Man, with all these great samples I will probably just stick with TAL Sampler. Thanks Grasspike!

there are emulator and fairlight samples availible, paid for, in tal sampler "Presets" section
one great thing about the tal and the dac is the easy activation.

Here are the Depeche Mode tour disks for the Emax:
https://rolls.bublup.com/view/5fd93a...9-3e68efac1713

Emulator I resource:
https://rolls.bublup.com/view/6765de...3-8dddf9537ff8

Thank you to everyone who has generously shared on this thread - very much looking forward to digging in!

Thanks a lot guys!

Wanted to give everyone an update on my ongoing project

Several forum members have now sent me several large collections of original EII files and EII disk images.

There is quite a bit of duplicate files in them all but a lot of unique files as well

So my goal now and current project is to consolidate them into one very large archive, weed out any duplicates, and have that archive have some sort of good organizational system separating the files by category

Once that is done I will then convert the images first to Emulator II Sound Bank files (.eii) and then WAV files

I am told by the good folks at Arturia that the .eii files are the way to go for the new Arturia Emulator II V. Those files contain not just the samples but all the patch information the EII used, especially important are the Key Mappings for the samples as well as things like envelopes. Also Arturia tells me to import .eii soundbank files if possible, because when you import wav files even ones that are already 8bit 27k samples from an actual EII, the plugin will still reprocess that wav file and run it through sampling engine again. That will cause degradation of the original sample file. Of course to me that seems like something to be exploited and abused

These patchbanks should turn the Arturia Emulator II V into an amazingly deep resource of vintage 80s sampling fun.

Also note that at this time there is an known issue/bug with Emulator II V importing patchbanks with capital letters. They are aware of the issue and will update that soon with a hot fix

After the patchbanks are done, I will also then render out the individual WAV files from the disk images.

Having them as wav files is also cool as you can import into other things like the CMI V, and Synclavier V, or the wonderful TAL Sampler, or even into Kontact

Anyway I imagine it will take a week or two to get all done. In the mean time Happy Holidays, and Happy Sampling

Thanks for your efforts in doing this and curating the files!

My pleasure, I am excited to have them! I am very thankful all the people that shared them with me as I am just a collector of them not a creator

Not EII related, but certainly fodder for the plugin. Here are some famous users' disks for the Fairlight CMI II:
https://rolls.bublup.com/view/b64bfd...a-55ffc3b40615


Also…
Depeche Mode Emax Disks:
https://rolls.bublup.com/view/5fd93a...9-3e68efac1713

Emulator I resource:
https://rolls.bublup.com/view/6765de...3-8dddf9537ff8

Thanks for sharing this!!!!

Thank you for the effort!

I've been trying to find where Arturia stores the E-II V .eii files. Can't figure it out.
Anyone know?

Grasspike - this is a hell of a thing you're doing ... sometimes the internet reminds me why I love the internet. This is one of those times.

here are 2 more for you

Click the "screen" tab to pull up the advanced editor window

Click on one of the 8 sample slots on the left then click "edit "at the top center of the window

Under that click "browse"

now under the "edit" tab you will see a teeny tiny button that says EII it is perhaps the smallest button on any VST plug in ever. It's so small at first I thought it was just random dots or lines. Such a shame such an important function is on such a teen tiny button. I mean it's really really small

under that and just to the left you will see "Factory" and "User" tabs. It seems like any samples you import as well as any EII Patchbanks will be under the "user button"

Arturia has enabled you to create folders under the user tab. I plan on using that ability heavily

when experimenting tonight with importing EII patchbanks you click on them and then the multiple samples in that patchbank will appear. You then have to click on the individual sample to load it in the slot.

For example it might say Flute A2, Flute A3, Flute A4 and Flute A5. Lets say you click Flute A4. It will then auto map that to the A4 key. The samples will then play in tune mapped to A4. That will of course have artifacts the farther you go out so you can click on another slot and load say Flute A3 then another slot and load flute A2. Then go into the key scaling page and adjust


It will also load the loop points for those samples as well as envelopes. On the handful I have experimented with tonight I have changed the loop points and envelopes quite a bit from what was loaded but that's the fun of vintage samplers

Once you have everything in your patch the way you want it you can just go to the main menu and save the patch

Santa has a gift for you

https://rolls.bublup.com/view/872a3f...1-8a2729f5cbc5

at the bottom of the page find 1400+ EII patchbanks that can be imported into Arturia Emulator II V. Each patchbank contains multiple samples. I obviously have not tested every file.

It seems Arturia EII V will import the sample, map it to the right key, and apply some loop points and some basic envelope settings and just leave the filter wide open.
at least with the 20-30 patches I have experimented with. I am finding the loop points and envelope points need to be adjusted, they work just can be oh so much better

anyway enjoy and let me know how they work for you

also I have a few hundred more EII samples that were given to me as SF2 files. The software I use converts the SF2 files to EII Patchbanks but the results seem to be hit or miss mainly miss with regards to sonic quality compared to just having the SF2 converted to wav and then importing into EII-V

will experiment with those further in the meantime enjoy these

Thank you.

Still on the fence about buying the Arturia EII V.
The TAL-Sampler is so good with these samples.

This is gearslutz get and use both

In all seriousness I love TAL-Sampler. It's a great instrument you really can't go wrong with

Having said that I also really love all the samplers now in V Collection 8. The Fairlight CMI, Synclavier, Emulator II and I will throw Mellotron V into the mix also as a sampler with a great tape sim built in

Arturia if you are reading this here is an idea for you

We all love Analog Lab, please make "Sampling Lab"

A combined instrument with 8 sample slots for layers and splits

Each layer can load any wav file you wish, then you can select which sample engine you want to use from the 4 sample engines you have each layer should have it's own modulation and lfos and have it's own filter. You should include all the filter models in your stable

So you could load a normal wav file and run it through a fairlight cmi engine then have that play through a Minimoog filter

Then after you set the loop points and starting/stop points you could decide to instead flip the sample to the EII engine with a Prophet 5 filter, then change again to the Jupiter 8 filter

Or another idea if you own Pigments (which I do) make the various sample emulations available in the Sample Engine tab of Pigments.

How awesome it would be to load a sample run it through CMI-V's engine or the EII-V engine and then use that to build a Granular sound or just be able in one plug in to layer the VA and Wavetable engines with a vintage sampler and save that as one patch.

So EIIV can't load EII disks without losing all of the modulation and arpeggiator settings? That's a shame. They're really very good.
Nope. The factory library is very classic. Definitely holds its own. Some of it was user contributions.

"Having said that I also really love all the samplers now in V Collection 8. The Fairlight CMI, Synclavier, Emulator II and I will throw Mellotron V into the mix also as a sampler with a great tape sim built in"

I have V-Collection 7 and the CMI, Synclavier, and Mellotron (underrated) are all really fun to play with.

That it what it appears to be happening.

If I had to guess Arturia modelled the actual sample input stage very well as an 8-bit sampler, with digital companding and a 27.7 kHz sample rate. This is where they spent the most time

That way you can load a wav file and have it sound like you sampled it directly in an EII

The modulation and effects section in the middle is totally different than on an actual EII

Then the output stage has the same filter used on the CMI-V based on the SSM2045 as it was used on both samplers in the real world anyway

In actuality I really like having an updated modulation and effects section and am not really bothered by it pretty much just importing the actual samples from the old disks

What I look forward to most is creating my own samples and running them through the very cool modelled 8 bit input stage. Arturia sure seems to have nailed that input stage as they have on the Fairlight as well

I now have multiple software samplers I enjoy (Iris 2, CMI-V, Synclavier V, Emulator II V, and Pigments) love the fact I can make a sound on say my JD990 or Integra 7, record it to a WAV file and then run that through all those samplers for different sonic colors and textures. That is a total dream for me

Wow, I love EMU II sounds and all sorts of vintage sampler sounds!

I don't have the Arturia, but I'm going to grab these sounds and just throw them in some sampler and use them.

Thanks for taking the time and effort in providing these sounds for the forum!

I love to take a sample of a single note played for 20 seconds or so and load that into the Mellotron and tweak the controls for a warbly vintage vibe and then record that and load the new Mellotronized sample into another sampler.

Especially cool to load into the granular engine in Pigments

One more thank you, grasspike! I really appreciate your efforts. Not sure if these are included in your archives (haven't had time to check everything) but I have all the 3 Universe of Sounds volumes in SF2 format. I also have tons of Roland sample libraries in OUT and AKAI formats. Let me know if there's any use of these for you. :-) Oh, and also lots of Emulator III libraries too, but for some reason those CD images cannot be recognized by Windows.

I use TAL Sampler which is amazing and works great with SF2. But not with AKAI and Roland libraries unfortunately. Roland is worse because I don't have access to the wave files there. I know Kontakt can read it but I don't have it...

Thank you @ Deleted d6ffc70 for your efforts and all who uploaded. Wow.

Now to run and find my way around them

Hey there Grassy P. A "sampling lab" would be a great idea, but please anything but based on the new AL-V software. To me it's quite a step down from the previous. It would be cool in keyboard workstation with screen form, like their previous samplers but have to be more comprehensive in the mapping layout. They're all very basic. What would make it an even cooler product is switchable filters from their other products.

They should also make a sample playing drum machine. They don't have ANY drum specialty products at all. With Dave Rossum having helped make the EIIV Arturia should make an SP1200! It would be rediculously huge selling if they can come close on the sound and give you both the old school and modern workflow with an emu of the original (umm.. emu) sequencer and new drum grid. Imagine a quick to use or more comprehensive "screen" mode with the sp1200 having legacy and modern dac and switchable analog filters from other products. If they wanted to destroy the game and sell zillions they could include small versions of the FX from the FX collection as individual inserts for all the channels. After that they could make an Akai MPC60 as the same idea. Then a more advanced rack sampler with the new tech like an Akai S950. True Akai is still around, but it hasn't stopped Arturia before!

What If Dave helped them make a modern true successor to the Emulator E4 line and that was the "sample lab" you're talking about, picking up where Emulator X left off? Great big graphic GUI. Easy to use, unlike that rediculous Halion 6 I bought. More comprehensive than TAL sampler. Unlimited layers, all the filters of the Ultra Proteus and Morpheus, modular "cords" section. Just call it Emulator 5 and make it red and grey to show the lineage from the E4. Have it read Emu, Akai, Kurz, etc easily and just license a bunch of old libraries so it can come with sounds. Those old companies would probably love to donate sounds for the factory libraries at the hope of selling stuff from their collection again with no work. I wouldn't care if it was part of V collection or not. I would gladly pay $200-300 for a true E4 successor in software that would stick around.

Hardware samplers have alot of fans still. They only became boat anchors because of PITA file systems and slow and expensive compared to software samplers. As we know though alot of the magic is lost with the software samplers, but Arturia is showing it can be BACK! Many of them though are fetching bigger and bigger money now as they become harder to source and people (re)discover them. Arturia can totally capitalize on this.

Arturia had at least two "drum machines" in plug-in form, and one in hardware form: the Spark series. (They have the DrumBrutes now, but I'm not familiar with them.) All of the Spark items have been discontinued, but I thought they were pretty good, especially Spark VDM (Vintage Drum Machines), which is what I have. It's along the lines of what you're talking about, and it had samples or modeled versions of the drums from the SP1200 and more than a dozen other vintage drum machines. But I guess they didn't sell very well, because they're all discontinued, though the iSpark may still be available.

As far as an "Emulator 5", I seriously doubt that will ever happen. The licensing alone would be a nightmare, since Creative Labs pretty much screwed up the chances they had to promote E-Mu and Ensoniq when they bought whatever parts of that company they bought. (And they only bought that to basically kill Ensoniq.) I'm not even 100% sure they own the licenses to the samples (or ROM code), because Digital Sound Factory owns some of that.

It may well be that Arturia got what they could as far as licenses for the original sounds, and anything else is owned by companies who don't want to license the sounds or don't want to cooperate, or whatever. It's fairly obvious Arturia did a pretty thorough job getting original Synclavier and Fairlight CMI people involved with those emulations (especially in the case of Synclavier), so who knows why there doesn't seem to be as thorough a library for the Emulator II as some would hope. For all we know, adding the other sounds would have resulted in paying more licensing to the point where Arturia would have had to charge a lot more for the synth (and the entire Collection) as a result.

Steve

Did he? His name isn't mentioned in the credits. And he didn't talk much about the plugin in this video either.

I guess I was wrong then I did watch that video. It's from Arturia and he's in front of an EII. He did mention being flattered by people wanting to make it in plugin forum and I just assumed he did help somewhat even just as a consultant. I'd even be happy with him just giving the project his blessing. The guy's a legend and am glad people even care about resurrecting hardware samplers.

I owned a DrumBrute. My experience unfortunately was bad with it. The noise generator went out just after warranty taking many sounds with it including the snare drum and shakers. I pawned it after that when i needed some money and eventually just lost to the pawnshop after not wanting to pay to get something not fully working out.

As far as licensing goes, did they license this EIIV from Creative? It says Emulator II V right on the front panel. What about the CS80 from Yamaha, or many of the other instruments from who originally made them. There's creative ways to change the name and design a little anyway and still show the lineage. When's the last time you saw a Black EII? It wouldn't need to have the stock samples from the factory library I don't think, those were never a big part of the E4 experience like they were on the EII. I'm just kind of envisioning a software evolution of the 90s rack sampler concept that people still like. You know, S760, Akai S series like the 950 and 3000. Not an overt sound magic and limited features like their predecessors, just great workflow and easy sample mangling with a good synth engine.

I wasn't aware Spark had a software version and honestly forgot the hardware even existed. It looks interesting! I've liked every other software I've gotten from Arturia and I have everything but this. Maybe I'll give it a try. I've been using Wave Alchemy Revolution and it's great but I am getting a little bored of those same sounds we've all heard a million times.

I don't know if how much they licensed from Creative (if anything), but I know they don't usually call something by its original name if they don't have the license to do so, or if they've changed it so much that it's no longer really the same. This is why the Jupiter-8 V isn't called "Jupiter" anymore, and why they don't have the original name in many of the other emulations. (The Jupiter-8 V was called that initially, but by the next Collection, the name had changed. They could have changed it to "JP8" which some people used to call them, though; "JUP" sounds stupid, if you ask me.) The CMI V isn't called "Fairlight" anywhere, and while "Fairlight" wasn't the name of the sampler originally, it was printed on the CPU housing, and it is what everyone calls them.

You might still be able to get the Spark software, but I'm not sure if it comes with the VDM sounds, or if that's an add-on. I have Spark and Spark VDM (which was its own instrument at one time), and the drum sounds in Spark are...meh. But the ones in VDM I use over and over. They're not all 100% accurate emulations, but they're pretty close, and you can mix drum sounds between kits, which is pretty cool. That said, the Spark interface is better and easier to use than the VDM one. They're the same engine underneath, basically, but the Spark plug-in is easier to use than the VDM one.

I'm with you on the Akai samplers and recreating part of that workflow and sound, though. That would be pretty cool, as long as it could load the tens of thousands of Akai samples that are out there. Otherwise, it would be very frustrating.

All that said, I was hoping more for an Ensoniq synth. We have the SQ8L emulation, but there's so much more Ensoniq did!

Steve