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Synthesist and sound designer Ian Dixon – in his latest video – shares his take on the classic E-Mu Emax II sampling synthesizer.

The E-MU Systems Emax II is a 16-bit digital sampling workstation, released in 1989, as a more powerful successor to the original 12-bit E-mu Emax. While the Emax II offers improved specs across the board, it dropped the analog filters of the original.

As a result, both versions have unique sonic capabilities and fans among synthesists.

Video Summary:

The E-mu Emax II Rack is a 1990 vintage sampler with 16-bit sampling, digital resonant filters, 16 voices and that classic E-mu sample-library character.

In this video I explain why I bought an Emax II Rack, how it fits into the E-mu Emulator family, and what makes this 2MB version with a Gotek drive interesting today. I look at the history from the original Emulator through to the Emax II, load sounds from the Gotek/sample library, play through factory-style patches, explore the filter and envelope controls, and talk about why vintage samplers still feel different from modern software.

This is partly a first look, partly a vintage sampler demo, and partly the start of a new Emax II journey: building a usable sound library, tagging useful sounds, sampling my own material and finding out what this classic rack sampler can add to modern tracks.

Topics covered:

00:00 Intro and music
00:15 E-mu Emax II Rack overview
00:39 Emax and Emulator history
01:03 Emax II specs and 16-bit sampling
02:06 Front panel and loading sounds
02:37 Gotek drive workflow
03:30 Sampling rates, filters, SCSI and MIDI
04:23 Exploring the sample library
05:08 Loading Grey Sounds Volume 1
06:45 Brass sounds and loading workflow
07:10 Emulator library sounds and synth-style editing
07:55 Digital resonant filter and Q
08:34 Filter envelope experiments
09:50 Synth-style modulation and envelopes
10:14 Sampling, looping and editing options
10:57 Piano, guitar, vocal and classic library sounds
14:26 Building a personal Emax library
15:08 Tagging sounds and using the library tool
15:48 Reflections on vintage digital samplers
16:26 Comments, resources and wrap-up

Watch the video and share your thoughts on the E-Mu Emax II in the comments!

Synthesist and developer Ian Dixon shared this overview of his new patch editor and librarian for the Yamaha TX7 synthesizer.

Video Summary:

The Yamaha TX7 is effectively a DX7 in a desktop module, originally designed as an expander for the DX7, but it has its own function memory differences that make a dedicated editor useful.

This tool runs locally in the browser, reads voices from the TX7, saves full libraries, loads DX7 SysEx banks, edits six-operator FM voices visually and lets you send individual sounds when you need them.

Dixon’s Yamaha TX7 Patch Editor and Librarian is available now at his site.

Sound designer Ian Dixon – in his latest video – takes a look at recreating the sound of classic ’70s string synths with the Korg multi/poly synthesizer.

Dixon walks through the sound design process, step-by-step, and caps the video off with a full audio demo.

Video Summary:

“In this tutorial, I build the complete performance from an initialized sound, creating a Solina-style string layer with multiple oscillators, filtering, ensemble modulation, phaser and stereo delay. I then add a detuned synth bass on Layer B and use key zones to create a playable strings-and-bass keyboard split.

Everything is programmed directly on the Multi/Poly — no software editor required.”