been on the mac side for years to, I believe it was when most music people were hanging on to win XP, 'cause Vista was... well, it was Vista; so I got an Imac back then, it was the last running their IBM powerpc g5 cpus. And it was ok, I had it running up until Logic 8 and the performance was similar to what you'd see your PC Cubase friends doing on their pcs, although, to be honest, back then they had a much healthier choice of plug-ins.

Anyway, this imac got broken due to overheating. Then got another one, much more recent and this time everything was much smoother, but got some problems with the screen - this time not due to overheating, but the fans actually blow some dust on the back of the LCD, whose price is kind of ridiculous, if you compare it to an IPS proper screen on its own. This screen problem is barely noticeable anyways, you can spot that there's something there with a full black wallpaper, for example, so I just ignored it.

But the overall impression I get from Apple is that while they're picky with their components, 'cause they always use IPS screens, for example, their keyboards and mice are great, the overall design of the machines is fantastic.( But they then cut corners in the assembly of the components themselves, and their strive for the smallest and coolest can actually get in the way of proper design. )And it's not just the looks, it's the thought that went into all of it, it's the experience itself. Even using the remote on the imac can impress people, even to this day.

The other factor, of course, is the software. I have no doubt in my mind that OS X is far superior to windows, when it comes to the ingenuity that went into it. Some very good ideas! No doubt. But if we're talking about bang for buck, getting a good computer for a home studio, then the math leans very much towards what MBTC said: you can get a far better CPU, with proper cooling and air circulation, even an hackintosh if you so desire, for much less; and presumably even get much better performance then you would on the mac.

Now, the laptops... Jeez, MBP all the way. Just the touch thing on them... Not having the anti-virus, all those naughty things next to the clock, it just feels more reliable, and most of us use Ableton to play - which runs very good on both platforms, so... I just feel like Apple has a very wide hole between the imac and the mac pro and they've consistently failed to realize that, being the clever company that they are.

Cheers
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Old 19.06.2015, 04:28 PM
MBTC MBTC is offline
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Just speaking from the perspective of operating system architecture, from a software engineer's point of view, OSX and everything related to it is a freaking mess compared to Windows (in terms of quality of code, the architecture, APIs, etc.)

There are a lot things about usability that it does right. Apple has always had good design teams and lousy engineering teams. And there are some things about usability that are screwy on Windows.

The biggest issue that I always bring up is that it's important to know that Apple doesn't make money off their OS, they make money by selling you new hardware, so everyone must understand that

A RAPID PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE CYCLE IS BUILT INTO EVERYTHING THEY SELL.

Contrast that with Windows, which will run most of the software for the platform you might have bought 25 years ago, even if in some sort of compatibility mode. Microsoft's commitment to backward compatibility is amazing, while Apple just throws it all to the wind.. Fuck it they say, we have a newer shinier model so you'll just have to buy that one instead.

All of this said, I'm still convinced a desktop Mac Pro makes a fine dedicated music studio, as long as you're willing to spend $6000 USD or so for the Apple brand (because you can get same for half that as a PC). And, if it's a dedicated studio computer you are not really going to be spending a lot of time fiddling with OSX or Windows, because you'll spend all your time in your DAW like Live or Cubase which is pretty much the same on either one. Both operating systems crash sometimes or give you a hard time, but both are suitable for the job of a studio computer. It's really a cost proposition.

However, that doesn't mean I'm unconditionally saying everyone must have either a Mac Pro or a powerful desktop PC. Some people need portability (which means a laptop is a must). Some people cannot afford to have a dedicated music studio computer which means they have to use the same computer for music that they use for everything else. Some people have a workflow that is not very CPU-heavy. Mine is -- I'm always interested in squeezing a little more CPU performance out of the box, but if you're the type that works with a lot of samples or purely hardware synths instead of software based synths and FX, then CPU and thermal considerations are less of an issue.

I do think overall that every Mac product that Apple sells, other than the desktop Mac Pro, is not designed for the thermal demands of a typical studio. They intend the Mac Pro is for professional music creation and the other models like laptops and iMacs are intended for general consumers and students. I do not have any experience with Hackintosh setups or even understand the pros and cons there, so it is very possible it is a solution to the value problem presented by the Mac Pro line. I do know that one of the benefits of the Apple platform is the limited hardware configuration (makes it easier to test and provide stable software configurations), so once you start running OSX on a variety of different components, you may run into bugs and glitches that wouldn't appear on an actual Apple system due to slight variations. But as I said no personal experience there so I'm not sure how big of a problem that is.
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