KVR Audio

Dan_E10 · Post by **Dan_E10** » Mon Apr 21, 2014 9:16 pm

Hi all,
I've been enjoying Emulator X2 on and off for a while now. It won't run on the Win7 64bit partition of my hard drive. Apparently Emulator X3 will, but now that Emu is effectively dead, I'm not sure that I want to go through the trouble of trying to get X3 to work even if I can track a copy down.

So anyway, I've already got a bunch of VSTi's that cover a bunch of bases. What set Emulator X apart for me were the Zplane filters which could be a lot of fun. I've got Rapture, Dimension Pro, FM7/8, Poly-Ana, some others that are included with Sonar, and a hardware modular, but nothing that has an array of filters quite like those in Emulator X. I never really got into the sampling capabilities of Emulator X and I'm not really looking to replace it as a sampler. I'm more interested to know what other synths out there have an array of filters similar to Emu's.

thanks,
Dan

Uncle E · Post by **Uncle E** » Mon Apr 21, 2014 9:56 pm

MachFive has excellent filters:

MOTU MachFive

robotmonkey · Post by **robotmonkey** » Tue Apr 22, 2014 5:46 am

I think there is nothing quite like Emulator X around.

If you want to use it only as a rompler for E-MU sound libraries then maybe the free Proteus VX will suffice? You'd obviously would loose the deeper editing and modulation options but would still have access to all the 50 Z-plane filters. As most of the E-MU libraries have at least a patch cord assigned to filter cuttoff and resonance you would have some very basic control over filters.

Dan_E10 · Post by **Dan_E10** » Tue Apr 22, 2014 4:45 pm

Uncle E wrote:MachFive has excellent filters:

MOTU MachFive

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll listen to some audio demos of MachFive. It does look like what I'm looking for, however it may be a bit pricy for my purposes. I originally got Emulator X bundled with a 1212M audio interface for $150 total.

robotmonkey wrote:I think there is nothing quite like Emulator X around.

If you want to use it only as a rompler for E-MU sound libraries then maybe the free Proteus VX will suffice? You'd obviously would loose the deeper editing and modulation options but would still have access to all the 50 Z-plane filters. As most of the E-MU libraries have at least a patch cord assigned to filter cuttoff and resonance you would have some very basic control over filters.

Proteus VX might be an option. I had read that it is rare to get it working in Win7 64bit though.
Dan

Ichad.c · Post by **Ichad.c** » Tue Apr 22, 2014 5:09 pm

The z-plane filters are patented...

realmarco · Post by **realmarco** » Wed Apr 23, 2014 6:51 am

whats so special about the z-plane filters ?

fmr · Post by **fmr** » Wed Apr 23, 2014 7:49 am

realmarco wrote:whats so special about the z-plane filters ?

It's a type of special 3-D filters, that put subtractive synthesis into the realms of physical modelling. You may take a read about them here: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun98/a ... chool.html

Gamma-UT · Post by **Gamma-UT** » Wed Apr 23, 2014 8:00 am

Filterscape from u-he does morphing filters. The VA won't load samples, but you can use the effects part of Filterscape to follow a sample player for paraphonic synthesis.

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Wed Apr 23, 2014 8:53 am

Ichad.c wrote:The z-plane filters are patented...

Nah… a trick that allowed them to control cutoff independently from resonance and thereby saving a lot of calculation was. It was called "ARMAdillo Encoding" and it allowed them to build these filters in hardware. The patent must have faded out since a few years ago. The principle itself has lost its importance since filters can be implemented in VSTs.

fmr · Post by **fmr** » Wed Apr 23, 2014 9:02 am

Urs wrote:
Ichad.c wrote:The z-plane filters are patented...
Nah… a trick that allowed them to control cutoff independently from resonance and thereby saving a lot of calculation was. It was called "ARMAdillo Encoding" and it allowed them to build these filters in hardware. The patent must have faded out since a few years ago. The principle itself has lost its importance since filters can be implemented in VSTs.

Really?

So, when are you going to implement them?

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Wed Apr 23, 2014 9:08 am

He basically did that in a way - in Filterscape.

Sendy · Post by **Sendy** » Wed Apr 23, 2014 12:58 pm

Z-plane filters, as I remember them, can have arbitrary passbands and resonances, with arbitrary q factors, and can morph into eachother, with the spectral elements moving and not just crossfading into eachother. Because it's such a complicated system (and we're talking hardware interfaces here), the engineers set up 64 (I think) filter profiles, each one like a wavetable in that it has several states it can morph around in.

The technology is somewhat obsolete - it was designed to run on fairly limited horsepower by today's standards, and there were tradeoffs - the overall cutoff shift could only be set at none-on (so it's non-sweeping), but the morph parameter more than made up for that by involving a lot of spectral movement.

These days we alrady have arbitrarily morphable filters in some plugins.

Uncle E · Post by **Uncle E** » Wed Apr 23, 2014 2:23 pm

Urs wrote:Nah… a trick that allowed them to control cutoff independently from resonance and thereby saving a lot of calculation was. It was called "ARMAdillo Encoding" and it allowed them to build these filters in hardware. The patent must have faded out since a few years ago. The principle itself has lost its importance since filters can be implemented in VSTs.

A sample loading oscillator and Z-Plane filter bank for DIVA sure would be sweet.

robotmonkey · Post by **robotmonkey** » Wed Apr 23, 2014 5:16 pm

Filterscape though does not sound even close to E-MU Z-plane filters in Emulator X3. Completely different characteristics.

robotmonkey · Post by **robotmonkey** » Wed Apr 23, 2014 5:18 pm

Uncle E wrote: A sample loading oscillator and Z-Plane filter bank for DIVA sure would be sweet.

It would be even sweeter if someone like DSF would revive E-MU/Ensoniq legacy and made a synth that would combine the sampling of Emulator with the transwave synthesis of Ensoniq + add all the E-MU Z-plane filters.

Soft synth with similar filters to Emulator X?