EMXP version 3.10 build #4 (c) 2006 - 2021 by E-Synthesist


Important notes:
---------------

0. An overview of new features and changes in version 3.10 can be found at the end of this file.

1. Read the manual (EMXPv310_referencemanual.pdf) and the disclaimer in the manual before using EMXP.

2. Read the EMXP macOS/Wine manual (EMXPv310_macOSWine_manual.pdf) when using EMXP in Wine 
   on macOS/Mac OS X

3. Problems with RS422 communication

When using an EmuSer RS422 adapter, make sure that the EmuSer is compliant with the latest 
design specifications:
- version 1.02b or higher of the hardware specifications, especially with respect to capacitors 
  C4 and C5 for which capacitance values of 22pF or 39pF are strongly recommended (instead of 220pF)
- version 1.02 or higher of the EmuSer firmware

Moreover, the stability and speed of the RS422 communication with the EMAX-I, EMAX-II, Emulator-II 
and DPX-1 is determined by a set of communication parameters. These parameters can be changed in the 
Communication Preferences menu (see section "10.6 COMMUNICATION PREFERENCES" in the manual). 
The out-of-the-box values of these parameters may not be the best for your specific set-up. 
The values that should be used depend on the speed of the computer and on the reliability of
the USB ports. The most important ones are the "Delay time ..." settings.
** Don't worry or get angry if the communication fails when using EMXP with the initial
   (factory) communication preference settings ! **
Just go to the Communication Preferences (option 6.5 from the Main Menu) and change the values of
the "Delay time ..." settings:
- Decrease these values if you have an old or slow computer, or if you want to increase the speed
  of the data transfer. The communication will be faster but could be less reliable.
- Increase these values if you have a fast modern computer. The communication will slow down but 
  could be more reliable.
If the communication fails and additional attempts result in EMXP errors saying that no data could 
be written to the RS422 port due to reason code 31, you will have to unplug the RS422 port and 
plug it in again. Then retry sending or receiving the data in EMXP. 
If the EMAX-I or EMAX-II was still in a "sending or receiving data over RS422" wait mode, it will be 
interrupted by the next data transfer attempt saying a bad packet has been received. Don't worry. 
A next data transfer attempt will probably be accepted again by the EMAX-I or EMAX-II. 

4. Problems with MIDI communication (especially with SP-12)

The SP-12 MIDI protocol is pushing the MIDI interfaces and drivers to their limits. You may have to
adjust the "Delay time ..." and "Timeout ..." parameters in the Communication Preferences (option
6.5 in the Main Menu) in a similar way as described in the previous section (RS422).
You may have to increase the Data Packet Size as well.
SP-12 MIDI communication in Wine on macOS/Mac OS X is not supported, due to limitations imposed by Wine.
** However it's also very important to use the most recent MIDI drivers available for your MIDI
   interface. Avoid old drivers as well as standard (generic) Microsoft Windows MIDI drivers **
** If you are using a MIDI interface with the standard (generic) Microsoft Windows MIDI driver
   you may have to set the Data Packet Size to either 293 or 298. Other values can result in
   communication errors or can result in EMXP freezing during communication **

5. Problems with a correct display of the EMXP screens

By default EMXP automatically adjusts the size of the Windows Command console window, and whenever
one or more characters or symbols on an EMXP screen change, EMXP by default performs a positional
screen update only (= updating the changed part of the screen only instead of reprinting the whole 
screen). 
If this default behaviour of EMXP causes problems for one reason or another, you should adjust
the Look&Feel preferences related to these screen modes. If you even can't get into the Preferences
menu, you can start EMXP from the command line with flags -NOSIZING and/or -SCREENREFRESH. This will
start EMXP in a basic console mode and will allow to get access to the Preferences menu.
For more information, see the Reference Manual chapter "1.7 STARTING THE EMXP SOFTWARE". 



EMXP - software for EMU vintage samplers (for Windows XP or higher)
-------------------------------------------------------------------

New features in version 3.10:

- Support for ESI hard disks and ESI hard disk images, used by ESI-32, ESI-2000 and ESI-4000 samplers. 
  All features that are available for Emulator-III/IIIX hard disks and hard disk images are also 4
  available for ESI hard disks and hard disk images: read, write, format and backup/restore/clone
- Full support for the ESI-v3 sampler format. ESI-v3 banks can be copied from any file or disk type to 
  any other file or disk type, conversions between the ESI-v3 sampler format and any other sampler 
  format supported by EMXP (except Akai S1000) are possible in both directions, ESI-v3 samples can be 
  played in the audio player, and reports can be created for a selection of ESI-v3 sound banks.
- ESI-v2 sound banks are fully supported as well by means of the Emulator-IIIX format.
- When constructing sound banks, copying presets is now supported as well (next to creating and erasing 
  presets which was already supported in previous versions)
- When constructing sound banks, it's possible to choose whether assigning the same WAV-file to 
  different key areas or presets should result in the same shared sample (to preserve memory space) 
  or in different samples.


Optimizations applied in this version:

- Additional information is displayed in the bank details window of the EMXP constructing module. 
  At all times it's possible now to see how much sample memory is already in use and how many samples 
  will be generated in the target sound bank
- The possibilities how to deal with stereo WAV-files in the EMXP construction module have been extended.
- The performance of converting large banks (especially in EMAX-II, Emulator-III and Emulator-IIIX format)
  has been improved.
- The performance of conversions to the SoundFont2 format of source banks having sample loop address 
  offsets which are not compliant with the SoundFont2 specification has been improved.
- A new preference has been added which controls how to convert voice/output channel assignments between 
  sampler formats which have a different polyphony.
- A new preference has been added for the EMAX-II format which defines whether voice/output channel 
  assignments should be converted to EMAX-II submix output channel assignments or not 
  (in previous versions, this conversion was done by default)
- A new preference has been added which controls how conversions to/from the SoundFont2 chorus effects 
  processor should be done if the other sampler format does not support FX processors. 
  In previous versions the conversion was by default done from/to the voice-level chorus parameter of 
  Emu sampler formats.
- Conversion support for SoundFont2 Exclusive Class Generators has been added
- When generating or converting to very large banks (Emulator-EIIIX/ESI-v3/SoundFont2) having a large 
  number of samples, the progress bar has been improved.
- When converting to the EMAX-I or EMAX-II format, the total available target sample memory size is 
  used in a more optimized way. As a result, the number of generated target banks may be lower now if 
  the converted source bank would not fit in a single target bank.


Bugs fixed in this version:

- When converting sound banks in fully automated batch mode to the EMAX-I, EMAX-II, Emulator-III or 
  Emulator-IIIX format, and the minimum allowed sample rate preference was set to another value than 
  the maximum allowed sample rate preference, the samples in the generated banks had a lower sample rate 
  than intended. This problem has been resolved.
- When converting more than 122 WAV-files to a sampler sound bank, not all WAV-files were converted. 
  This has been resolved.
- The Emulator-IIIX sample numbers shown in the sample overview and sample details screens were wrong for 
  samples with a sample number higher than 255. This has been resolved.
- In Emulator-III/IIIX sample overview and sample detail screens, LOOP ON was shown if no loops were set 
  but reverse play was enabled, and LOOP OFF was shown even if a forward/backward loop was enabled. 
  This has been resolved.
- When asking for key area details of an empty Emulator-III/IIIX preset, EMXP does not crash anymore.
- When converting sound banks with defined but empty samples (i.e. with a size of 0 sample points and/or 
  with no left nor right channel defined), EMXP could crash. This has been resolved.
- Conversions of Emulator-III/IIIX voices in which the sample channels have been switched off (resulting in 
  no sound) could result in an error. This has been resolved.
- Conversions to the Emulator-IIIX format were based on some sampler limits of the Emulator-III instead of 
  the Emulator-IIIX, e.g. with respect to the maximum possible preset parameter size. As a consequence 
  the conversion of large banks could result in more Emulator-IIIX banks than required. This has been resolved.
- The maximum available memory size per sample for Emulator-III/IIIX was slightly too low. 
  This has been corrected.
- The default value for the pitch bend range and velocity switch level parameters for Emulator-III/IIIX 
  presets was wrong. This has been corrected.
- The preference screen for selecting the WAV naming rule when extracting samples to WAV-files could behave 
  strangely. This has been resolved.
- The default minimum and maximum allowed samplerate of a new created EMXP construction file for EMAX-II 
  were not correctly derived from the preference settings if one or both of these samplerates where set 
  to 39069 Hz or higher in the preferences. This has been resolved. 
- When converting samples to WAV-files in manual mode, the settings for the extent to which selected items 
  should be automatically processed where reset everytime a WAV conversion process was started. 
  The previous settings/preferences were not taken into account. This has been resolved.
- When converting to the EMAX-I or EMAX-II sampler format with the request to convert stereo samples to 
  PRI and SEC voices, and at least one stereo sample could not be converted to PRI and SEC voices in a 
  destination preset (due to an unavailable PRI or SEC voice), the destination preset had no PRI+SEC stereo 
  voices at all, even if other stereo samples could perfectly be converted to PRI and SEC voices in that 
  destination preset. This problem has been resolved.
- Converting SoundFont2 banks containing "stereo linked" samples could result in errors (like error 637) 
  or even in a crash if the left and/or right sample were also used as mono samples in the same bank 
  (e.g. if the instrument zone of the left channel had different generator/modulator settings than the 
  instrument zone of the right channel). This has been resolved.
- When converting SoundFont2 stereo samples of which the left or right channel (also) had to survive as a 
  mono sample, this mono sample was based on a stereo-to-mono conversion of the stereo sample instead being 
  based on the original left or right channel. This has been resolved.
- Conversions of SoundFont2 banks with a bank name containing special characters (like "/") do not result 
  in error 867 anymore.
- EMAX-I and EMAX-II voices with an Attenuation set to a value between 32dB and 46dB are not being reported 
  anymore as being corrupt.




Build notes:
- Build 3.10.1 - 2020-07-31: Initial build.
- Build 3.10.2 - 2020-09-08: Bugfixes
                             - When formatting hard disks or creating hard disk images for the Emulator-III
                               with a predefined size of 1GB, the resulting disk/image was invalid and could
                               not be used. The same was true when formatting/creating hard disks/hard disk
                               images for ESI samplers with a predefined size of 502MB or 2GB. This problem
                               has been resolved. Note that the problem did not occur for other samplers
                               and/or other hard disk sizes.
                             - When starting the EMXP construction function for EMAX-I or EMAX-II, EMXP
                               crashed. This has been resolved.
- Build 3.10.3 - 2020-11-22: Bugfixes - the following bugs have been resolved:
                             - When copying Emulator-I files or sounds, an empty screen was shown, and the
                               process could not be continued nor interrupted anymore.
                             - When leaving a copy/conversion process (before actually launching it), pressing
                               escape in the screen for selecting a batch or manual process sometimes didn't
                               work.
                             - When launching an action on a sampler disk (e.g. showing EIII banks) which is not
                               in the correct format (e.g. EMAX-II formatted) the possibility is given to select
                               another drive. When the drive selection screen was left instead of actually
                               selecting a correct drive, a second drive selection screen could appear instead
                               of returning to the menu screen.
                             - Formatting a hard disk for the Emulator-III/IIIX/ESI sampler was not possible
                               if the hard disk had another filesystem on it (like NTFS or EMAX-II). 
- Build 3.10.4 - 2021-05-30: Optimization
                             - The invalid MIDI footswitch value 191 in Emulator-III/IIIX presets is accepted
                               now by EMXP but considered as identical with the OFF value. This specific invalid
                               value is accepted because an official Emu library (Vol 14 - ESI-32 GM set)
                               contains presets (Clavinet) with this invalid MIDI footswitch value. 
                                                                 
2021-05-30
///E-Synthesist




