Emulator III : Overview
Taking The
High Ground Three years after the launch of the legendary
EII, Emu Systems began work on a new mega sampler - the Emulator
III. Released in 1988, the Digital Sound Production System
was a major leap forward in sampling technology. CD quality at 16
bits (oversampled), 16 separate voices, huge RAM, an internal hard
drive, external SCSI and a brand new operating system. The
engineering quality and the sound were (and still are!)
awesome.
CD Revolution The Emulator III not only
matched CD quality with 16 bits, but harnessed the CD revolution by
using the new CDROM players to load sample libraries. This provided
the EIII with a massive library of high quality sounds, which could
be rapidly and easily accessed. The EIII took centre stage in
studios and post production suites across the world.
The F
Chip The Emulator
III kept with the overall Emulator II design, but with a faster main
processor and a revolutionary Digital Oversampling Filter chip -
custom built by Emu Systems. This was the start of a long line of
custom chips which have been at the core of E-mu Systems sample
designs ever since. The F chip ensured a pristine quality of sound
output - and a 96dB signal to noise ratio. The EIII is much quieter
and free from any digital artefacts - unlike the
EII.
Workstation The Emulator III Keyboard version has a 5 octave keyboard
with aftertouch and velocity. It came with a 16 track sequencer and
full SMPTE/MIDI sync. Rather surprisingly the EIII only has
unbalanced outputs, but it does have a 25 pin SCSI connector and 16
individual voice outputs.
The Mystery Emulator III
The EIII rack
was announced at the same time as the EIII keyboard was launched,
and it appeared in the marketing material. EIII racks were available
from May 1988, however they seem to have been in limited supply, and
only a few were actually sold. They are hard to find second-hand,
and therefore command higher prices.
The EIII Rack uses the same engineering design
as the keyboard version. The existing card frame is mounted
vertically (which is how it was designed), it has the same hard disk
drive, power supply, and floppy disk. A new control panel was fitted
into a deep (at least 20") 4U rack unit. Two fans were installed to
keep the Emulator cool. The rack has exactly the same functionality
as the keyboard version.
Memory The Emulator III was available in two memory sizes, either 4
MB or 8MB. The 4 MB model can be service upgraded to 8 MB by
replacing all 16 SIMM's.
The Hard Disk All models
came with an internal 5.25" 40 MB Hard Disk. The actual size of the
drive was 52.1 MB, which when formatted became 43 MB. This
enables 32 or 16 banks of sound to be stored, depending on the RAM
size.
Analog Filters The EIII kept with analog
filters for the voice channels, using Curtis CEM3387's. Real-time
digital filtering was still too expensive, and the EIII was pushing
the price limit already. (the hard disk and 4 MB of memory added up
to $2500 alone).
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