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LAYOUT: E-mu eOS 4.xx Samplers - MIDI Designer Q&A

Rating: GoldLAYOUT: E-mu eOS 4.xx Samplers
by
thedood

+2 votes
Rating: Gold
Gold
asked Sep 17, 2018 in Community Shares by thedood (950 points)
edited Dec 4, 2018 by thedood
Guys, what DAW are you using to get the connection going? Can't talk to the emu through Renoise or Reaper.
@nick-cent no need to use a DAW at all. If you’re connecting via Wi-Fi through a Mac, you can just use the active routing (name might be different) on the bottom right. In all cases, you can use one of these

http://mididesigner.com/midi-patcher-for-osx/
I can only trigger notes. I have enabled program change on the emu, and now changing preset will change preset, but nothing else ...
Sorry my mistake - I hadn't changed Device ID on the sampler itself...  I finished testing the template and it seems to be very working fine! I still have to use it more to take the most out it and the emu! Thanks again this is awesome! I would love to see the one for the akai s6000 as you mentioned - I do own one of these units. Great Job!
Great to hear Nick. Im so sorry regarding the System ID, I only added a note regarding that yesterday. Im pretty sure by default the Emus from factory settings use 00 but I had changed mine accidentally over the years and I also couldn't work out why it wasn't working when I first started designing it.
My version seems to be pretty stable on an Ultra 5000 (4.7) and an e64 (3.01), I used it again last night and everything seemed to work fine.
I have a little work to do on the Cord presets. They are a little confusing, as essentially, they are super controls, thats fire groups of buttons holding preset cord Destination, Source and Modulation sysex to the sampler, But MD wont display these values as you push the presets, they will only change on the sampler, as I cant get them to "set" the controls in MD, other than to a default value (which is zero for all, as I wanted to easily unplug them all). They work, but as the MD display wont follow the presets, they can get confusing and at times you need to look at the sampler screen to see what they are set too, but if you start from no cords attached, and then slowly hook them up manually its fine, which is what I do most of the time. However, some cords are really common, like Filter Envelope to Filter Frequency, so as presets they can be handy. Ill see how I go, but just beware the presets in cords are still being developed.
Ive got eh S6000 Sysex manual here, its huge! so it may take a little longer ;). I also have a couple of CD3000xl's and I really want to get a panel for them too, as they have terrible little screens.
Cheers
Brett/Thedood

1 Answer

0 votes

Very good job


Brett, the work you've done is very much appreciated, thank you again, I have been wanting this for so long. I will be using it and get back to you with my findings/requests. As for the cords, I get what you mean, it's ok though, I keep an eye on the emu's panel and double check what's goin'on.

One thing I have found it's missing, is on the filter envelope. Unlike the Amp Envelope, the Filter envelope can take negative values and this is something important in designing filter envelopes with the emu. If you could fix this, it would be very helpful.

Also, how do you use the XY grid?

Cheers, nick
answered Sep 19, 2018 by nick-cent (180 points)
Well Im glad your testing this for me Nick! haha I totally missed the Filter/Aux envelope issue. Thankyou! so much for that. Ok, so when I was doing the initial layout, I basically just copied directly from the Emu Sysex spec. Now here's the interesting thing, I found a few bugs in the specification itself. (http://www.deepsonic.ch/deep/docs_manuals/e-mu_eos_remote_sysex.pdf)
The value ranges for the Filter/Aux are identical to the Amplifier Env, 0 to 100. So Ive just inputted those values, and started testing, to get Negative values from the filter env, when I was hooking up the cord to test it, I added a neg - modulation rather than a pos + one (This is essentially the same as running the envelope below zero, if this were real Analog voltage, we technically are just shifting the DC offset) But, the values actually go from -100 to +100, so now it can swing further (better resolution). I couldnt believe I missed that, but I was using the Amp envelope as my main guide and as you know, that actually cant go into a negative value. Once again thanks for the help there mate.
Cheers
New version uploaded Nick, give it a go for me and let me know how it works. Here are a list of changes.
1. Added negative values to the Filter and Aux envelopes.
2. Stopped all the +- buttons from "clocking" or going all the way round to the start again, I found that frustrating.
3. Ive added 2 new Voice controls, these are Group number and Sample number. Essentially, these let you choose which sample a Voice uses and what group that voice is in. May come in handy.
4. Ive added 2 new Midi controls for Volume processing. As the rackmount E-mus are totally reliant on Midi for the keyboard, they have some extra controls to help get the Velocity and Volume curves correct for your playing style. These are Volume Sensitivity and Ctrl 7 (CC Midi Volume) curves. Have a play and see if they do much, I certainly noticed a change in the Midi Velocity curves when using it. (Midi Velocity is now in the Amplifier section)
5. Ive changed the pages around, and a couple of the controls for better workflow, hope it doesn't screw you round too much haha. I found the workflow a little awkward before, so now the pages are better suited for voice editing. (I do a lot of Drumloop stuff)
6. Got rid of the Cord presets and replaced them with more testing Keys C1-G1 and C4-G4. I don't use any sharps/flats as Im an electronics engineer that likes to build Synths and screwaround, not a musician that actually plays them haha.
7. Lots of Gui mods, made it more 3D.

Cheers
The X-Y grid. The reason I added this was to make "playing" more responsive. Although you can play/jam live with the panel controls (Frequency cutoff etc) they aren't incredibly "responsive", as changing some values can be a little delayed. Here's the reason, because we are sending values in Sysex to a buffer behind the preset (not directly to the control like CC), the changes can be delayed, not by much but enough to notice if jamming live with some parameters I found testing, some took a second to change). But the Midi Controller sub system, along with cords, hooking the midi controller numbers to the parameters we want to change is much faster and responsive, as its designed to be fast enough (low latency) for playing live.
On the "Other" page, you have a bunch of controls up the top Midi A Midi B etc etc. By default Midi A is set to CC18 Midi B is set to CC19, Midi C is set to CC20 and Midi D is set to CC21, so Midi A though to D all listen to the X-Y grids CC output.

"Edit - The grids are labeled by there CC outputs...Y19, X18 etc (You can easily edit these CC numbers by going into design mode ;)"

Now we go to Cords, and create a new patch from Source - Midi A to say, Destination - Amplifier Volume, add some modulation amount and go to the X-Y grid and you essentially now can play the Volume on the grid, you can set these to whatever you like, here's a good one, set Midi A out to the LFO1 rate in one cord, then set the LFO1 out to Amplifier volume on another cord and you can get some cool results playing the grid. I put them there so I could essentially screw around with Cords modulation and test the results. You're quite welcome to change the CC of Midi A etc to what ever controller numbers you like and use your favourite external Midi controller to output the CC instead. Have fun.
Cheers
Alright, I did some testing and I am about to get in the studio and use it again today. I saw the changes you made and now I feel there's everything there and makes sense. Of course it is difficult to know where (in the menu system) one is when MD doesn't recall the emu's settings on screen and makes it difficult to select voices, samples and groups. I, myself, don't use the emu for drums and mostly I use it for bass, if not always. I might stack voices, or even samples, but I' rather stack the emu to the virus or something. Anyway, the sound you get from this machine is unbelievable, but now having a touchscreen to set up cords and change the envelopes just like that, is a huge time saver to say the least! Great job done mate! I salut you for this.
On my machine, Midi A,B,C etc start off cc21 and on. I think this is the default, but not sure. So, basically you've set up the grids for a pair of MIDI A & B and another pair C & D, right? I'm off to go use it again and get back to you if I find something new. Amazing amazin amazing... :)
Hey Nick, sorry for the late reply.
"basically you've set up the grids for a pair of MIDI A & B and another pair C & D, right?"
Yes. just so I could do some testing using the ipad and then I can setup say a korg kaoss, joystick controller etc etc or something like that to use the MidiA MidiB simply by changing the CC numbers.
But I mainly just use the XY grids, they are pretty responsive I find.
Theres been a bit of delay on the S6000 too, Im doing a whole new Korg TR rack panel as the one on this site isnt up to my standard lol
Cheers
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