10 Facts About E-mu Emulator

E-mu Emulator Systems was founded in 1971 and began business as a manufacturer of microprocessor chips, digital scanning keyboards and components for electronic instruments.

Originally, E-mu considered selling the design for the Emulator to Sequential Circuits, which at the time was using E-mu's keyboard design in its popular Prophet-5 synthesizer.

Finally released in 1981, the E-mu 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.

In 1982, the E-mu Emulator was updated to include a VCA envelope generator and a simple sequencer, and the price was lowered.

Several highly respected OEM and third party sample libraries were developed for the E-mu Emulator II, including a multitude of high quality orchestral sounds.

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E-mu Emulator II was popular with many musicians in the 1980s, such as early adopter Stevie Wonder, and was used extensively by Front 242, Depeche Mode, 808 State New Order, ABC, Genesis, Paul McCartney, David Bowie, Herbie Hancock, Vangelis, Tangerine Dream, Jean-Michel Jarre, Yes, OMD, Stevie Nicks, Mr Mister, and many more.

In recent years, the E-mu Emulator II has risen in popularity due to the resurgence in 1980s pop culture, with new artists wishing to revive the E-mu Emulator-based sound.

E-mu Emulator III was introduced after the discontinuation of the E-mu Emulator II in 1987, and was manufactured until 1991.

The new operating system used in the EIV was known as the Emulator Operating System or EOS, which was updated regularly by e-mu.

E-mu Emulator IV was the first to be released, a rack sampler that came with 128 voices and memory expansion up to a then-massive 128MB.