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Emulator II : Sound Designer

Overview The first software product developed by DigiDesign was a Mac based sample transfer and editing program, called Sound Designer for the Emulator II. This allows visual editing of the EII samples - as well as acting as a remote control front panel. This version of Sound Designer is specifically just for the Emulator II.

   THIS IS ESSENTIAL SOFTWARE FOR ALL EII USERS!!

This legacy software is essential for any EII owner. It enables you to do without unreliable diskettes, edit samples using a computer, and keep an infinite library of sample banks that take just a few seconds to load. You need an old Mac, a serial cable and the software.

Sound Designer developed into being a generic sound editing software as Sound Designer II, but only the original software has EII front panel controls, and allows a whole sample bank to be transfered and saved to Mac disk. It is by far the best software to use with an Emulator II.

 Sound Designer for Emulator II
 Digidesign initially produced a dedicated Mac sample editor called Sound Designer for Emulator II. They also produced dedicated versions for a variety of different samplers (Emax, Akai, Ensoniq, Prophet 2000), and also ported them onto the cheaper Atari platform. Sound Designer supports a range of sample rates, but only monophonic samples. Samples are converted to 16-bits for editing and storage on the Mac.

Important!!
 Emulator II's with Rev 0 Logic Boards (serial numbers below approximately 990 (dual drive) and 460 (single drive) require an upgrade that converts the serial interface to RS422 to work with Sound Designer. This is a simple replacement of the old RS232 driver chips with new RS422 chips. E-mu Systems produced this on a small daughterboard which is no longer available. You may be able to get a service centre to do this upgrade for you as the changes are small - see the RS422 schematic manual.

Both Emulator II EPROM's must be at Version 2.1 or higher, the OS diskettes must be at OS Version 2.2 or higher. OS 2.3 is HIGHLY recommended.

Some Rev 1 Logic Boards may also need correcting (probably serial numbers from approximately 950 to 1100 ), but with a different modification.

Please read the SD for EII Troubleshooting Manual before using the software.

MIDI Setup
When Sound Designer is being used MIDI must be enabled and set to channel 1, and ideally no MIDI cables attached to the EII (or ensure there is no MIDI data present whilst the EII is under Mac control).

  Sound Designer Universal Digidesign sensibly introduced a generic sample editor called "Universal", so that samples could be exchanged between a wide range of different samplers. This software supports RS422 serial communication as well as MIDI sample dump. The Emulator II and Emax are supported. Sound Designer was also enhanced to support playback and recording of samples using the new Digidesign Nubus sound cards.

Universal will work with the original Sound Accelerator card, but not any of the later AudioMedia cards. Sound Designer Universal supports a range of sample rates, but only monophonic samples. Samples are converted to 16-bits for editing and storage on the Mac.

 Sound Designer II
Digidesign continued to improve the software, and moved into two track, and then multitrack computer based recording market (Sound Tools, then Pro Tools). Sound Designer II was introduced with improved computer editing and DSP functionality, and with more samplers supported than ever before. However as Sound Designer II was further developed, after version 2.5 sampler support was dropped completely.

SD II supports a range of samples rates, 8 - 24 bits, mono and stereo samples. The Emax (RS422), Emax II (RS422), Emulator II (RS422), Emulator III (SCSI) and SP1200 (Sample Dump over MIDI) are full supported.
 

 SD for EII Mac Only


  GOLD SPECIAL EDITION

* Complete Kit for US$ 75.00
* SD for EII software on diskette
* Long 3m GOLD Serial Cable
* GOLD plated connectors
* Mac CD with 100 E-mu Factory
   Samples in SD for EII Format
* Includes shipping anywhere


 

 Manuals 

* SD for Emulator II
   User Manual 1.6MB
 

click to download PDF

* SD for Emulator II
   Troubleshooting 78KB
 

click to download PDF

* Emulator II RS422
   Schematic   581KB
 

 

click to download PDF

* SD for Emulator II
   Review     380KB

 

click to download PDF

 

 

 

 Suitable Mac

Supported Mac's
SD for EII was designed to run on a basic Apple Mac with just 512 Kbytes of memory.
It will happily run on a Mac with a 68000 to 68030 processor running in 24-bit addressing mode (Mac OS 7.1 or earlier). Turn off any RAM doublers etc. A Mac II or Mac Classic is ideal.

It will also run on 68040's with cache off and on PowerPC Mac's.

Proven Systems
* Mac II VX OS 7.1
* Quadra 800 OS 8.0
* Powerbook 180C OS 7.1
* Powerbook 5300C OS 8.6

The Mac MUST have a serial port.

Unsupported Mac's
iBook/iMac
OS 9/OS X
 

 Sample Banks

EII Sample Banks in SD for EII format saved on Mac CD.

Available Now
*
E-mu Factory Library
* Burmer Collection
* FMS Library

Available for OMI Users
* OMI CDROM Volume 1
* OMI CDROM Volume 2
* OMI CDROM Volume 3

  
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 Mac to EII Cabling

The EII RS422 connector must be connected to a serial port on the Mac via a specially constructed cable. To make a cable take a normal Mac serial cable (as used for connecting modems) and slice off one end. Wire the cable to a DB25 plug as follows:

Mac Min-DIN8 pin

EII
DB25
 pin

1

20

2

9

3

2

4

7

5

3

6

10

7

No Connection

8

11

Connect the mini-DIN shield to mini-DIN pin4.The DB25 shield not be connected.