Digital Systemic Emulations has launched version 1.0 of Emulator I, a free rompler instrument that brings the sounds of the iconic Emulator digital sampling synthesizer by E-mu Systems.
Finally released in 1981, the Emulator was a floppy disk-based keyboard workstation which enabled the musician to sample sounds, recording them to non-volatile media and allowing the samples to be played back as musical notes on the keyboard. The 51⁄4″ floppy disk drive enabled the owner to build a library of samples and share them with others, or buy pre-recorded libraries on disk.
The Emulator had a very basic 8-bit sampler – ; it only had a simple filter, and only allowed for a single loop. The initial model did not even include a VCA envelope generator. It came in three forms: A two-voice model (only one of these was ever sold), a four-voice model, and an eight-voice model. When the original Emulator was turned on the keyboard was split. It was designed to be played in split mode, so playing the same sound on the full keyboard required loading up the same sound floppy disk in each drive.
The instrument comes with the sounds of 58 sampled E-Mu Emulator I disks, including the Drums set. The samples were recorded from a real Emulator I, and were manually re-cut and looped.
Controls include an ADSR envelope, filter with cutoff, emphasis and ADR envelope controls, and an LFO (sine) which modulates tune and filter.
Furthermore, there’s a chorus effect, mono/polyphony switch and a master tune knob.
The plugin is available as a free download for Windows and Mac in 64-bit VST2/VST3 and AU formats.
More information: Digital Systemic Emulations
