E M U L A T O R P R O T E U S - no other instrument has ever knocked my socks off like that one in 1990, when the first affordable sample-based instruments had just come out (Korg M1, Roland U-20...). The Proteus was one of the 'kings' of realism for that time, and I was fascinated about its orchestral sounds. Now of course, perception has changed so much that the demo songs can't impress anyone and sound deficient.
Emulator continued to manufacture such racks until about 2000. I think this orchestral one was the last one, and for 1999 it really sounds excellent:


One of the former heads of EMU is now said to have announced to take up production of modules again. However, it seems to be focused on electronic/analogue sounds I don't want to abandon hope that it will also include new orchestral racks/modules...

I'm with you on this one, Rosetree. I, too, wish they'd make a new, state of the art orchestral sound module, or at least, a module that also includes all the orchestral sounds anyone would need.

Speaking about the Roland U-20, it was my second keyboard. In fact, I still have it, but some of the keys and buttons stopped working many years ago. I had bought it when it came out, in 1989, because it sounded the most realistic, as far as acoustic and orchestral sounds were concerned. The Choir sounds still sound pretty good.

Come on, Kurzweil, Roland and Yamaha, gives us some modules!

The thing these days is that laptops are so cheap and powerful, (And there are many orchestral VST libraries on the market) demand for hardware modules is small and non-profitable. (Also a laptop and VSTs are no more difficult to set up then a hardware module these days)

Bill

Another topic we've often discussed already... I agree that for studio use everyone goes VST, and that's most probably why Emulator had to stop manufacturing their hardware modules around 2000. But does a 'cheap' laptop really suffice? According to all I read you need a powerful, more expensive one for the good libraries. Then, I was thinking about using orchestral sounds live, and there I still consider hardware sound generators as both easier and less glitch-prone. In fact, there IS a reasonable demand for the Roland Integra, it's not one of Roland's total flops (like BK-9).
I even see one advantage of sound modules for live use which they didn't have in the late 1990s: with an iPAD (or other tablet) and a proper app (to be developed by the manufacturer preferably), even a module can be controlled very conveniently as if it had a large touchscreen of its own.

The bigdownfall of the big VST orchestrall stuff is loading times and processor use... I wouldnt use LASS or anything in that order on just a normall laptop


But... if you want impressive orchestrall stuff, turn your head towards the Korg Kronos expanions... KA pro is the name and they are close to what those VSTs offer and fit in a workstation..

Very impressive and Sevan did a masterful job of demoing it. However, although probably better than anything you'll hear on a normal synth, I found the strings just a tad harsh/(metallic?) for my taste and I also didn't like the harp....I should say, I didn't like the simulation, the sound itself was quite nice, it just didn't sound like a harp to me. I do believe that the strings could be 'mellowed' to my taste with high quality EQ, as the tone itself is full, rich, and has lots of 'character'. JMO, though. I'm no expert on orchestral sounds. Would like to have heard some of the orchestral horns.

chas

Even though these demos came out a few years ago using the older Kurzweil PC3 series (not the newer PC3K or PC3A), they are definitely worth a listen. I think you'll be hard-pressed to distinguish these from a real orchestra:

http://ejbleen.wix.com/uso#!__page-1

Sorry about the link. You'll have to cut and paste it on Google.

Regarding the Kronos, yes, I would consider its expansions as the closest (at least technically) to software libraries you can get on a synth, I just recommended someone to have a look at it - for me personally, it would mean to give up the lightweight MoXF and carry a 13.9 kilogram keyboard to each church wedding. That's why I'm so crazy about a module.
With respect to this specific demo and expansion, I'm not sure... the demo boasts so much with gigantic percussion sounds and octaved strings with a strong-vibrato solo violin on top of it, I'd rather want to hear how a plain Beethoven symphony would sound with it in order to be sure how realistic it really is.
In that respect, I like the Kurzweil examples Mikem posted even better - even if this is not up-to-date technology, and there are some details where you hear it: the very high string section tones do sound somewhat synthetic, the piano is sub-standard, and at one point I heard a not-so-perfect trumpet. Kurzweil have certainly also rested on their laurels too long... Actually I think the Roland SRX 04 and 10 largely live up to these Kurzweil sounds (SRX 10 probably exceeds them), Roland woodwinds might be a bit worse, but IMO it's more a question of how much detail you put into the sequencer tracks.

So KApro is from Kurt Ader? He used to be the head of KARO sounds in Mannheim. They used to have string libraries for the M3, too. They sampled the Mannheim symphonic orchestra. Obviously KApro is no more under the KARO label, but made by Kurt Ader, as the Youtube user states...

Yes, the same man, the same magic... Korg is blessed having this man making soundpacks for the Kronos..

Tough keep in mind that they are expensive. I was lucky when i bought my used Kronos that those packs where on it...

Rosetree, I trust your judgment and your ears. If you say that the SRX-04 and SRX-10 "largely live up to these Kurzweil sounds", I believe you. Getting a Roland Integra-7 is certainly cheaper than a PC3K/A, so I'll certainly keep this in mind when I'm ready to buy.

Thanks for your feedback.

Have a look at the page describing how those examples were recorded. With the level of care for choosing sounds that people here may use, or with some different combinations of patches the Kurzweil PC3X could sound even better. Especially if some of the effects were used here and there for a subtle boost.

So many of the Kurzweil sounds have been set up with multiple style specific vibrato, delay, reverb and much more. Where on my old Fantom X, I may have had to have several patches lined up in favourites, one patch on the Kurzweil could handle the same in many cases.

For all my orchestral type voices and arrangements, my best source is my Tyros 5 and the fabulous Ensemble feature. Great all-in-one unit for home studio and for the road.

My best sound module I still use in my home studio is the Yamaha MU100R. This 1990s tone generator and add on expansion cards is still popular for users including the DX (DX7 synth), AN (AN1x synth) to the existing VL (wind and string virtual modeling) instrument and VH (vocal harmony) boards and I currently installed the DR (drums) and AP (acoustic piano) cards.

I still run multitrack audio tracks via the A/D inputs and all with FX etc. With simple System Exclusive data commands, you can have a MIDI automation track runnning alongside your other instrument tracks in a song.

I love the onboard licensed Aurel Exciter and some fully parametric EQ, reverb etc, to use with some of my vocal tracks. The incredible virtual modeling of the VL board is still relevant today, and when this is incorporated into the Performance multi-channel presets with the onboard samples you can achieve some breathtaking evolving sounds. Unique orchestral effects can be made by running the four separate midi channels from the Tyros 5 Ensemble output and assigning any combinations of the MU100R 32 midi channels and voice selections.

Marcus

Well, thanks a lot for your trust, but it always remains a subjective thing. This is my impression from overhearing these demos all in all, but to be sure about the individual quality of Kurzweil sounds and the range of different samples, I would have to try a PC-3 myself and go through the voices and samples, including the available expansion(s) (I've read about KORE64). I haven't ever tried a Kurzweil in a store, so my judgment is really just based on these demos.

Sound is indeed subjective. For example, I've read many people say they just love the Tyros 5. Others instead, say it's garbage. How does one reconcile these opposing opinions?

You absolutely have to try a keyboard for yourself. Everyone has different ears, needs and likes.

I hope you get to try a Kurzweil soon. You'll be glad you did.

Unfortunately, Kurzweil has no module, and the synthesizers are much too heavy for my taste. It's really a pity. But I'm going to try a PC-3 some time, just to see what I miss. But I won't accept that weight for my gigs.
About Yamaha modules - the latest one, Motif XS rack, is SO MUCH poorer than the Integra, there's just no comparison. The MoX had exactly the same soundset, poor string sections, poor artificial French horns etc., and no sample expandibility.

Here's an operatic pice, "Cavalleria Rusticana" played by two different people. The first one is done using the Roland Integra-7:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cokZT5qOL1Q


The second, using the Kurzweil PC3K:

https://soundcloud.com/orlan-charles/mascagni-intermezzo-from


Comments are welcome.

I'm not crazy about my Motif XF's strings, in general. That's why I want a piece of gear for that. My 3 options are:

1) Kurzweil PC3k/A

2) Roland Integra-7

3) Motif XF sound libraries, like, "Garritan", and "Digital Sound Factory Symphonic Strings".

Unless, the Motif's replacement is revealed soon with great string and orchestral sounds.

What about Muse Receptor???

I know Synth o'man , I'm in contact with him on Facebook. In this piece he has, for some reason, not used the newer SRX 04 except for one track. He didn't make use of any SN-A tones either. With the old, mostly heavily looped SRX 06 strings Roland cannot match Kurzweil. It strongly depends on the piece, too, here vibrato solo strings seem to be important, e.g. in a Beethoven symphony or many soundtracks the straight sections are more important.
Edit: Just got to listen to the Kurzweil example. Surprised to say I don't like it better. The straight non-vibrato strings used sound synthetic in the high notes.
I'm tempted to try the first bars with a strings mixture of my own...

Actually, I don't think you can conclude very much from such comparisons. In fact, Roland wins this one sky-high IMO, which I didn't expect at all. But it's not because Rolands sounds are better in general, but just because of the individual choice the two users made among the range of sounds available. It could sound very different with the same instruments if other selections had been made. Probably not a real help as a purchase decision, I'm afraid.

I had looked into that a few years ago, but decided I did not want to get into VSTs, for various reasons.

Thanks for the suggestion, though.

I noticed that Synth o'man used more tracks than Orlan Charles' PC3K version. Of course, this type of comparison is not scientific. It's just to get an idea of how each sounds. It depends on the skill of the players, the kind of voices used, etc.

I hope you do a recording yourself, using the voices you think are best. If you do, please post it here, or post a link to it. I'd love to hear what you can do with it!

I agree with your assessment. The Kurzweil version sounded more harsh. Good points.

You can get the original Proteus rom samples for 39$

https://www.digitalsoundfactory.com/e-mu-virtuoso

Thanks Dan... nice site... and i can load soundfont format into the Kronos... and the price is just awesome..

Yes. sounds are a bit old school, but you get this american sound of the 90-2000 years

vArranger can also load sf2 so it is nice

Just found out that via John Melas Waveform editor I seem to be able to load the Virtuoso waveforms into my MoXF flash, too!!

Just a warning or question... I just purchased the Virtuoso sounds as Soundfont and imported it into the Melas waveform editor for Motif. I can audition all sounds in the editor, but strangely most of the waveforms are 'one shot' instead of loop, so when I play a trumpet or strings, the sound runs out after a second or so. I can change every single waveform to 'loop', but no matter how I set the loop start/end points, there are loud popping sounds each time the loop begins.

I've just tested loading a Virtuoso voice with sample into the MoXF: As I feared, the slow strings I tried abruptly stop sounding after about 2 seconds. The waveforms are wrongly implemented as one shot samples...

Luckily, a few waveforms of the strings part of the package are looped (e.g. Marcato strings) and also implemented as stereo samples, so probably they will indeed be a valuable supplement to my MoXF strings. But most waveforms seem to be unusable due to this one shot problem, unless I change thousands of keybanks into loops myself (with the problem of avoiding these lound popping noises).

There are many Kurzweil String demos. This one is simple, but sounds nice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0zYXdAbcXE

Hello, you can send it to me, and i will try to convert the SF2 to motif format with another converter.
Maybe loop points will be imported too.

What is the motif sound format extension you need?

Thanks for your offer, that would be very helpful. I'm going to follow some suggestions of DSF first, then I would write you a PM.The MoXF takes .x6 and .x3 format, but thanks to the Melas editor I could also use the old Motif XS .x0 format.

ok, let me know.

I can convert SF2 to .X3

You don't believe it - did I have to buy ancient 15-year-old Emulator Proteus sounds to get the best marcato strings I ever had for the Yamaha MoXF?? These marcato strings are great! Luckily, these ones are looped, and I edited the voice putting two different marcato samples left/right to get a beautiful stereo. I don't want to know how many Motif users tried to get real marcato strings and never tried to convert these old Emulator waveforms...

These are the "NEW" Emulator Proteus Virtuoso marcato strings for Yamaha Motif/MoXF :

Just great of Dan, he was able to convert the whole EMU Virtuoso sound package into the Motif XF format, which didn't work properly with the Melas waveform editor.
It is actually SHOCKING what a dramatic upgrade the Emulator Virtuoso soundset represents for the Yamaha Motif XF/MoXF. A lot of the strings are really excellent, and the loops are not as short as one might expect, it's often several seconds before the loop starts.
It is also striking that, although the Proteus Virtuoso waveROM size was stated with 32 or 64 MB, in fact when it is converted into the Motif format, the size is OVER 500 MB! Is this another example how Yamaha and other manufacturers often blow up sample size to exaggerated, meaningless values? I guess so...

Good to hewr Dan could help you...

The huge sample size is probably because they resampled the Proteus and not used the orriginal samples...

Which prooves the opposite of your statement, its incredible how good the sounds are that Yamaha can create withe their current samples... There are 2000 sounds in the Tyros 5 and only 700 MB of samples... And yet the soundquallity is close to the big kontakt sound libraries..

No, Bachus, it is not resampled (look at the DSF link and product description), and the E-MU package is only 32 MB in Soundfont format. It only grows to 500 MB when it is converted into the Motif .x3v format.
The other Motif libraries I have all seem exaggerated in their sample size when comparing their quality with the 32/64MB Roland SRX boards, for example. I don't trust those size statements any more. Nobody knows by what factors these figures are inflated.

Yes the SF2 files are the original ones !
64Mb of samples in this virtuoso box

You can see some of the secrets the bigs are using, like using sample rate between 24000 and 37000 Hz

The problem with the conversion to Yamahan is that when a sample is using by many sound presets, they are duplicated in the Yamaha. I don't know if many motif sounds can share the same audio sample

But that's not the reason here. You are referring to duplicate waveforms in the flash board (which are avoidable, the Motif/MoXF can use the same waveform for multiple voices, you just have to take care yourself that you don't copy duplicates onto the flash if you load several voices one by one). But here the E-MU package already has hundreds of MB when opening it in .x3v-format in the Melas waveform editor on PC. The waveform editor doesn't duplicate any samples, obviously it is the .x3 format itself which inflates the data size.

Yes this is the reason ;à

If you sort the wav samples by size, you will see that the same sample is duplicated many times for each instrument it is used inside.

Maybe the x3 format does not allow to use the same sample inside many different instruments, so they simply duplicate them

Sorry, then I understood you wrongly. I thought you were talking about duplicated waveforms, but you are referring to duplicated individual samples as components of a waveform. So that's the explanation then, thanks. Maybe this occurs with other libraries too, that's why they are so "large"...

Something is still wrong, the voices are not correctly connected to waveforms, they are mute and refer to Yamaha factory waveforms now, but I can install the EMU waveforms on the flash, which is the most important, so I can form voices by selecting the new waveforms manually.

Besides the marcato strings, I now have gorgeous small strings and symphonic big strings - better ones than Garritan!! I also have the best French Horns now. It's so remarkable that I have to repeat it: 15-year-old EMU samples have significantly, almost dramatically upgraded the orchestral voices of my MoXF.

Demo of three strings voices and French Horns, exclusively using E-MU Virtuoso samples!
https://soundcloud.com/rorosetree/e-mu-virtuoso-strings-fyamaha-motifmoxf

So, how do YOU rate them compared to the Garritan, DSF Strings, SRX-04/06 and SuperNatural?

I rate them to be on the same high level as the other ones mentioned! DSF strings have longer samples and still a higher quality for the 5-piece sections, but they neither include a really big section nor a real marcato version. So the E-MU strings indeed contribute high-quality variations I haven't had in the MoXF so far. The Garritan big strings have some features I don't always like: they sound odd in the low keys and have quite a strong vibrato in the upper keys. Maybe SRX-04 and supernatural strings combined do a similar job, but it's always good to have various different high-quality strings to combine them!

Thanks for your review! When it comes to Strings, the more the merrier!

To complete the picture about the E-MU Virtuoso: as good as the orchestral strings are, especially for their age, as bad are the brass sounds. This is really its weakness except French Horn. Trumpets, trombones and brass sections as a whole are far below the standard of the old Roland Orchestral boards and SRX 06.
Woodwinds are quite good except flutes, where I miss sampled vibrato. Solo strings are quite good.

Thanks for the details.

Just made a little new demo: beginning of Mozart's Little Night Music (Kleine Nachtmusik) exclusively with E-MU Virtuoso sounds:

https://soundcloud.com/rorosetree/demo-e-mu-virtuoso-fyamaha-motif-mozart-eine-kleine-nachtmusik

The main violins were good. However, as a whole, the SRX sound better, and so do MoXF's libraries (DSF, Garritan).......in my humble opinion.

I don't think you could do this e.g. with Garritan GPO Lite alone. Just a big soft section, too big for a fast Mozart tune, and solo strings, you wouldn't get this sound. These marcato strings rock, I especially like how they play around 0:43, that's very realistic. I also like their sound in the contrabass range very much. What I don't like here is the string quartet and the woodwinds, these both would sound better with either SRX or Garritan.

So actually maybe I'm even going to sell a part of my other libraries. I've decided to make a break here and enjoy E-MU Proteus 2000 from now on. I have a special relation to my Proteus memories anyway, and I think it's absolutely amazing enough as a virtual orchestra, playable live on keys. All these sounds are so incredibly good compared to what everybody thought was great in the early 1990s, it's just human madness to constantly raise demands higher and higher, for me it's time to make music, e.g. playing this beautiful Little Night Music, instead of hunting for gigabytes...
P.S. I know I started this thread in the search for new modules... but I think I changed my mind (unless there will be a new E-MU ).

At the 0:43 second mark and onwards is the part I thought was most realistic. I called them simply violins in my comment above. I did not know they were marcato strings. I, too, thought the woodwinds weren't great. You can mix-and-match these marcato strings with woodwinds from SRX-06.

Just curious; which libraries will you sell?

I'm glad you've decided to make music, and that your search for better sounds is over (at least for now), because you can spend lots of time looking, and you wound up having less time playing.

I've always liked Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb_jQBgzU-I