The E-mu EIV is the most powerful Emulator ever, with 128 voices and up to 128 Mb of internal memory. Nigel Lord investigates whether this is the current state-of-the-art in sampling...

It occurred to me the other day that sampler development has reached a similar stage in relation to digital recording, as the drum machine design has to sequencing. After losing ground to more broad-based sequencing systems, drum machine designers set to work introducing all manner of 'human' programming features which could not be found in conventional sequencers. After a little realignment, the drum machine has continued to hold its own amongst increasingly sophisticated software and hardware sequencers.

And so it is with samplers. It's still possible for those with direct-to-disk recording systems to do without a sampler altogether, and graft on snippets of recorded sound within an arrangement, but innovative new features have seen samplers maintain their lead in both professional and non-professional circles. Simply put, samplers still do an awful lot of things you can't do with direct-to-disk recording.

I was firmly convinced that having gone 'direct-to-disk', I'd be able to sell my samplers, to help offset the cost of a ludicrously expensive Mac system. It hasn't happened. Both machines are still sat here and both are used regularly. Even harder to imagine was that 12 months after setting up my Mac system, I'd be poring over the features list of a new sampler, wondering how on earth I could get the money together for this stunning new machine. For the E-IV promises to move the art of digital sampling along several miles along from where it currently stands.

Rather less surprising is that this new machine should have an 'Emulator' logo emblazoned across its front panel. Seemingly, since the very word 'sampling' entered the hi-tech musician's language, there's been an Emulator around to carry the flag; well, the Stars and Stripes at least. Indeed, as purveyors of the very first affordable sampling machines, E-mu can rightly claim to have been among the architects of sampling technology, as we have come to know it.

With the Emulator IV, the company have single-handedly laid to rest many of the design restrictions of their earlier models. A slew of new features promises to have rival R&D departments rattled. But even if the E-IV is a significant new product, it comes with a pretty significant price tag too: In fact you won't have much change out of five grand, even with the basic memory complement. Should we complain? Well, it's hard to when E-mu have just released the ESI-32 sampler, offering an entry point to quality sampling for almost a quarter of this price (see review last month). Clearly, they're looking to reaffirm their presence at both ends of the market.

First base

In the first significant departure from conventional sampler design, the E-IV's operating system, though initially loaded via floppy (to facilitate easy upgrade) may be saved to internal flash RAM, and preserved after power-down. I think I'm right in saying the only other samplers to use flash RAM were the Ensoniq range, which allowed you to store the actual samples themselves (apart from Roland's MS-1 and JS-30 — Ed). This made them ideal for live work where, before the advent of cheap hard disks, you were limited to loading samples from floppies — with all the attendant problems of speed and reliability.

On the E-IV, flash RAM is used solely as a means of saving and loading the operating system, but even so, it's a welcome innovation, offering the perfect compromise between having an easily upgradable system and being able to load it virtually instantaneously from ROM.

Of immediate interest to owners of past E-mu machines, the E-IV is fully conversant with the massive E-III sample library, and can read Emax II and Akai S1000/S1100 banks, "as if they were its own" — to quote the manual. Sample rate is selectable from 22.05 to 48kHz, with 18-bit linear D/A and 16-bit linear Sigma-Delta A/D converters.

Sampling is either mono or stereo, with up to 1000 samples possible per bank, arranged in up to 1000 presets. The basic architecture of the E-IV places individual samples as the fundamental building blocks of the system. These may be combined or used individually to form 'voices', to which are assigned keyboard and velocity settings and any of the extensive range of programmable synthesiser parameters.

When applied to a keyboard layout and stored as a set-up, individual or combined voices become 'presets', while groups of presets gathered together are referred to as 'banks'. Rather like a computer, the E-IV places groups of up to 100 banks into 'folders', which are saved to disk as a convenient way of keeping related sampling data together.

Sampling and playback operation takes place across a variety of modes which, for reasons best known to E-mu, are referred to as 'modules'. There are six of these in all, covering master (global) functions, disk functions, preset management, preset editing, sample management and sample editing. A dedicated front-panel button takes you to the desired module, and menus within these are selected using the Assignable Keys along the bottom of the unit. Once there, you can move yourself around using a combination of the arrow keys (up, down, left and right), the data entry control, and the assignable keys, which may be set up to jump instantly to the screen you wish to edit.

It's a logical system, which succeeds in getting you where you want to be with the minimum of fuss and without constant recourse to the manual. That said, you're unlikely to get much (let alone, the best) out of this machine without studying the manual — particularly if you're not familiar with the family of E-mu samplers.

Presumably in anticipation of any upgrades, E-mu have decided on a loose-leaf style manual (like that of most larger software packages), which is actually only about half-full, as the system stands. Perhaps the spine width is the best yardstick of E mu's confidence in the E-IV's future!

Data storage options include an internal HD floppy drive, an optional internal hard drive and external drives via SCSI including removable hard disks, CD-ROM drives and magneto-optical units. With two 50-pin SCSI ports gracing its rear panel, the E-IV can be placed within a SCSI chain rather than having to be placed at one end of it. This would facilitate much easier data transfer between the sampler and a computer editing/recording system; there's even a special page within the E-IV's Master menu to look after the special needs of Mac systems in terms of their SCSI priority.

Digital inputs and outputs are provided, with switching between AES/EBU and S/PDIF formats. There are also three expansion ports, one of which may be used for an additional MIDI interface to provide a further sixteen channels, while the others to are given over to future expansion options — to be announced. Inputs are balanced using stereo jacks, as are the main output pair — though these are duplicated using XLRs — and there are a further 3 sub-mix pairs, again on standard jacks.

A further rear panel socket provides a connection point for a PC-compatible ASCII keyboard. Through this, you can access all front panel controls, if the E-IV is remotely situated, and also speed up the tedious process of naming samples, presets and banks. Showing such foresight, I half-expected to find that E-mu had also included a CRT output, like the Roland S-760 option, but sadly not. You'll have to make do with the LCD, though this one of the better examples of its type, with a large screen making use of graphics as well as text.

Front panel hardware includes a numeric keypad, data entry wheel, cursor keys, function keys placed directly beneath individual screen parameters, and a variety of other push-buttons. The onboard floppy drive is set on its side at the far right of the unit, with phones output and volume control in the corresponding position over on the left.

Boasting a truly awesome polyphony of 128 notes (64 in stereo) and multi-timbral operation of up to 32 parts (with the optional MIDI card fitted), E-mu seem intent on making the E-IV the only sampler you'll ever need. But of course, this is dependant to a large extent on the sort of memory it can support.

Thanks for the memory

Having finally reversed their decision to make users pay through the nose for dedicated memory upgrades. E-mu have fallen in line with most other manufacturers, by using plug-in SIMMs chips in the E-IV. These are the very same SIMMs chips which can be bought from computer stores, at a price reflecting their ready availability. And with space to install 128 megabytes' worth of the blighters, this is no bad thing.

With a full memory complement, E-mu claim a total stereo sampling time of over 12 minutes, making it possible to load entire songs into the E-IV for editing and rearranging. Far from direct-to-disk systems usurping samplers, it seems that samplers are quite capable of usurping direct-to-disk systems.

Speaking of disk systems, one of the E-IV most enticing features is an audition function, which lets you hear a sample played directly from any connected disk drive, without first loading it into memory. This, I have to say, is one the features which would place the E-IV high on my wish list. Searching through even a modest-sized sample library can be the stuff of nightmares, and in my case, usually one of those moments when I begin to question my decision to move away from conventional musical instruments. You can waste hours of your time looking for a particular sample, or simply searching for inspiration amongst hundreds of megabytes' worth of sample material. The E-mu system not only helps you find things more quickly, it also makes the decision whether to load in and set up a sample much easier to make, particularly as it also works with CD-ROM drives.

"E-mu seem intent on making the E-IV the only sampler you'll ever need"

In terms of speeding up the whole sampling process, however, the audition function is only part of the story. With this new flagship, E-mu have clearly addressed the problem of sampling as a slow, laborious business which only encourages people to fall back on the relative security of existing sample libraries, rather than creating new sounds for themselves.

A computer-style 'find' facility makes it possible to automatically search for specific samples, presets, banks or folder on any connected drive. If you don't have the full name, simply enter a search string of a few of the letters or characters used, and the E-IV will seek and find any files that correspond to them.

Within the Sample Manage menu, you'll also find three functions designed to strip away three of the most tedious sampling tasks — normalising, truncating and placement — and carry them out automatically. Normalising, as you probably know, is the process by which samples are boosted to their maximum level without clipping. Truncating is the removal of unwanted space at the beginning and end of a sample, while placement determines the transposition range across which samples may be played. Thus, selecting a 12-key range would place a sample at the centre of a one octave span. Of course, you can if you wish, assign each individual sample to a single note within the E-IV's ten-octave range, or alternatively spread it across all ten of those octaves. Exactly how recognisable a sample will be when transposed down by five octaves is open to debate, but E-mu's state-of-the-art G-chip technology provides smooth, distortionless transposition, so if Portishead 'detunes' are your bag, the E-IV would appear to be the machine for you.

Pasteboard parameters

Though resampling to create layered sounds and trigger short pieces of music is nothing new, the process is made a little easier on the E-IV, with the addition of a feature that allows you to select the main stereo outputs as an input source.

Resampling may be carried out in either 16-bit or 18-bit mode — with 16-bit recording recommended for mono or duophonic pieces. One of the reasons for carrying out resampling is to restore polyphony levels, by allowing note combinations and sequences to be played using only a single key. But with the kind of polyphony available to E-IV users, this is not the problem it might otherwise have been. All the same, resampling can be a highly useful tool for those who don't have too much additional equipment around, and who have to achieve the sounds they want by building them up a layer at a time.

In terms of manipulating samples inside the E-IV, the potential is massive. There are five main areas of operation: Utilities, where samples are cut, copied and pasted, Loop Type, where sample looping options are presented; Tools 1, where basic digital editing operations are carried out such as truncation, gain change and stereo to mono conversion; Tools 2, where more advanced digital processing functions are included, such as sample rate conversion, tuning, compression, parametric EQ and reversing; Tools 3, where you'll find time stretching and pitch changing, doppler effects (which move sound around from front to back and side to side in 2D space), transform multiplication (a special function which merges two sounds by accentuating common frequencies), and an aural exciter algorithm.

Interestingly, this and chorus are about as close as the E-IV gets to providing any kind of effects processing. E-mu have always seemed reluctant to offer reverb and delay as an option on their machines; modules like Vintage Keys and the Proteus series bucked the trend towards including effects on multi-timbral sound modules, and clearly the designers of the E-IV have resisted the temptation too.

Where the E-IV does score highly is in the provision of a whole raft of preset programming parameters, where sound can be combined, shaped and filtered. This is the crossover point between sampling and synthesis, though thankfully, the programming system included here is redolent of analogue synthesis rather than any of the esoteric (or incomprehensible) digital forms.

Of course, it is digital processing that is carried out here, but it's made to feel and sound analogue. Filtering, for example, is via E-mu's well-regarded low-pass designs, offering 12, 24 or 36 dB/octave with resonance. The filter envelopes, which may be positive or negative, provide six-stage parameter control — Attack 1 & 2, Decay 1 & 2 and Release 1 & 2, each adjustable for level and rate, with additional controls for cut-off frequency and Q. Filter operation is selectable between 2-pole, 4-pole and 6-pole, and claimed to be, 'analogue-sounding' (their inverted commas). I can't quibble with this, and I doubt the most hardened analogue devotees could either.

The filters display low-end characteristics, which complement samples of classic analogue machines virtually as if they were the real thing. In fact, they're almost identical in operation to the filters onboard Vintage Keys, which I've certainly grown to like over the past couple of years. The only real difference is the provision of 6-pole operation, which isn't included in VK.

Multiple mods

Complementing the broad range of filter parameters, the E-IV's amplifier envelope shaping is similarly comprehensive, offering the same six-stage parameter control (though obviously, only positive envelopes are generated here) with additional controls for pan settings and choosing the sub-mix output pair.

These days, of course, having a comprehensive range of parameter controls is only half the story. What people want, and have come to expect, is a similarly wide range of real-time control parameters — just to remind themselves that these are musical instruments they're using. The E-IV is unlikely to disappoint.

The modulation options are included within the Preset Edit module, covering some 48 sources and 50 destinations. The connection strings which are used to route modulation sources to their destination are referred to as 'cords', and of the sixteen available, two are permanent — the amp envelope to amplifier and key to pitch. The rest may be set up by you.

With so many modulation possibilities, I won't attempt to go through them all, but you will find them listed in the accompanying boxout. I must, however, mention the LFOs, which are selectable for sine, sawtooth, triangle and square waves, and variable between 0.08 and 18.14 Hz. You can apply a delay to the LFOs, to simulate vibrato effects when playing an acoustic instrument, and there's also a parameter which applies a random variation to an LFO's modulation rate, each time a key is pressed.

Conclusions

Needless to say, there are masses of intriguing and highly useful features on the E-IV which have to pass without mention. Even E-mu's own blurb hardly scratches the surface of what this machine can do.

Having used the machine intensively for the best part of a month, I can only say I feel extremely positive about it — positive in a way that certain other samplers didn't leave me. Part of this, I put down to being broadly familiar with other E-mu products (the aforementioned Vintage Keys and a couple of Proteus modules), which in many ways the E-IV is directly related to. Many of the programming features, and quite a bit of the internal architecture, has been derived from the range of E-mu sound modules — and given that I regard these as the friendliest and most intuitive around, you won't be surprised to learn of my approval of most aspects of the E-IV design.

It would be hard to recommend any other sampler over the E-IV. If I were looking for the best sampler money could buy, it would probably be the E-IV. But irrespective of the current Anglo-American exchange rate, almost £5000 for a sampler with a basic 8 Mb of memory and no internal hard disk, seems pretty damn high in my book.

I'm sure E-mu know considerably more about their potential market than I do, and I'm equally sure there are enough people out there who want the best, and won't be daunted by the asking price. I just wish I was one of them. I would dearly love to own an E-IV; even with a sophisticated hard disk recording system at my disposal, this is a machine I believe I could achieve a huge amount with. E-mu really do seem to have thought about everything. At no point did I find myself thinking, "... if only this or that had been included". But I was heard to mutter on several occasions, "... if only I could afford it".