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Emax Owners Manual

FOREWORD

WHAT IS AN EMAX?

Emax is a responsive, low cost, surprisingly easy-to-use musical instrument with staggering creative
possibilities. It’s also a composer’s personal orchestra, a recording studio’s chance to have hundreds of
acoustic and electronic instruments “on call” at any one time, a university’s research tool. But most of all,
it provides the means for some truly special musical experiences. To give you a better idea of its
capabilities, here are just a few of Emax’s highlights:

Rather than synthesizing sounds, Emax digitally records (“samples”) real-world sounds into its memory. If
you want Emax to sound like a piano, sample a piano; if you want it to sound like a barking dog, sample a
dog. Pre-sampled sounds can also be loaded into Emax’s memory from disks.

These sounds may then be modified with Emax’s analog synthesizer processors and/or state-of-the-art
digital processors. The analog-type processors include:

Low pass voltage-controlled filter (VCF) with AHDSR envelope generator

Voltage-controlled amplifier (VCA) with AHDSR envelope generator

LFO with adjustable rate, delay, and speed variation

‘Two programmable wheels for real-time control over pitch, filter cutoff, AHDSR attack rate,
level, LEO modulation index, etc.

Two programmable footswitches for real-time control over sustain, release, sustenuto, “patch”
change, and Sequencer start/stop

Velocity-sensitive keyboard, where keyboard dynamics can control any or all of the following:
VCA level, VCA attack, VCF cutoff, VCF attack, and VCF 0.

The keyboard can play up to eight notes simultaneously; however, in some cases each note can contain
two different sounds. Note that like standard analog synthesizers, there is a complete set of modifiers for
each note. Therefore, when we refer to the “filter’ or “VCA,” we are really talking about eight filters and
VCA’s.

Digital processing techniques include:

Truncation (shortening the beginning and/or the end of the sample)

Looping the sample (or any portion thereof)

“Crossfade” looping for smooth, clean loops

Digitally combining (mixing) two samples

Sound reversal (“backwards tape” effects)

Splicing two samples together (imagine a soprano voice changing into a guitar note...)

Advanced split capabilities

Easy doubling, plus velocity-controlled crossfading and switching between doubled samples

Individual tuning and attenuation for each sample

Ultra-flexible, programmable arpeggiation

16 track “scratchpad” sequencer

Sounds are stored on commonly available double-sided, double-density (DS/DD) 3.5“ floppy diskettes (as
used with many personal computers). Thanks to sophisticated disk management techniques, it’s easy to
save, organize, retrieve, rename, and catalog various sounds.

For outside world interfacing, the built-in sequencer can sync up to a 24, 48, or 96 pulses-per quarter note
clock or MIDI sync; there’s also a complete complement of MIDI functions.

Despite all this flexibility Emax is nonetheless not that hard to learn... as you will see during the course of
this manual.