Vintage Synth Explorer

E-mu • Emulator III

The Emulator III was E-mu's biggest classic "Digital Sound Production System". Also called the "EIII", it was E-mu's biggest and most professional sampler-synthesizer prior to the 1990's. It was the first sampler to offer 16-bit CD-quality specs with stereo or mono sampling at 44.1kHz or 33kHz. RAM memory is 4 MB expandable to 8 MB. There are extensive and modern sample editing features (from looping to rate conversions). The on-board 16-track sequencer and arpeggiator are also superb. Equipped with MIDI, SMPTE, SCSI, built-in disk-drive and multiple outputs, the EIII is comfortable in any studio. A Macintosh can also be hooked up to the EIII for easier graphical editing which was very useful since the LED screen on the synth is so tiny.

As a sampler workstation the EIII was at one time the dominating force. Although modern machines far exceed it today, the EIII is still a quality instrument with controls and functions that would be familiar to anyone who uses samplers. A very classic machine that can still stand strong among a generation of sampler workstations 10 years later, the EIII is still in use and will continue to be used for many more years. It has been used by Depeche Mode, Genesis, and JellyFish.

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Posting Rules: Please keep your comments relevant! Do not post requests for help, do not use for sales, do not post unless you have something interesting to say about this instrument, or we may delete your post.

 

Mic Romoog

Posted 2 days ago

I love my EIII and agree with Rokuez: The best sounding sampler (ok, i never owned a Synclavier or Fairligt III :-))
I still have the same problems as Jmiles described, never move an EIII from your last (repair-)point...it needs a big steel-concrete bond as keystand. As EIII User it's not wrong to own also a good cordless screwdriver... :-)

Alex Stone

Posted 58 days ago

I use EIII.
This is the best tool that I have ever seen!
I believe that EMULATOR III - the best sampler and is the standard of playing among the synthesizers, samplers and workstations of all time!

Jmiles

Posted 76 days ago

I had one of the first E111.s back in Jan 1988.It was an absolute nightmare.The cards kept on coming loose and I had to open it up and reseed them every time we moved the synth.
It took awhile for them to get it right.I used to also own EMU's first HD rack.A 300 meg HD that cost me $4000 in 1989. Saying all this there is the fact that it did sound great.really fat and sampling vocals was really a breeze and they sounded fat as well.Sampled lots of Vocals from Luther Vandross.
I still have my E4XT-a great sampler which I still use

Edsta

Posted 112 days ago

I'm lucky enough to have one of these truly amazing beasts.
Curtis filters on a 16 bit stereo sampler???
yeeeeees please.
16 outputs and 8 meg (my version) make an SP1200 look like an Ensonic mirage.
That's just scratching the surface...
www.eIIIforum.com is the dogs xxxxxxx by the way! :)

Rokuez

Posted 303 days ago

I have two EIII racks and IMO it is the bets sounding sampler.

I believe it is also the highest resolution sampler with analog filters.

Check out the E-mu Emulator Forum www.eiiiforum.com

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