Vintage Synth Explorer Forums

I'm finally coming home and am about to buy a hardware sampler after too long away. I'm just about decided on an E-Mu Ultra, and am trying to find one with the RFX-32 effects board installed. But it's hard to find!

Is it worth fussing over and waiting for, as compared to the stock effects in the Ultras? Effects are a pretty big part of my sound design - reverb and delays most especially and primarily. I like grungy sampling, but not necessarily grungy reverbs, if you know what I mean. I like to have control over my reverb grunginess.

I'm also interested in the pre-Ultra EIV samplers. It's not clear to me if these have some kind of multi-effects as a standard feature, or if it's an option I have to hunt for. Can anyone comment?

Cheers

Some pre-ultra and ultra e-mus have an effects card that is not the RFX card. Both of mine (E4k pre-ultra, E4xt ultra) have it, but I can not say if they came stock or were added somewhere along the line. This card provides a wide array of reverb, chorus, and delay, but you can only send the effects out the main output. If you were running 3 stereo presets out the sub outputs, the effects of those would go out the main so it is kind of limited in that you can not (to my knowledge) choose which output to send the effect. Still it is decent, but I have rarely seen one for sale.

The RFX card is very expensive but opens up a lot of options. If you have the RFX card, then you can also add (maybe just one of the add-ons) an extra 8 outputs giving you 16 outs or 4 inputs to run things through the e-mu filters. I believe it gives you a certain number of busses allowing to apply various effects and even route through another filter giving you two in-line filters.

However, it is very expensive. If you can find one, then you will almost certainly pay a lot of money for it. Also, there are some bugs with the latest software that were never corrected causing random panning of voices and bursts of noise. I do not know what actions trigger these bugs or how frequently they occur.

I would not buy one because it is too much and I could just use that money to buy another couple of e-mu samplers or some nice effects.
emusonacid.co.uk has more information.

Here's Sound On Sound's review:
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/May02/a ... urfx32.asp

Thanks guys, I really appreciate the responses. Very helpful. I'm still undecided about buying a card, if I ever find one. Though with the resale value so strong, it might not hurt to try.

I am just so excited to have a hardware sampler again, regardless. I've pretty much decided on a E4XT, though any other Ultra-series would suit me just fine.