UPDATE - I picked up an EMAX SE rack (post #9)
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I'm getting tempted to pick up either an Emax II or Emulator II to reproduce an old 80's track that I originally wrote in 1989. The track has a Depeche Mode vibe; thus I want the sound that only Emu can give me. An Emax II can be had for much cheaper than an Emulator II, but can it give me at least 90% of the Emulator II sound vibe? I had an Emax II back in 1991 for a year or so, but never owned an Emulator II. Opinions from current or previous owners of both would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Anyone? I guess samplers are not too popular here like synths, which is understandable.

The Emax II is totally different and much cleaner sounding.

I’ve owned the Emax II and had also had a Emulator II in my studio in the past.

Pretty different sounding
Emulator II is 8 bit with analog filters
Emax II is 16 bit with digital filters.

That being said I loved the sound of the digital filters on the Emax
Was pretty convincing for early digital filters.

As I recall the Emu II was smoother sounding was hard to tell it was 8 bit.

Thank you, gentlemen. Hopefully I'll make up my mind eventually. Decisions, decisions.........

I have used both pretty extensively.

While 8 bit the EII uses a bunch of digital tricks like companding to sound much better than other 8 samplers, more like 12 bit or even 16 it also has a nice analog filters

The Emax II has a digital filter, but it sounds good and has character

If you are looking for an 80s sampler vibe the Emax II can definitely get you there for less money, but it will sound different than the EII

If you however are looking to get 90% there (probably around 95% or more) to the sound of an Emulator II you should also check out the Artiria Emulator II V plug in. Yes it's a plug in but they use the same digital tricks and have a nice filter modeled after the actual EII filter. I have used both the EII V plug in, and a real vintage EII side by side and they sound amazingly close. I have a good friend who owns minty one he got new back in the mid 1980s

It is so close I lost all gas to buy a vintage one as the workflow is so much easier

One cool thing about the plug in version is that there is no limit on sample length. You can use it play back hour long samples if you wanted

Thanks for all that info! The downside of the Arturia plugin is that you cannot load an of the original Emulator II samples. I own the plugin and it doesn't have all the original libraries that were available for the hardware.

I think the best alternative to an Emulator II would be en Emax SE. They don’t go for much more than the Emax II.

OK, after researching I decided to pick up an EMAX SE rack. The unit is very clean with an updated OLED display, internal HD, and the floppy was swapped out for a USB/card drive. Looking forward to receiving it later this week.

Does anyone know of any PC software that will allow me to work with the Emax? (converting wave files to Emax, transferring samples, etc.)

Translator Pro from Chickensys is what comes to mind.

Top choice. Happy owner of Emax I SE HD with something like 500+ floppies on the USB stick including entire Emax library + extras. Some people even prefer the Emax I over the Emulator II.

I can see this is the HD version, but make sure not use system floppy image for the HD version, instead use the SE. With the HD version some buttons no longer work as they should and the machine will stuck if you try to "load" as it is trying o find the HD (which I hope the previous user has removed).Here you go: http://www.emxp.net/

Best part it supports virtual Emax floppy images. This is what you have on the SD card. So no need to save as standard Emax, just go directly with the floppy image (I believe it is called HxC in the program). This will save you a tonne of time. Also there is batch where you can convert a folder full of images, etc.

Great software. I remember I converted entire Emulator I library into Emulator II format using this software but also it helped me compile the Emax floppies. It even lets you load the OS and save it for later. This is important, as I have mentioned the problem with the HD OS which is not your best friend. So that way you can pre-make virtual floppies with the latest (non HD version) OS, as every floppy should have an OS on it. Keep that in mind when converting from .wav to Emax. Welcome to the club.

Thanks, Don for all that info! Here is the description of what I just bought:

"Rare E-MU Systems EMAX I HD Plus SE Rackmount Sampler. Factory Plus SE HD Model 2121. Internally mounted SCSI2SD 5.2 board with 4 partition 16GB SD card capable of holding nearly 400 banks in the floppy drive slot. Comes loaded with many custom and factory library sounds I will include download links for entire Emax library as well.

Analog and Digital Boards have been recapped. New universal input medical grade power supply installed. Everything works great and sounds amazing! 12 bit character and true analog filters.

System boots up in seconds from SD card. Banks save and load nearly instantaneously. The HD advantage is huge over standard floppy or Gotek systems as every function of the unit is faster and more responsive.

Display has been updated to a beautiful new white OLED display. Sadly pictures can't do justice to the quality of the OLED. Everything works as it should. Incredible sounding sampler with analog processing. SE features provide deep synthesis."

I shouldn't use the HD?

You already have scsi2sd instead of hard drive which give you whole different realm of loading time compared to hxc, congratz! You can use EMXP connecting sd card to pc (or crossover/paralles with Mac)

How much did you pay for it?

Excellent. Previous owner removed the HD and installed SCSI2SD. In that case you are all set. Plug and play.

I have the HD version just like yours (removed the HD drive, of course). Been tempted to go SCSI2SD route like your unit, but then I remember there is a limit of how much one can put on a drive. It has a limit of only 20 MB which is something like 35 floppies. With 7 partitions that's around 240 floppies and that's it. My collection has around 690 floppies so that wasn't the option. Instead I have one single USB stick, smallest size that can barely be seen when plugged into Emax and it's all there. I agree loading from SCSI2SD is way faster than HxC drive (which I use), but in this case I prefer the quantity over quality. :o)I'd say 2 grand. It is the super rare SE HD version, with SCSI2SD and a new OLED display, full recapped with new PSU. I have the exact same unit, but with HxC instead of SCSI2SD (to give me more onboard storage) and a green yellow OLED instead of white OLED. There aren't many of such units around. It is the elite Emax I.

However, if it was this auction, then it's a steal!!! Because that unit has at least 500$ worth of upgrades! Quantum7 got MEGA lucky! So glad he did!!!!

I got it for $2k. I've seen them for much less, but not in anywhere this good of condition. The guy has 4 or 5 of them and likes rebuilding them. It is certainly waaaay cheaper than an Emulator II, and many people seem to prefer the Emax I in many ways. Although the Emax I rack wouldn't have looked as cool as the Emulator II on Ferris Bueller. LOL

Awesome to hear, thanks! I think I'd rather go your HxC route with the quantity over speed. I will PM you about that.

Great guess on the price! The guy wanted $2499 originally, but I asked him if he would consider going to $2k since I promised my wife that I would keep the spending down this year (spent nearly $50k last year with gear and the new studio build), so after some thinking he accepted my offer.

Ok, I worry about one thing. I can see on the front panel you have SCSI2SD. It makes me suspect the previous owner took the floppy cable with the floppy drive and tossed them away. Please if you can, and it is actually very easy to open up the unit from the bottom side. Just unscrew a couple of screws, put your phone inside and snap a few photos with flash on and send them here. Hit into every direction. And we will see what we can see. Fingers crossed!

Drive
There is a GS member Acid Mitch. Well you know him, lol. Anyway he's into building / pre programming and selling these Gotek drives. From that point they are plug and play. You just have to specify him the device: In this case the Emax I, and he will pre program the Gotek drive and set the correct modes. I can do the same job, but don't want to take man's bread.

I bought Goteks for Amiga as these were dirt cheap and converted them to Emax. They came with blue led, in combination with (retro) red LED display on the Gotek panel, it looks super sexy. You can actually install the screen on the Gotek, but I prefer the retro LED display and have a spread sheet of all the floppies. You can also install a dial, but I don't like it neither. Just minimalistic three button design. Press and hold to engage warp.

*Let him decide whether to go FF or HxC. I went for FF (fast floppy) but HxC is just fine. I don't want to go into details as I have already spoken about my reasons (why I switched to FF) which is probably no longer valid due to constant HxC upgrades. So HxC is most likely just fine. Again being a public forum don't want to cause any trouble to HxC. This is a long and complicated story but totally offtopic to Emax.

Arturia Emulator II V: Missing factory library? There's links for all the original samples and many expansions in this thread. I use them in the logic sampler, sounds great.

Thanks again, Don! When I receive it next Tuesday (of course the seller sent it to me the cheapest slowest way possible LOL) I will open her up and snap some photos. Is this kind of like the Gotek drive> - https://reverb.com/item/37494096-flo...isks-emu-e-max If not, do you have a link for Acid Mitch's Gotek drives?

I bought the emulator drive shown in the reverb link and it works fine. It also comes with software that supports converting samples, etc. I used his drives for the S900 and DSS-1 too.

You really can’t hear the difference between an Emax I and an EII without A/Bing them. I wanted an EII for years but I couldn’t justify the price difference and maintenance. Would still love one so I can complete my Ferris Beuller room but…meh.

It’s amazing how much more expensive the racks are than the keyboards.

Don…besides fewer numbers what benefit does the SE HD have over an SE Emax? The drives are useless and, like you said, the SCSI implementation, while fast and nice to browse on the Emax display, is limited compared to a floppy emulator.

That one will work. You have a display which shows which floppy is loaded. That's cool. I prefer the "retro" 7 segment LED display.

It's pricey though. I bought two for that amount.

Im using both and disagree, nothing sounds like EII

Thanks! Do you have a link for the one you bought?

Has anyone done an a/b of Emulator II V and the hardware? I love the sound of the software but I’ve never owned the original. We sold one at Rondo music, but at that time sampling wasn’t interesting to me, so I mostly ignored it.

On the AB'ing I've heard on Youtube I actually liked the EMAX I sound better on some sounds, but the EII on others, but the difference was so very slight that I couldn't be sure that I was just hearing things. Anyway, the $5k-6K price of an EII vs. the $2k of the Emax was a no brainer for me, not to mention I already have 12 keyboards in my room, so being able to get a RACK Emax was a huge space-saver to me.

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EII is different, it spits time warp thing out like nothing, its dark scary hunting posEmax rack se is my go to sampler and absolutely favourite for style I do

https://www.ebay.com/itm/32391336379...53.m2749.l2649
I paid 67.80 for two. The price has changed as we can see and that's very unfortunate. This unit, requires FF configuration file in order to use it for Emax. Took me a couple of trial and errors to get it working and increase speed to max. I think the jumper is already in the correct position. If you want HxC, you will have to reprogram the drive.