Hello @Kate Middleton, Presence by Studio One is a good way to play and edit SF2.

 

This is a kind of you to provide people with this.
Unfortunately, it has a similar conversion issue in order for it to work, it does not just load without requesting conversion to play. I tried it.
Sforzando that is.

 

Last edited: Apr 6, 2026 at 10:35 AM

The things that made the E-MU Proteus' unique were the effects and the nice Z-Plane filters, which soundfonts cannot replicate well. While Emulator X3 is old and buggy, to my knowledge it's the only way to use the Z-Plane filters and E-MU effects in software. There was something E-MU did make called EmuPowerFX which allowed you to use the effects as a VST effect instead, but that only worked if you had an E-MU sound card/audio interface with the E-MU DSP chip on it.

While Digital Sound Factory/DSF do sell most of the E-MU sounds as Kontakt libraries, many of them are old and are not good, many of them are just the raw samples without the special filters and effects.

 

Yes, all .exb. I must say that loading the .exb banks is real quick, as well switching among presets.

That was the first thing I tried once banks were loaded, I love that. But with UltraProteus rack was a pain in the ass to program.
X3 easypeasy: you select voice processing within the preset then choose the (Z-plane) filter.
There is even a Morph designer filter - 6 stages.

 

Yes, there would even be an advantage: additional outputs incl. S/PDIF are only available on Proteus 2000, not on Planet Earth or Mo' Phatt units. Apart from this, the only difference is the front plate. Internally they are basically the same. Every unit has up to 4 ROM slots. You could just put the ROMs from Planet Earth, Mo' Phatt, and another one in Proteus 2000 and use them together in the same device.

 

Last edited: Apr 6, 2026 at 2:10 PM

Many of the Sound Blaster Live! sound cards from around 1998 to around 2003 had the EMU10K1 chip onboard which came with a 64 voice synthesizer, 32 parts of multitimbrality, and up to 512 voices. It also had some effects made by E-MU Systems (e.g Flanger/Chorus/Reverb/Pitch Shifter/etc.) built into it as part of the FX8010 DSP architecture.

Many soundfonts were made back in the day that were built specifically for the SB Live! cards, including some soundfonts by Gort
(e.g Gort's Synth) which took advantage of the SB Live!'s resonant filters (which something like Fruity Soundfont Player doesn't have) which is why playing them back on something like Fruity Soundfont Player or BASSMIDI VST/juicysfplugin will not make them sound like what they did back on the SB Live! card.

No one to my knowledge has managed to recreate the SB Live!'s synthesizer playback behaviour/filters/effects in software form which is a shame because while I do have a Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 card, I cannot use it due to my PC not having PCI slots.

E-MU also made software for PCs called Audio Production Suite and came with a bunch of Proteus soundfonts which are the exact same ones you can on sites like Musical-Artifacts to this day.

 

I’d like to also try the soundfonts, Emulator X3 is working successfully for windows but if these soundfonts are accurate I can take the proteus sound to my Mac, iPad and iPhone with a sf2 plugin.

 

I’m going with both, doesn’t hurt to have all the options available to me but I’m starting to go through the sound banks for X3 and putting it all together, I’ve been burned out yesterday from something unrelated so I’ll be able to test VX and the Proteus 2000 library, heck it could get imported if it’ll work in Emulator X3

 

What are the differences between the Emulator VX & X3 ?

 

I still own all of the various Proteus hardware, going back to the original, and I keep meaning to sell it as I haven't turned it on in ages. I've used the Digital Sound Factory Kontakt patches a few times just for fun. They aren't perfect, but they are authentic enough for my purposes. I don't think they're that bad at all, and they certainly scratch that itch when I want to invoke some nostalgia.

 

1. E-Mu Proteus VX v.2 that E-mu was giving away for free at the end. Includes manual. Can play any and all E-Mu sample sets of module ROM. Runs in Windows XP to 10 x64. Software version of Proteus 2000. Includes Composer ROM sample set. Stand-alone or plugin. Abandonware.

2. Emulator X is a software-based audio sampler that was produced by E-MU Systems from 2004 to 2009.

Emulator X software is compatible with PCs running the Microsoft Windows operating system. The sampler can operate as a stand-alone program or as a VST instrument and, as of Emulator X3, is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

For the software to run, one of several sound cards sold by E-MU was originally required.[1] The sound card acted as a hardware dongle to prevent unauthorised use without the purchase of an E-MU branded device. This requirement was later dropped with the release of Emulator X

Versions

Following E-MU's decision to end sales and production of its hardware sampler line in 2003, Emulator X was released as the company's first entry into the software sampler market in 2004.[1] Emulator X2 was released in 2006,[3] followed by the third and final incarnation, Emulator X3, in 2009.[4] The product has since been discontinued[5] and is no longer available to purchase from either E-MU or its parent company, Creative Technology.

Functionality

Emulator X was largely based on E-MU's hardware sampler operating system, EOS. As such, it replicates or expands upon most of the design and features available in the final revision of the operating system, EOS 4.70. An example of this is the inclusion of E-MU's highly publicized "Z-Plane" filters, with Emulator X containing over 25 new filters not available in EOS.

It is also capable of importing and exporting bank files in EOS format for compatibility with E-MU's legacy hardware samplers such as the Emulator IV and E4 Ultra series devices.

It is the last software sampler produced that retains the ability to directly sample other sources, in contrast to current software samplers, which require existing samples and are therefore more akin to traditional ROMplers. Among the more noteworthy sampling features added in Emulator X2 is SynthSwipe, a tool which gives Emulator X the ability to sample from connected MIDI devices such as hardware synthesizers by sending a series of notes at differing velocities via MIDI and automatically recording the device's output to create a new fully mapped sample bank.

 

Have you tried the UVI Falcon Emu 1 2/3 packs? I am not sure what other people think of them, but they always sound fantastic to me.

A word of warning though. Falcon can be a real pain in the arse to install.

 

I do love your answers.. Always extremely detailed!