I noticed that dozens of libraries for the Emulator sampler vst have been released. I am a fan of old school samples and I would like to understand if these libraries are also usable on mac.

- Is there a macos alternative of Emulator plugin (working with .exb and .ebl files)?
- Is it possible to load these patches any other different sampler for macos (for example Kontakt)?
- is there a way to convert these sounds (wav + patches) and make them readable on kontakt?

 

Well, it would seem Oly has converted his.
The versions I was uploading to AZ the last few days (which have been beaten by Oly) were the full iso, and as such could have also been used for Kontakt or anything else.
For instance, Vol 4 iso is actually 500+MB, whereas Oly's is just 128MB!

 

I tried to download several libraries (Oly release) to test them and there is no .iso inside, what I found is .exb (patch) and .ebl (samples). I tried to convert them with chicken translator, but nothing...
@Olymoon : do you have any suggestion?

—UPDATE—
I found that -Extreme Sample Converter (Win vers)- can translate and save into Kontakt files any E-mu patch. It's a time-consuming method for all the releases, but effective

 

Last edited by a moderator: Oct 13, 2020

@recycle For me Chicken Systems Translator works without problem, but I converts from Emulator X3 to Independence Sampler, you dont need ISO, you only need exb sound bank and everything will be fine

 

Interesting. I wonder how Chicken Sys Translator makes 500+MB out of just 128MB?

 

Yeah, maybe I have an outdated Chicken...

 

I dont know a solution for Mac to use these converted libraries.
But many of them are already at sister site, without conversion. If search with the terms "E-MU Classic Series" you will find a lot of them posted in 2016 and before.

I don't know how , but I can tell that these libraries are containing all the banks, and each bank contains all the presets.
I tested before I speak.
Sometimes, we dont understand something, but still, it exist...

 

Most of these libraries have already been posted in ISO format.

 

Last edited: Oct 14, 2020

I'm having the opposite problem lol. I downloaded Millennium Synths EMU IV-BSOUNDZ on sister, and its in Cue/Bin format, and neither Kontakt, or Power ISO can read it, nor can I mount it to a virtual system drive. It says the format is unsupported. Any tips?

 

Try with a translator (Chicken Systems or Extreme Sample Converter), they can read any sampler format

 

Thank You! Works like a charm!

Edit: Used Extreme Sample Converter

 

Last edited by a moderator: Oct 19, 2020

It's simple. Different format = different size
Sometimes after conversion size is much bigger.

Some softwares needs more strewn data in self format, more details etc. so their files are bigger.
Other softwares can run more compressed data, less description details in self format etc. so files can weight less.

For example weight of 3 video files in different format with same parameters:

*.avi - 82MB
*.mov - 120MB
*.mp4 - 112MB

*.exe format is great example
You download .exe ~300MB click install and after installation folder weight is ~700MB

There are some groups like FitGirl which repack games.
You download game from FitGirl which weights 4GB and after installation You have 12GB.

 

Not sure u understand.
The iso is eg. 528MB, and contains audio data. The converted files for X3 become 110MB.
The question was how would Chicken Sys 'back-engineer' 110MB to again be 528MB so that any sampler can use them when converted from the source.

 

And the iso might just be 528MB because that's the partition size the sampler uses. Look at every Akai CD, each folder is 60MB max, and you'll often find folders (aka an Akai partition) all the way to G or H with most of them empty because that's just the way an Akai created its file structure. There might only be 100MB of data in the bank, but if the EMU needs to see a whole 528 MB partition on a cd to read it, that cd needs to be 528MB. None of those samplers in those days used any sort of standards for how they did things. They made all that up as they went, which is why every single samplers OS has different file size and partition requirements, and then you get things like Ensoniq's fucked up floppy disk implementation heh.

 

I'm on a modern Mac, but I tried the E-MU X3 software earlier on a loose Windows PC (the ISOs were all available on a sister site) and man - those are some incredible sounds. It's basically all their famous modules (Proteus, Composer, World, Phatt etc.) in software form. People say the sampler in it (Emulator X3) is also good, but I'm more interested in them as a collection of new sounds.

It would be epic if these could be easily used on Macs.

I've tried "translating" the sounds with Chicken, but for me the results are often a miss, at least with earlier versions. Filters sound wrong, loops not working properly, effects not obviously included = fucked up sounds.

 

Some of the Proteus (and other E-MU) libraries are floating on the web in KONTAKT and even SF2 format.

To be honest, many of the sounds are pretty bad even on Emulator X, but there are some real gems in there too which often don't translate particularly well to other formats / samplers.

Also, if you are interested in like 90's drum sounds, orchestra stabs and whatnot the Proteus / module libraries are full of very interesting samples. Could be worth it just to extract the raw audio files.

The Emulator X3 itself is a nightmare to use. It's from a different era. The complexity and twitchiness of the envelope knobs alone will drive most people mad. Also the save popup nag, holy shit.

 

Last edited: Oct 16, 2020

These two are the answer:

 

Yeah they had a set called "Formula 4000" which had a bunch of their "greatest hits" modules packaged into CD-ROMs. I've taken all the drum sounds off of those with a converter - great stuff!

 

Last edited: Oct 22, 2020

Not.