E-mu SP 1200: The Lo-fi Dream Machine
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ก.ย. 2024
- A look at the SP 1200 which is a legendary sampling drum machine first released by E-mu Systems in 1987.
Huge thanks to Si Spex (aka Barry Beats) for allowing use of some of his tracks throughout the video and for also making some of the breaks I was playing around with.
Check those out here: barrybeatsakas...
Thanks to T O N E L A B for uploading a rather handy walk-through of the SP 1200: • How to use the E-mu SP...
Also thank you to the owner of this unit.
Dave Rossum website: www.rossum-elec...
Social:
/ alexballmusic
/ alexballmusic
My Music:
alexball.bandc...
That's why I love.....SP crunch!
(Kicking myself for thinking of that _after_ making the video)
Helloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
nice video buddy : )
Do one on the Boss/Roland SP series.
Yes it sounds fantastic and has a very nice character, something you don't hear
much today in modern music. sometimes i think low bit rate beats especially
from old hardware can sound better that high fi beats. they add a lot of colour
and character which goes well with drum beats. the tune by uptown dope on
plastic was sampled on one of these. i have sampled the original kool and the
gang beat on modern programs and DAW etc etc i found it impossible to recreate
that sound that the old hip hop and rap guys got from one of these.
mate I am nodding my head 3 seconds in
“EMU’s history is a story for another time”
a story for another documentary mayhaps???
There is a great interview with Dave Rossum and other emu-people on youtube somewhere, where he talks about digital filters and so on :)
..leaving my options open...
Yes yes yes yes
@@AlexBallMusic please do it! :)
This is the video I was thinking about with Dave th-cam.com/video/pDS2sDg0eP0/w-d-xo.html
The 'thank you for watching this far' bit made me realize that I never skip a bit in your videos, because all the content is so great 😍
Ah, thank you. :)
bet it would fit nicely with some jungle
It would get wet mate.
I did try pitching up some beats and it does sound exactly like you'd hope it would.
@@AlexBallMusic think we could have a listen sometime? here's to hoping hahaha love the vids mate have a good one
@@spg3331 If I have a chance before it goes I'll stick something on Instagram.
@@AlexBallMusic thank you
My local studio had the sp12 back in the day. I tried to buy it but the owner would not sell to me. So I saved up and got an ASR-10 instead hahah
That was soooo cool 😎👌 thanks
Cheers!
I've been doing music on my computer for years and still whenever I hear the SP1200 I end up wanting one despite not having the wallet for it 💸
Yeah, something about that sound and workflow. A computer is a different thing.
@@AlexBallMusic I'd get so much mileage even just from recording virtual synth chords ITB, then pitching them way up & resampling into the SP1200 to be pitched back down for a crude filthy version of chord memory. Instant old school rave type vibe.
I can't believe Australia went to war against these beautiful machines.
😂
hahahaha yes
The Great Emu Systems war. Never forget ;'(
poor emus : (
HAHAHAHAHAH
@@Boujonzu The Great E-mu Systems War never happened because Md2802 made fun of the name of the company and one of the stupidest wars ever, The Great Emu War of 1932, which came about because of the public concern of these tall brown flightless birds running amok in the Campion district of Western Australia, eating the crops that the farmers were growing during the Great Depression. That’s the joke.
I can't understand why I want this, it's clunky, it looks like a cash register and I believe I now understand what love feels like.
It actually is a cash register for any seller
If u do get one buy the new Rossum one
I usched thisch on Schack to the Future.
Still like the sound of that Machine.
Basically timeless by this point!
In the late 90 's I finally got the sp1200 I sat in a room full of records , I was intimidated at first but 5 hours later I was making beats I fell in love with that drum machine super dope
I can only imagine the joy of doing that. I don't have the room full of vinyl, I just have about 20 or so that I used for this video, but I can imagine a lifetime of exploring that.
Very disappointed that this mention of Emu had no mention of Rod Hull at all.
I'm American and I get this joke. Cultured? 🤔
Actual lolz 😆
Rod invented the ladder filter.
@@AlexBallMusic Dayum. LOL
I always wondered if Rod couldn't grab hold of the gutter, 'cos Emu was being stroppy again.
@@AlexBallMusic too soon
Phil Collins loved this machine (and the SP12 before it) so much he used it for nearly a decade. Listen to his own "But Seriously" and Genesis' "We Can't Dance" for SP1200 galore, then sometime later in the late 90s (circa 1995) he'd switch from using the SP1200 as his main rhythm machine to using drum sounds from his Korg keyboards for his Dance into the Light and subsequent albums.
I always thought to myself re: Phil Collins "Wow... a drummer who doesn't despise drum machines!"
@@jaibhimadevi5805 Well the Roland CR-78 happened to play a big part in his 1st hit which you already know which one i'm talking about. He once introduced Roland the Bisexual drum machine on stage as he said he didn't mind who he played with.
@@jaibhimadevi5805 when sampling drum machines came in some drummers embraced it and adapted, while others basically hated on them and many got left behind.
@@jaggass The Bisexual drum machine?
For nearly a year I had a borrowed SP-1200 (in the early 2000s). The sound is that great, gritty 12-bit crunch that's still popular today, but it wasn't that big of deal for me as I already had 8-bit and 12-bit samplers in my studio. The greatest thing for me was the workflow. That's the most underrated feature IMO. The panel graphics are essentially a manual that's always in front of you and using the sliders for all parameter input is pure genius. It's a very simple and intuitive machine. I wish more devices would have copied that aspect.
Thanks for your story. Yes, that is indeed very true, gives you a simple sound engine that has a character to it and then a selection of choice options for control of your sounds and that's basically it!
There is something to be said for simplicity. A Juno synthesizer is another such example.
Oh, nice to see Barry Beats . Love his videos as much as I love yours :) something special about those lo-fi aliased samples coming out from older gear. Then I am one of those now old people who was raised with Amiga 500 8bit ProTracker sample-songs and still like the sound of many of them :)
Yeah, the sound that takes you back. :)
Barry - what a gem, yes!
My favorite example of the SP12 (not SP1200), is its use by Terry Lewis & Jimmy Jam on Janet Jacksons Rhythm Nation. It's god damn perfect.
Coupled with the ever grittier Ensoniq Mirage.
@@rommix0 yes!!! I own 3, beautifully underrated sampler.
@@Ancaja123 I had a friend who owned a Mirage in the 80s. Get a couple of drinks in him and he'd be guaranteed to start waxing lyrical about his "Ensoneek" :D
😮WOOOOWWW!!!!!!!
You didn't run it through an HM-2 once mate.
This was my second drum machine which I got back in 1988. It is awesome. I hope Behringer clones it, gives it more memory, a large OLED screen, 12 and 16-bit options, on board effects, resampling and looping/chopping tools. Please Behringer, after you clone the linndrum, clone the SP 1200
This machine sounds like the feeling of a good blanket in winter, I love it.
The little house ditty around 8:00 gave me major Amiga vibes. It has that same CRONCH the Paula chip has. That lo-fi sound is just so damn charming.
Thanks! Yes, both fizzy and soupy. Just somehow all works as a whole.
I wonder if there is an Amiga software that it can turn it into E-mu SP1200. On standard 6800 CPU you can use 4 channels, but on expanded CPU you can mix channels and have more.
@@dvuemedia Octamed.
@@benanderson89 - I know about Octamed tracker.
*opens other tab with BasoonTracker and keeps jamming*
*behringer wants to know your location*
ISLA beat them to it.
(Excuse the pun)
@@AlexBallMusic ... and wrote the book (err video) on it!
The SP-1200 was essential to the sound of Music Sounds Better With You by Stardust (Alan Braxe + Thomas of Daft Punk + Benjamin Diamond). The "nyquist ring" the 1200 added to the Chaka Khan Fate sample complemented it perfectly. It added that perfect amount of "shimmering glitter" to its top end. The same can be said for One More Time, which also had a lot of nyquist aliasing added to its original sample of Eddie Johns' More Spell On You. Decimort 2 has a preset (designed by professional engineers) that mimics circuit behavior of the SP-1200 perfectly.
I can't compare it to an SP-1200 since I don't have one, but the sample rate cutoff is correct down to the single digits. Apparently the SP-1200 isn't ACTUALLY a constant 26Khz, but it "jitters" slightly... if the engineers in charge of matching the presets are to be believed.
It is indeed. I hadn't heard that about clock, I'll have to check with some techy people on that front.
When you pitch down the clock goes down of course, so maximum stretch is probably something like 8khz. I'll have to look that up too.
@@AlexBallMusic The jitter effect in Decimort seems to be used to some degree in almost every vintage sampler preset that Decimort has. I don't understand HOW a digital sampler might have a non static sample rate that changes (jitters), but my guess is that the engineers knew what they were doing. Fingers crossed that your contact understands it better than we do. If I had to guess, I'd say that it's emulating some sort of imperfect power delivery system on the complex circuit boards of these older samplers. They were insanely complex back then. When I use the jitter feature, my brain doesn't say "that's the sample rate being modulated". Instead, it just sounds like extra bit reduction, except it follows the amplitude of the sample more closely than regular bit reduction does.
@@SiliconPrairie So the answer (from an engineer and SP 1200 expert) is...
When it's sampling, all other functions are switched off. The Z80 uses a crystal for timing that may be a tiny bit off, but that doesn't fluctuate.
When they did analysis of the SP 1200 there wasn't any sample rate jitter.
So this could be a red herring?
@@AlexBallMusic Very interesting! Either the engineer in charge of Decimort's preset programming made a mistake, or its jitter feature is not correctly named/described? I have no doubt in my mind that your source is correct. D16's engineers likely just did A/B testing using a spectrograph and educated ear.
As per Decimort's manual: "Jitter - Controlling the intensity of random, short-period Resampler’s deviations... Jitter is the deviation from true periodicity of a presumed periodic signal, often in relation to a reference clock source"
Now that I watch your end clip with those intense nyquist rings, I can tell there's little to no "jitter" as the manual describes it. I know based on many hours of using this plugin what jitter sounds like, and clear, harmonic sounding nyquist aliases cannot exist when jitter is anywhere north of 5%. The shimmering ring sound becomes more of a sickly groan...
If I could get my hands on a few samples of a sine wave pre and post SP-1200, I bet I'd find that the amount of jitter used in Decimort 2 was a mistake. D16 is very serious about the authenticity of their vintage sample machine emulations, so they'd probably be interested to learn of these findings as well.
Who's disliking this content? I don't get it, it's an interesting video, and hardly controversial.
As they channel has grown I've collected some "fans". I guess we all need hobbies. ;)
It's always the same in a lot of big channels. I honestly think most of them are automated by Google.
@@AlexBallMusic strange how some people get their kicks, isn't it?
@Snake Plissken I once disliked a video whose title claimed Elvis was racist, with very little evidence to back it up. (even if he was, this tawdry TH-cam shit-pedlar didn't deserve clicks from it) Think that's the only time I've done it.
It cóuld be to let the almighty algorithm know this recommendation is not something they're interested in.
This is fun to watch, considering I'm writing a master's paper on '80s music production. :D
Ah cool! Hope this helps.
Can you post a link here when you’re done
I never actually coveted the SP1200 back in the day. I was much keener on the Emax 2, which had a similar sound engine, but a lot more in the way of melodic tweak available for the chord merchants. And Jaz drives, more ram, a mod wheel, and ADSR. Woot!
I'd love to hear a 1200 grinding out a lo-fi groove full of crunchy funk samples, with an Emax 2 doing some sophisticated riffing on top. We only ever managed to get one of each in the same studio a couple of times, and the combo sounded huge.
Great video! I had an opportunity to grab one of these in about 2005 for $600 and of course I didn't buy it , boy don't I feel stupid ! Lol
Damn! Was that the going rate only 16 years ago?
@@AlexBallMusic They were still about $1,200 but it was at a pawn shop, They didn't know what they had and just wanted to get rid of it.
@@AlexBallMusic I love the sp 1200 but I would not pay $4000, to $5,000 for one today.
Don't feel guilty I was offered a Jupiter 8 for $1500 in 1998 in excellent condition, one owner and I rejected, now you know much it's today.
@@MachineCityAudio True, I'll rather go with the Isla Instrument SP-2400.
And just like that, the beat SP1200 video on the information superhighway was uploaded...
🤜🤛
"What's that?"
"It's a f***in EMU!"
Excellent job, thank you for explaining it fully, I also enjoy the bad asx musik!!!!!
This is honestly one of my favorite videos Alex, I was telling my livestream how you literally made the SP1200 something I’d be interested looking at more. After years of being told how revolutionary it was, and never getting it, in this short video you laid out everything perfectly. Thank you!
Hey Stephen!
Ah, I'm glad to be able to get that across. I've fallen for it hard, especially the quite extreme limitations which are weirdly liberating. "That's all I can do? OK great, let's go with it".
I've been sampling bits of my old tracks and throwing them up on Instagram if you're interested.
instagram.com/tv/CRr7X2yBRF2/?
@@AlexBallMusic this is rad dude! I think we need to link up on something creatively…👀👀
I've been using an Emu Emax lately, I've read the sample engine is remarkably similar to the SP1200, which wouldn't surprise me. As a heavy user of early Akai samplers, and the Ensoniq Mirage, I was realllly struck by how strange and limited the transposing is on the Emax. It gets crunchy FAST as you transpose down. Haven't made hip hop beats in years but it was very easy to make some SP1200 style jams, it really is incredibly similar to my ears.
I have the SP-1200 along with an Emax and although they sound very similar the SP sound just can’t be replicated … But the Emax can manipulate sound in ways that the SP can’t do either way they both sound amazing 👍🏼👍🏼
Oh cheers Alex 🙏🏼 thanks very much for the plug 🤓🍿
Thanks for the very useful tutorial!
★★★★★ AWESOME! Finally, I "kinda" get the SP1200 now! A little bit. Maybe. It's those sliders that throw me off every time. I keep thinking they're just for volume but I see now they're for pitch etc too. 🤷♂️ Oddly, it seems Novation took a leaf out of this old way of trimming samples with their latest Circuit Rhythm so there must be something about not having a screen and using our ears to trim samples that yields more "interesting" results...?
Great video, as usual, Alex.
Thanks. Yep, you write music you never would have thought of.
I'm not skilled like the SP gurus who sit there with the unit and a wall of vinyl, but with the little bits I can do I can already tell why people love it.
The feel of the sequencer is what makes the sp 1200 so legendary. Its so loose and swingy and spacious, its awesome
I sold mine (a model 7030) in 2018 for 260,000 Yen. Still slightly regretting it but I'm gonna keep my MPC 3000, promised!
One of my favorite aspects of the *Chicago 18* LP from 1986 is that it supposedly includes start to finish sounds from the predecessor, the SP 12. Chicago’s founding drummer, Danny Seraphine, had taken such a big issue with the usage of the drum machine in the previous album and took on the attitude of “if you can’t beat them join them”. His intention was to try elevating the usage of the machine i towards something that was more humanistic and not just someone who didn’t know what a drummer really did programming stuff for their own amusement. The 12 was his tool.
Not getting my hopes up cuz its $10k lol. Tight vid tho
Oh please do an Emu story...
Now that you've played both the emu and the isla, how do you feel that the 2400 compares to the 1200? 🤔
It does the _thing_ and then a huge amount more. Plus it's very convenient with all the modern connectivity, so I'm very happy to have it as much as the original is a lot of fun and very inspiring.
I'll have to do some lo-fi A/B comparisons before it goes back if I have time.
@@AlexBallMusic Sick, glad to hear! Loved the video btw :) :)
Also, have you thought of doing more reviews of software (synths, sequencers, etc)? I think it would be very interesting to see your thoughts on Renoise... really left field I know but love me a good tracker haha
This is the kind of instrument that didn't even appear to be an instrument at the time, and seemed somewhat limited and expensive, while also somehow allowing for some great music to be made by those who happened to dive into it. No doubt plenty of people wrote it off when it was new and yet some dug down and explored all it was capable of, and made it famous.
That really doesn't happen anymore today thanks to the power of VSTs and the ability to recreate almost any sound, but these types of machines are still in high demand because they do it so effortlessly.
I'd love to know if it caught on quickly, or if that happened slowly as the tricks were discovered.
I guess the Emulator / Drumulator / SP-12 run had set it up to be a success?
thanks, now i finally learned what "SP1200 (ring)" simulation means in MPC settings :D
Ah right! There you go!
I’ve the poor man’s SP1200, the zoom sampletrak.
I vaguely remember that thing. I had some Zoom kit back in the day and pulled it out of storage recently. It didn't even fire up and is worthless so I chucked it.
Great video as always! Isn't it funny that eight voice polyphony in a drum machine seems limited? Considering a real drummer can never produce more than four notes at a time it's actually quite a lot to work with.
Yeah, that's a good point.
wish I had never sold mine!
Ethe E-mu system is nice, but my preferences lean to the O-Stritch (made in Ireland). It sold for 120 - 140 pounds in the UK, or 54.43 - 63.50 kg in Canada. However, it could not compete in one domain: the telephone keyboard. The E-mu could call the U.S. without toll fees. Huge advantage to musicians outside the Scots Valley, CA area code. The O-Stritch, on the other hand, had a "buried in sand" filter which lent an even more distinctive "muffled" sound than the E-mu. Alas, as much as I loved it, the O-Stritch never really caught on. You could say it laid an egg.
😂 epic!
I worked in the O-Stritch factory in Dublin back in the 80s and know for a fact that plugging in a telephone and pressing the on off switch twice while vigorously moving the far left slider up and down like it owed you money enabled a free call to anywhere in Canada 🇨🇦.
Omg ...BARRY BEATS .aka Si Spex.... it's my favourite beat by him .
I copped an sp12 turbo back in the 90's. It had previously been owned by Doug E Fresh's DJ. I think I still have the 5 inch floppies somewhere. I sold that thing 15 years ago for $500. I wish I had kept it. It had the commodore 64 drive with it. Honestly, I'm more of an Ensoniq fan. But the SP series will be in the Hip Hop Hall of fame. Here is a great video about EMU and the history of it. th-cam.com/video/pDS2sDg0eP0/w-d-xo.html
Such a classic, and possibly the GOAT was the master of this machine, J Dilla
I have always associated Dilla with the MPC. When was he using this?
@@JasonBrouwers the whole time he had been using the 3000. He never got rid of the SP1200
will like to see the path for that KORG MS bass sound
Unfortunately Creartive left E-MU to rot. Can't Rossum buy it back?
1:33 Orignal Apple ][ FTW!
Question, The SP-1200 Was produced in Santa Cruz, California, how did they end up in New York ?, We we’re using Roland R-8’s, DDD-1’s, and Akai MPC’s? I’m from Berkeley, California? AKA Sitrukain. Check me out.
Alex, Now that you have played both the S2400 and SP1200, how do they compare? Is the 35th Anniversary SP1200 really $6000 USD better?
The S2400 does _the thing_ but it's leagues beyond in terms of functionality. So I'd personally prefer the S2400 as wonderful and classic as the original is.
@Jayo Delaware it sounds ok for me on main samples but not on drums and the swing doesn't sound right to me.
Hello Alex.How are you?I enjoyed the video. It was very informative. I have not owned or used an Sp1200, so it was good to get an overview of how it works. I wish that there were more people doing professional level tutorials on how to make awesome music with it.
Have you used the RX 1200 and the 950 filter that you can buy with it?i know that's its only $30/40 if you buy them together, but how does the sound of it compare to the hardware version, and do you think that you can make professional level music with it?
Does a software item like that fit into a daw workflow, since you have to chop a sample up outside of it, then drag and drop them onto a pad?
I last request please...lol, thank you for hearing me out... Some of the established producers say that Reason Studios software instruments and even the daw itself sound paper thin. As a hardware, synthesizer, and live instrument based producer do you agree? And if so, how would you beef up the sound, and make it sound as good as your hardware counterparts?
Thank you. I still appreciate what you do. You're a creative genius. You have charisma. You have the heart and mind of a teacher. And the soul of a blues musician. Lol.
I still love that 70's video man. You were a one man band. Literally...😂lol😊.
Have a good day brother.
I owned a SP-1200 back in 1987 along with two Emu Emax I’s connected to a Mac SE/30 via MIDI running MOTU Digital Performer (early DAW). Honesty, I never got on with the 1200. LoFi wasn’t a feature at the time like it is today. There was nothing I could do with 1200 that I couldn’t do better with an Emax and sequencer so ended up selling it. And the same holds true today, nothing you can’t do easier with a DAW and low sampling rate. I get the hipster and retro appeal of these things in our world of modern tech overload but once the initial novelty wears off I wouldn’t want the day to day experience of tracking with these machines. And those clicky buttons…YUCK. Never owned one but Roger Linn’s MPC was a massive improvement. I was and remain an E-mu fan however.
You never let us down. This is quality. You're such a great teacher. The attention to detail is the best !
🤜🤛
Love the sound. I use maschine with the sp1200 emulator and you get something similar. Record at 45rpm and tune down, hear the crunch and the high frequency rings, mmmm.
No, I'm not into hip-hop, drum & bass or house. Nevertheless, I'm now gaga for the SP 1200, as with every piece of kit you showcase, you f***er!!!
Any thoughs on Isla Instruments 2400? Does it preserve the magic of original?
Great video and great sounds! Was looking for an excuse to get into vintage samplers but couldn’t figure out what folks love about them - this helps!
I'll expect to see them on your channel soon. ;)
12 bit sampling for 4k no thanks. Close your eyes and you would think its a Native Maschine. Behringer will bring one out for £250. You can very easily get this low-fi sound off soft synths for next to nothing.
Easy Moe Bee's "Flava In Ya Ear" beat one of my fav from an SP1200 but could name hundreds more.
You can get pretty close by resampling from an SU10, but nothing seems to really match the 1200 perfectly.
I once dreamt I found an E-mu SP 1200 with a broken slider for $20 at a local flee market. I woke up PISSEDDD like nooo tit was just a dream.
I’m just wondering if electronic musical instruments sound better when you flick your hand away after pushing a button, turning a knob or moving a slider. As far as I can make out it’s just done for a poor effect. Seems to be a common thing now. DJ’s are the worst for it !!
Great video 👍
Cheers!
I can’t overload the input stage. It doesn’t accept the sample. How do you do this?
For anyone drooling over this machine don't bother, it's really a piece of shit. Since I got a Roland s760 a few years ago I would never go near the sp again tbh.
The Isla S2400 is a really good… modern alternative to an actual SP 1200
Hey Alex - love all your retro gear retrospectives. I remember most of them as gear I would have liked but couldn't afford. Still can't afford the 2nd hand prices 😀 but wouldn't want any now, with potential associated headaches 😱 Very happyy with more affordable and reliable modern tech. But love watching these 😍
Thanks Ian. Yeah, retro gear comes with its baggage. I'm lucky to be able to borrow a lot of stuff because my channel would otherwise be massively out of my price range. ;)
That warm, grainy 12-bit sound...
it was HARDLY considered ‘lo fi’ in its day ... quite the opposite!
Can someone advise me please. I want to get into music production and have no clue where to start from, I have a good ear for music but no beat making experience and my heart keeps telling me to follow my dreams 🙏🏽
This is the machine Behringer needs to clone ASAP
Already been done!
@@AlexBallMusic by Behringer? The one by Isla Instruments looks good but still currently above my price range
I meant by ISLA, yes. Who knows, maybe they'll do one too.
@@AlexBallMusic let's hope so
this drum computer shouldn't go for 10k, 20k would be more appropriate. Nicest piece of audio gear ever.
I wouldn't be suprised if in 10 years or more that's what they go for.
What a GROOVE !!!! 😍
Alex, that jam at 2:26 is beautiful! Make a proper track out of it, and replace the "problematic" samples with something you can use for a release? Thaaaanks!
omg this sound is fucking crunchy,warm and deep.
Nice video! However, I disagree with the term LoFi. At the time, the SP1200 was the highest fidelity instrument we made at 12 bits. Everything before it were variations on 8 bit compression. 12 Bit Linear was a major upgrade and for all practical purposes was "state of the art" given the price of memory etc, back in the day.
Thanks for the comment. I see your point, but I referred to it as lo-fi because it is by definition exactly that.
26khz was the _max_ sample rate and with such limited sample time, the "record high, pitch down" technique had to be used that meant the clock went _down_ from there. At the lowest tuning it was probably something like 10khz.
So all sorts of crunch and aliasing occurs, which is the exactly what lo-fi means.
The filters are there to try to combat that, but they carve off everything over about 12khz too.
So it's lo-fi or lo-fi. Unless you record very short samples and don't pitch.
So sure, it was high tech for 1987, but then a black and white TV was high tech once too.
But its drawbacks are of course its strengths. It just sounds so soupy, fizzy and beautiful.
@@AlexBallMusic All of Emu's samplers to that point were not higher then 27k sampling, whether it was Emulator I, Emulator II, Emax, etc.. And all of those were different types of 8 bit compression. The Emulator III was the first instrument that was true 16bit 44k sampling. It incorporated double over sampling to improve on pitch shifting artifacts but that. But the real change was the development of the G Chip which everything after the Emulator III was based on, i.e EIIIX, Emax II, all Proteus products, etc.. Distotionless pitch shifting over a 5 octave range, fixed sample rate.
Nah, at the time 16 bit already was the state of the art or even mainstream. The Farilights and Synclaviers already had it for years. And the Casio FZ-1, also with 16-bit sampling, was released the same year at a much lower price!
12 bit was really mainstream at the time with newer drum machines (in 1987) being 12 bit, like the Roland TR-626.
Yes Emu itself was a bit behind (no pun intended) with 8 bits before this, but the was using a special compression/compounding techique which made it sound way better than "normal" 8 bit.
And the 26 kHz was definitely low fi standards for the time with many samplers having higher sample frequency than that at the time (1987).
And then Creative Labs fucked it all up.
I know you don't want to hilight any famous music because the TH-cam algorithm/takedown demons will flag you for it, but no discussion of the SP-1200 can be complete without bringing up the absolute zenith of the period: Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique.
The Dust Brothers infamously made the entire album on just an SP-1200. Over a hundred samples, no native instrumentation, and just the Boys rapping. One of the most glorious hip hop collage masterpieces from the sample era that you will ever hear.
Thank you! Much appreciated.
Yes, I couldn't go into that otherwise the video would get slapped in seconds.
DJ Shadow - Endtroducing > everything else. ( made on an MPC 60 I think ).
I know J Dilla was a stalwart of the MPC but I wonder if he used this at any point too
I hear a Barry Beats track in the background. Wicked.
People say the 808 was essential but this thing might top that by a long shot.
Also, in half an hour it is so hot you can bake an egg 💢👊🏼💢
My e4k lacked the soul these things had... a shame given that it was big, heavy ( by 1997 standards ) & overpriced by a couple $$$$.
I've not used on of those. Is that because the fidelity got better and it all became too clean and lost the character?
@@AlexBallMusic mine just didn't have that much of a clarity to it, it actually sounded a bit muffled... the pre loaded sounds were o.k. but the sampling input was disappointing. It lacked depth, there was an annoying reverb sheen on everything even with fx turned down or switched off, mine may have been a lemon, but I knew someone that had an e4k at the same time with same issues no clarity, no meaty phatness to it. Just weak and lifeless. The preloaded sound was the "soundtrack" from an early korg or roland digital.
The only person who should be showin how this works is none other Pete Rock.
How much of the sound was due to CMOS a/d converters?
I am seriously considering running a lot of the samples I use a lot through something like this just to get that lovely crunch, it's such a delightful sound
Yep! When you pitch down and it fizzes and rings, it's just gorgeous.
do not make these videos otherwise the prices of vintage continue to rise!
The way I love this beast makes me wanna go rob a bank so I can buy it😪
Fascinating! I wonder how difficult it would be to build something "like it sortof" using a raspberry Pi and an A/D D/A board.... Wonderful instrument. Want one!
An FPGA would let you do pretty much all of it. With the benefit of being more accurate in terms of actual sound.
Good question. I imagine you could do a DIY lo-fi sampler, I've got a DigDugDIY Lo-Fi Dreams that is that kind of idea.
What you describe IS the isla 2400!
There are thousands of hours of work involved.
@@6581punk yep I.like the idea of fpga but one would still have to interface the a/d+d/a converters as well as the RAM. It would be.blindingly quick though. The Pi thought has going for it COTS hardware as well as in built networking which offers the really weird possibility of a distributed analogue modelling synthesizer across multiple Pi modules. A pity the latency across the Internet is so high else one could have a real-time'ish modular Pi instrument distributed around the planet lol
The sound is impeccable!!!
Grap luva is a beast on the SP. TH-cam him.
Awesome video. Thanks!
I've really grown to appreciate the grainy, noisy qualities of old samplers. So much magic, so much character.
Yep, funny how the soul disappeared once the desired fidelity was achieved. The early ones are so much better.
@@AlexBallMusic I will never forget that Eno quote that speaks about how we'll emulate the imperfections of old gear as soon as we're able to surpass those limitations. No surprise you find software these days that intricately recreates old analog/digital gear.
I think that today's gear are fantastic but the vintage has that charming and that vibe that the new ones will never have.
@@carlosserrano3985 I find it hard to believe that we won't have that exact same mindset with today's gear in 10 or 20 years. I find people in online circles who are absolutely infatuated with stuff that came out in the mid 2000's, whether it be analog, digital or even virtual. Personally, I do believe it all boils down to nostalgia ultimately, although it is hard to deny that vintage gear was designed with a lot of care and attention.
Very good review / tutorial. ✊🏾💾🔥
Please put an amen beak in that first song!!!
Where did that drum break come from in the final song (which is GORGEOUS) BTW!!
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