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Originally Posted by
StarfishMusic
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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 What about the CS80 from Yamaha, or many of the other instruments from who originally made them.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