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Emulator III : Overview
 Taking The High Ground
Three years after the launch of the legendary EII, Emu Systems began
work on a new mega sampler - the Emulator III. Released in 1988, the Digital Sound Production System was a major leap forward in sampling technology. CD quality at 16 bits (oversampled), 16 separate
voices, huge RAM, an internal hard drive, external SCSI and a brand new operating system. The engineering quality and the sound were (and still are!) awesome.
CD Revolution The Emulator III not only matched CD quality with
16 bits, but harnessed the CD revolution by using the new CDROM players to load sample libraries. This provided the EIII with a massive library of high quality sounds, which could be rapidly and
easily accessed. The EIII took centre stage in studios and post production suites across the world.
The F Chip The Emulator III kept with the overall Emulator II design, but with a faster main processor and a revolutionary Digital
Oversampling Filter chip - custom built by Emu Systems. This was the start of a long line of custom chips which have been at the core of E-mu Systems sample designs ever since. The F chip
ensured a pristine quality of sound output - and a 96dB signal to noise ratio. The EIII is much quieter and free from any digital artefacts - unlike the EII.
Workstation The Emulator III Keyboard version has a 5 octave
keyboard with aftertouch and velocity. It came with a 16 track sequencer and full SMPTE/MIDI sync. Rather surprisingly the EIII only has unbalanced outputs, but it does have a 25 pin SCSI connector and 16 individual voice outputs.
The Mystery Emulator III The EIII rack was announced at the
same time as the EIII keyboard was launched, and it appeared in the marketing material. EIII racks were available from May 1988, however they seem to have been in limited supply, and only a few
were actually sold. They are hard to find second-hand, and therefore command higher prices.
 The EIII Rack uses the same engineering design as the keyboard version. The existing card frame is mounted vertically (which is how it was designed), it has the same hard
disk drive, power supply, and floppy disk. A new control panel was fitted into a deep (at least 20") 4U rack unit. Two fans were installed to keep the Emulator cool. The rack has exactly the same functionality as the keyboard version.
Memory The Emulator III was available in two memory sizes,
either 4 MB or 8MB. The 4 MB model can be service upgraded to 8 MB by replacing all 16 SIMM's.
The Hard Disk All models came with an internal 5.25" 40 MB Hard Disk. The actual size of the drive was 52.1 MB, which when formatted became 43 MB. This enables 32 or 16 banks of sound
to be stored, depending on the RAM size.
Analog Filters The EIII kept with analog filters for the voice channels, using Curtis CEM3387's. Real-time digital filtering was
still too expensive, and the EIII was pushing the price limit already. (the hard disk and 4 MB of memory added up to $2500 alone).
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Product Spec
* 16-bit Digital Sampler
* Stereo, 16 voices
* 8 MB Sample RAM
* Boot ROM Version2
* Sample Editing Software
* Rack $500 - $800
