[looper's] OT: E-Mu Audity/birotron

[goddard.duncan@mtvne.com]

 >> I have an A2000 and it is one of my favourite synth. You can certainly get bizaare sounds out of it. Beware though, the 16 meg (or is it 8) rom upgrade is virtually extinct, and look out for prices of the Emu Extreme Lead which has the soundset of the A2000 built in, but can take the newer Emu Rom cards. << 

 

we've been using one of these for a bit over a year now. one of the great things about it is the custom tuning scales, allowing the building of patches that only contain the notes for a certain key, so that the thing only plays (say) Cminor whatever enters it by way of midi instruction. this makes it ideal for live use with any of the hardware analogue sequencers like the doepfer maq and so forth. another great thing, which it inherited from it's ancient namesake, is the sheer number of modulation possibilities. I only wish that there was a decent software editor for it as the front panel programming is like painting one's hallway through the mailbox. it's labour-intensive but the results are as good as we can get from the analogue synths we used to use, and it's much smaller.

 

regarding the expansion card- E-mu stopped production of them because the same sound set had become available in the x-treme lead. they told me that the audity represented an r&d stepping stone and that the newer products were vastly improved and more stable. I called this absolute arse behaviour, and gave them some grief about early adopters being shafted by big businesses, and they eventually relented and "found" around 15 more boards. (it CAN'T take the newer emu boards, despite what their website says; the processor can't address that much memory and the file structure is different; you would need to buy the x-treme or another new box to do this, but see below).

 

I was sworn to secrecy until I took delivery of mine (halfway through a tour last year...) at which point I was able to announce to the user group on yahoo that there was a slim chance that this board was available in small quantities.

let me tell you, it is well worth it. it transforms the audity into a total beast. other folks who've been able to compare the expanded original with the x-treme say it is much fatter sounding and more stable. I would not be parted from mine for anything.

 

btw- loved the birotron anecdote; I will be forwarding that to the mellotron list as a former birotron manufacturer is on the 'tron list.

 

duncan/r.m.i. 

 

 



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