Emu 1820m Soundcard & Emulator X Studio Software

MC rebbe The Rapping Rabbi reviews Emu 1820m and Emulator X Studio in The Technofile

I’ve bolted the doors, I’ve locked the windows and I’m sitting here with my Uzi in one hand and my Emulator in the other…if Emu think they’re getting it back…they can think again…not that I need the Uzi to scare them off…the sample library of The Emulator X Studio is so comprehensive that it’s bound to contain an ultra realistic multi sampled Uzi, so if they come a knocking, I’ll put my speakers up against the windows and let rip…in real time with near zero latency!

What am I saying? No…not that I’m too cheap to spend the money on bullets…what I’m saying is that this interface/software combo is a must have…to die for …all that and a bag of latkes…

Why? Well first a little history. Go back into the dark ages/golden era of audio technology…we’re talking the beginning of the eighties…and you’ll find that if you wanted to buy a sampler the two main contenders were Fairlight and Synclavier. The Fairlight…with its amazing 8 bit sampling and green screen monitor (sic)…was the most popular of the two and was used by everyone from Duran Duran to The Art of Noise (Depeche Mode were about the only people using a Synclavier…mainly because they were about the only people who could figure out how the thing worked), but if you wanted to buy one, you’d be looking at the better part of fifty grand…and that was in the days when fifty grand was worth something …

Enter Emu, with their now legendary Emulator. Offering similar facilities, at a fraction of the price, it was an instant hit. So although Emu didn’t invent the sampler (the Mellotron was arguably the first sampler), what they did do was to popularise it by making it accessible in precisely the same way that the late great Bob Moog had done, a decade earlier, with the synthesizer.

The Emulator begat the Emulator 2 (and the Emax, which begat the Emax 2), which begat The Emulator 3, which begat the Emulator 4 and, for a long time, the Emulator name was synonymous with sampling. A few other manufacturers tried to get in on the act, most notably Roland, whose ‘S’ series samplers were excellent…not to mention more reasonably priced…but no one else could even get a foothold in a market that Emu, with its now extensive sound library and brand awareness, owned….or could they…

Enter Akai…who did…an Emu… releasing the S900…closely followed by the S950 and legendary S1000… at a much lower price than the Emulator. Sure the ‘S’ series lacked the Emulator’s library and their bass ends sucked…if you don’t believe me come round to my studio, The Bagel Factory and listen to the S1000 I’ve had sitting in a rack since the beginning of the nineties…nevertheless, they hit the right price point at the right time, drove the dance music revolution and became ‘industry standard’, in Europe at least.

To make up lost ground, Emu started releasing affordably priced sound modules, that combined parts of their by now legendary sound library, with brand new, specially programmed patches. The Proteus…The Vintage keys…The Orbit…all were instant hits and graced many a dance floor anthem. Then the desktop music revolution hit and suddenly no one wanted hardware anymore. Not only were there soft synths…there were soft samplers, which, although something of a joke at first, soon started to get taken seriously.

The industry was rife with speculation about the future of Emu and Akai. If you want to know what happened to Akai, the answer can best be summed up in one word… ‘who?’ (unless you’re a US Hip Hop Producer that is). As for Emu, they were bought up a few years ago by PC soundcard manufacturer ‘Creative Technology’. Many thought it would be the death of the Emulator legacy, particularly since all that seemed to be emanating from Creative HQ were Creative products with a sprinkling of Emu inside.

Then, out of the blue, Emu released the 1820m Audio Interface & Emulator X Studio Software and everyone was agog. Why? Because, in a nutshell, Emu have done the impossible… following years of other manufacturers half assed attempts at soft samplers and overpriced soundcards, Emu have built a soft version of their Emulator 4, choca full to the brim with classic library sounds and bundled it with a ridiculously fully featured soundcard…using the same converters found in Digidesign’s ultra high end Pro Tool HD192 interface and featuring on board DSP…at a price that absolutely defies belief….yup…Emu, have done an…Emu!

In fact they haven’t just released one soundcard, but several (the 1820m is the top of the range), which can be bought separately or bundled with the Emulator software, but at under 400 UKP for the 1820m and Emulator Studio X software, it would seem churlish not to review…and indeed buy…the best they have to offer.

The bundle I looked at consists of the Emulator software and sample library (on half a dozen CDs); a PCI soundcard offering a Firewire (1394a) socket, SPDIF digital i/o, ADAT i/o (that doubles as optical SPDIF i/o) and an ‘EDI’ (Emu’s proprietary interface) socket into which a half width 19” rack mountable breakout box connects via the supplied cable; a daughter card offering word clock & SMPTE i/o together with MTC output; and the aforementioned breakout box., or as Emu like to call it, ‘audio dock’, which is where most of the interfacing action take place.

Here you will find (on the front panel), a pair of Neutrik mic/line/Hi Z inputs, hooked up to a pair of TF Pro preamps that deliver 40db of gain via a pair of rotary gain knobs, a switch to send 48v phantom power to both of these sockets, green and red signal/clip LED indicators for each input, a pair of MIDI in/out sockets, an SPDIF optical output (for easy mastering to CD/DAT), a headphone socket with rotary volume control and various illuminated readouts showing sample rate, sync, SMPTE and MIDI status.

Turn the audio dock round and you will see ‘nuff i/o. For starters there’s 6 balanced line level inputs and 6 balanced outs (on ¼” jacks) configured as 3 stereo pairs, there’s also an extra pair of balanced outs intended for connection to your monitors…and if, for some reason, you don’t have a pair of studio grade monitors, there’s even 4 lower impedance stereo mini jacks for connecting to computer speakers. Naturally there’s an Emu EDI socket for connection to the PCI card (…via the included cable), a second set of MIDI i/o sockets and interestingly, a set of phono inputs that feed an RIAA equalised pre amp, together with a GND terminal, for connecting a deck!

This reminds me of the scene in ‘Everything You Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask’, during which, having successfully pursued across the county and caught a mammoth mutant breast, the Sheriff turns to Woody Allen and asks “are you sure that’s the only one…these things usually come in pairs…”

What am I saying? Well unless Arrested Development’s involved, record decks…like breasts, tend to come in pairs… so at first it seems odd that there’s only enough inputs for one deck…especially since anyone who has a pair of decks will also have a mixer with RIAA pre amps built in, raising the question, why do they need this input at all? The answer, presumably, is they don’t, as DJs will just connect the output from their scratch mixers direct to one of the audio dock’s stereo inputs…but if you’re a musician who wants to use your hi-fi turntable either for the occasional bit of sampling or to copy/restore/archive/bootleg (in the musical sense obviously) your vinyl collection, then you will love this facility, which is ideally suited to your needs.

Well featured as it is, the i/o in…and out…of itself is nothing to get too excited about, as there are other interfaces around at a broadly similar price, offering broadly similar i/o options (though not a deck input). What sets the 1820m apart is what’s on the inside. As mentioned previously, it contains the same converters as Pro Tools HD, resulting in 24 bit 192Khz resolution with a signal to noise ratio of 120db! But it doesn’t end there as the 1820m also features EMU’s E-DSP chipset, a hardware accelerated effects processor that offers 28 different effects including reverbs, delays, modulation, distortion and EQs…and before you ask, the answer is yes…these effects can be used as EMU ‘Power FX’ VSTi compatible plug ins from inside your sequencer of choice.

There are restrictions. For starters, Power FX are not available at 96KHz or at a sample rate of 192Khz. Also there are currently no third party manufacturers offering plug-ins for the Emu platform, so, at this point, E-DSP is not comparable to Powercore, UAD1 or Pro Tools (to be fair, EMU aren’t suggesting that it is…though should EMU decide to take things in that direction…and The Rebbe thinks they should…perhaps Avid should watch their backs…or drop their prices…). Nevertheless, the inclusion of native DSP effects at this price point should be applauded as using what’s on offer will effectively save you valuable CPU power for soft synths, soft fx and the softcore (or hardcore) porn you’re downloading whilst composing…

Like all of the audio interfaces in Emu’s line-up, the 1820m ships with ‘Patchmix DSP’, a powerful application that provides a comprehensive soft mixer, extensive routing possibilities via its integrated soft patch bay and, of course, full control of the aforementioned FX. Depending upon your setup, you can use it in standalone mode to control everything, or (more likely) set it up once, then leave it running in the background, as you control everything from your host sequencer, returning to Patchmix only very occasionally for the odd tweak/re route…or perhaps even, not at all.

And now that I’ve whetted your appetite with the hors d’oeuvre, here’s the main course: Offering the same 24/192 fidelity as the1820m, The Emulator X Studio sampler is, in a nutshell, an Emulator 4, featuring 36 patchchords per voice, over 50 of Emus’ patented Z-Plane morphing filters, multi wave LFOs, conditional voice modulation, clock modulation and a whole host of other synthesis functionality. It can run in standalone mode as a VSTi plug in from within your sequencer and this coupled with the option to play samples from RAM or to stream them from hard disk and the ability to import most sample formats including WAV, AIFF, HALion, GigaSampler, EXS 24, EOS, EIII and SoundFont 2.1 makes it desktop sampling done right!

If you’ve never heard an Emulator…it’s da bomb! It always was the best sounding hardware sampler available, bar none and this latest incarnation only serves to improve upon that legacy thanks to the quality of the 1820m and the inclusion of an extensive and eclectic 2GB library that runs the gamut from classical piano forte to in yer face drum n bass…and if that’s not library enough for you, Emu have recently started releasing the rest of their vast sound library on modestly priced CD ROMs…including the best of their vintage keys and Orbit modules, meaning that for less than just one of those hardware modules would have cost you a few years ago, you’ll soon be able to own the lot…and an Emulator 4…and a soundcard with onboard DSP…and still have enough change for that bag of latkes…

Hardware installation is as straightforward as installing any other PCI card (just bear in mind that the optional sync daughter card requires its own PCI slot, so you’ll need two spare slots if you want to use it) and plugging a cable between your newly installed PCI card and audio dock. Software installation is similarly straightforward, though it’s mildly irritating to have to juggle half a dozen CDs and mildly amusing that one of the CDs installs 99% of its library, then requires another CD for the remaining 1%. Emu would be well advised to stick everything on one DVD.

Having completing my installation, I headed straight for the Emulator sound library and immediately encountered two problems. Firstly, samples were a pain to load and audition and secondly patch volumes varied wildly. I spoke to Emu about this and they told me there were free software updates available on their web site that would fix these problems. They were correct. Once downloaded and installed, everything worked beautifully, so the moral of the story is when (and I do mean when) you buy your Emulator, make sure your software and drivers are up to date.

Since then, I’ve spent quite a few months testing this package comprehensively with various software and hardware configurations and I have to say The Rebbe is seriously impressed! Emu are right to describe the audio it delivers as ‘pristine’. Even though, at times, I would have liked a little more gain (…the story of my life…), it handled mics, guitars, basses, synths, drum machines, decks and everything else I put through it with ease and transparency. It also worked faultlessly with every piece of software I tested it with…Cubase SX3, Sonar 4 Producer Edition…Sony Acid…Native Instruments’ sonic arsenal…even an old version of Logic Platinum 5.5 (despite the fact that Logic isn’t officially supported)! It even happily handled audio from video applications such as Premiere Pro, After Effects, Encore DVD; web design applications such as Dreamweaver and Flash; and VJ applications like Arkaos and Resolume!

Because the 1820m provides a Firewire port, I also tested it with various Sony DV cameras/players. Once again, it was rock solid, giving me, in conjunction with Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5, full machine control and faultless transfer capability and I ended up authoring several DVDs with the resultant footage, using the 1820 to monitor my audio, with zero latency, so clearly this package is just as useful for authoring video/multimedia as it is for making music!

In fact, there’s only one thing I can find wrong with this bundle… it’s currently only available for PC. Perhaps this is not altogether surprising since Emu’s new parent company, Creative Labs, are the biggest and best known PC soundcard manufacturers around, nevertheless, this will be a huge disappointment for Mac users…and is a hugely missed business opportunity for Emu…though they are aware of this, as they tell me they get calls asking for a Mac compatible version, on a daily basis, so it’s not without the realms of possibility that one might appear at some later date. Until it does, I’d seriously recommend Mac heads consider buying a PC to turn into a dedicated Emulator…yes, it really is that good…and if you think I’m being extravagant, bear in mind the total cost of ownership for doing so would still be less than the cost of an Emulator was several years ago.

Oh and talking of Mac users…and indeed bundles…just one more thing…since Emu sent me this package to review, they’ve upped the ante still further, by adding a massive bundle of third party software, for free, including 3 sequencing packages, namely Cakewalk Sonar LE, Steinberg Cubase LE, Ableton Live Lite 4 for Emu Systems, Steinberg Wavelab Lite for audio editing, IK Multimedia Amplitube Lite, for guitar modelling and amp simulation, everyone’s favourite mastering plug in, IK Multimedia’s T Racks, SFX Machine Lite audio effects software, Minnetonka Discwelder Bronze DVD authoring software and Emu’s own Proteus LE desktop module and are even offering special deals that allow you to upgrade some of these applications to full versions….plus they’ve actually lowered the price of 1820m/Emulator XS package… If I wasn’t Jewish, I’d think it was Christmas….

Of course, if you’re recording large ensembles or need banks of i/o, you might find the 1820m a little limiting but, since, nowadays, most people’s i/o requirements are fairly modest, for the vast majority this soundcard (or possibly even one of its cheaper siblings) will be just what the rabbi ordered. As for the Emulator X Studio…truly it’s in a league of its own!

In fact, this bundle is so outstanding…on every level…that I’ve had to invent a new award, as merely giving it the full 5 bagels is not enough! ‘The Golden Bagel’ is like a ‘recommended’ an ‘editors choice’ and every other award you can think of, all rolled…like a fine Cuban joint…into one…only it’s more Jewish…

The Emulator is dead…long live the Emulator!

Emu 1820m and Emulator X Studio awarded Golden Bagel by MC Rebbe The Rapping Rabbi in The Technofile Emu 1820m and Emulator X Studio awarded 5 bagel in The Technofile by MC Rebbe The Rapping Rabbi

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