E-mu Systems Emulator 4 XT Ultra

Is it a synth, a sequencer or a sampler? The answer to all three questions is an emphatic 'yes', as Paul White finds out when he takes the E4XT Ultra into his studio.

The E4XT Ultra is Emu's latest 'big guns' sampler, the top of the E4 Ultra range and directly competing with Akai's recent top‑of‑the‑range S6000 in terms of market position. At the heart of the Ultra is a new 32‑bit RISC processor designed to tighten up MIDI timing and SCSI operation, as well as facilitating SMIDI sample transfer. E4XT Ultra facilities include 128‑voice polyphony and 32‑part multitimbrality as standard, plus eight outputs, including the main left/right stereo outputs. This number can be expanded to 16 analogue outs if you desire, or eight digital ins and 16 digital outs on an ADAT‑format I/O option if you prefer to expand digitally (see separate box elsewhere in this review for a list of some of the expansion options). There's also a 3.2Gb internal hard drive fitted as standard, though a larger drive of up to 9Gb can be fitted, and SCSI for connecting external drives (up to 18Gb, including DVD — Digital Versatile Disc — drives). Memory expansion is by means of regular SIMMs or Flash memory (see the 'Thanks