EMX fading away when is the EMX2 released?

citrus · Post by **citrus** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 6:07 pm

I've been thinking about getting an emx for a while now, I just sold the ea1 and the er mkII to my best friend last week in order to build up the cash.

Last night I had a wicked dream about playing live at some gig, music was awesome and so was my gear, i had never seen it before (there was a kaoss pad shaped a bit like a rubiks cube) . There in front of me was an EMX2, slightly bigger than the EMX, it was weird though, completely black with white lights and a red display, there were a few green buttons. It also had this handlebar thing, you could assign and alter sounds by tilting it forward (a bit like a mod wheel but you could also slide it right and left along the guide rail (this was at the front of the machine.

Ha ha crazy I know but I must want an EMX badly, so I phoned up the shop today and enquired about the EMX, he said they had about 2 left nationwide (I live in the UK), and that he expected a new model to come out very soon, cost around £600-700, and be pretty much the same but with limited new features. Do these things only ever get anounced at Namm shows? Will I have to wait till winter Namm 08 for the announcement and next summer for the actual unit? Is it worth the wait or should I just buy one while they are still in stock? Why is EMX production drying up a year before the release of a new model?

For the moment I will just have to dream about what it might be

Ruso · Post by **Ruso** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 9:20 pm

there has not been any official info on new electribes, they DO release them first at winter NAMM.

citrus · Post by **citrus** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 3:02 am

Yeah, i'm really hoping it will be worth the wait, I've decided to hold off, even though the price of the emx is falling (cheapest I've seen is £389) i think its worth the extra cash for something new... still wonder what it will be like.

Daz · Post by **Daz** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 3:24 am

Your dream EMX2 sounded pretty cool

I wonder whether the next round of 'tribes will be cheaper single function units like the ER/ES/EA pieces or more expensive multi-function pieces like the EM/EMX/ESX. Or maybe some kind of crazy all-in-one super Electribe

Daz.

Ruso · Post by **Ruso** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 4:46 pm

I'm putting my money on an all together box.

but at this moment I doubt it will come out this next year... the reason being is that right now there are many new advancements with audio coming out.. there's the osc protocol which I believe will make midi useless in a year or two. I can't wait till osc is out...

also with the release of radias, which was loosly based on the EMX synthesis it's gonna be hard to now implement a better engine, simmilar to radias into a groove box.

another thing is multi touch screens being avalable and utilised for audio (the lemur)... which already use the osc protocol... this makes them easilly programmable. s**t with some creative modular drag and drop in max msp, you could make your own electribe within ableton live.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=lfnfXAUydbk

citrus · Post by **citrus** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 11:28 pm

Ah, I now have even more indicision; wait or buy now

Yeah, the Lemur looks good and sounds good, it reminds me slightly of the reactable meets microkontrol. I still don't think this could be the shape of electribes to come, primarily because its touch screens vs. real knob tweaking. Maybe its a lot harder to get what you want from a touchscreen, there are more options and freedom, but less control. I think its probably going to be some super tribe, just a mashed together version of the emx+esx, with a few updated features; probably a bypass to the tube gain and no more smart media.

Daz has made me think now that they might release some updated, smaller units. Maybe its a Supertribe, with some minitribes; pocket sized electribes ER/ES/EA, but again with new features, they could probably shrink most of the buttons onto a touchscreen but still keep the knobs and step sequence buttons. These would be geared to be used with the mini kp, just handy things for making music/noise/rhythms on the move, at gigs, parties etc... pocket sized samplers... cool, korg workbox... even cooler

Ruso · Post by **Ruso** » Tue Aug 14, 2007 4:43 pm

it's not a sound module, it's a controller, and you're wrong on lack of control capabilities... it's a multi touch touch screen which means you can control as many things at once as you can have people touch. which is better then physical controlls because you can arrange these where you can control say five at a time with some hand gesture....

on top of that all controlls can be assigned a gravity parameter which allows them to have a slingshot effect. On top of that it has four individual screens which you can customize.

And since it utilizes osc the presicion of all the controls is NOT 0-127, it's unlimitied resolution integers and floating points.

You can pass back and fourth strings and color values.

watch this: imagine making a groove box based on these controls...
http://youtube.com/watch?v=xg4eSAalAvA

it's a whole new way to make music.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=4_gqNldEF4c& ... ed&search=

and last but definetly the best http://youtube.com/watch?v=18T8Oij3XlQ& ... ed&search=

citrus · Post by **citrus** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 4:00 pm

Yup, i take back my words, the controlling doesn't need to have 0 cycling thru to 127, its instant, you're right (It was a good demo vid). I especially liked the wee gravity balls (don't really know the proper name for them) and the vj functions too. If this is on the market right now, what can Korg come up with to compete? Granted, Korg will release something on a smaller budget than the lemur but they cant hope to be that behind such a rival piece of technology. Ha ha, just the last video you posted convinced me I should wait and save the pennies.

I was reading the other thread about what people would wish for on a new EMX, ESX and most of the things just seem to be more buttons, features, connectivity etc. But, considering the jump from the earlier elictribes up to the EMX theres heaps more to play with. That must mean a similar jump of new possibilities and ways of doing things, rather than just updated features (mute button/SD slot/tube bypass) to an existing setup... it might include some sort of Kaoss pad which would be crazy...

Ruso · Post by **Ruso** » Thu Aug 16, 2007 3:30 am

Well I still have a lot of hopes for the tribes, they're wonderful machines. I love them to death. I don't use them for anything but midi control but even at that I find them better then any midi controller I have seen.

if you're getting bored of the electribe sounds especially the emx, hook it up to a computer, and use it a sequencer for software synths....

if you sit there and get to understand midi well and figure out a way to manipulate it with say midi ox and midi yoke, you can create wonders with them.

Right now I have a setup where I create fully 99% improvised live sets. I have my two tribes, a trigger finger, a kaoss pad and a keyboard ALL strictly for MIDI. My whole setup produces one giant groovebox basically.

There are many uses for the tribes.

here's how it works, the esx's midi is controlling two instances of battery on the two synth parts which are loaded with all my one shots, drum parts sequence impulse kits in ableton, on both the esx and the emx so I can change drums, the five synth parts on the emx are controls for five fm8 synths the trigger finger is controlls for all the glitches and studders as well as live looping/rearranging for my voice. the kaoss pad's midi is going into a return track in ableton which has a rack in it which holds virtual effects and basically works the same way as the kaoss pad except in software which allows me to send any part or combination of parts through the effects.

nemmo · Post by **nemmo** » Thu Aug 16, 2007 5:06 am

A big tribe would be great. EMX+ESX+Polyphony+Storage space+Kaoss control.

The most important thing: it should keep the ability of sequencing/editing in real time. Roland's MC-909 would be great if they'd implemented that feature.

ThreeNine · Post by **ThreeNine** » Sat Aug 18, 2007 2:30 pm

Ruso wrote:
here's how it works, the esx's midi is controlling two instances of battery on the two synth parts which are loaded with all my one shots, drum parts sequence impulse kits in ableton, on both the esx and the emx so I can change drums, the five synth parts on the emx are controls for five fm8 synths the trigger finger is controlls for all the glitches and studders as well as live looping/rearranging for my voice. the kaoss pad's midi is going into a return track in ableton which has a rack in it which holds virtual effects and basically works the same way as the kaoss pad except in software which allows me to send any part or combination of parts through the effects.

Can you make a you tube video of this set up? I'd love to see it in action.

supermel74 · Post by **supermel74** » Wed Aug 22, 2007 8:11 am

Ruso wrote:there's the osc protocol which I believe will make midi useless in a year or two.

If you think midi will be useless in a year or 2 you need to lay off the crack pipe.

Ruso · Post by **Ruso** » Thu Aug 23, 2007 10:22 pm

the osc protocol is a much better idea then midi, it has a much higher presision, you can send not just cc note clock, etc, but ANY message in a format of integer, floating point, bit, or even character arrays, which means you can pass strings back and fourth from and to.....

the speed of osc which is basically an ethernet protocol unlimited compared to midi.... midi can receive only one byte at a time which means that if you wanted to pass a string, you'd have to send as many bytes as there are letters in the string which means you would have to clog the bandwidth until it was done making it unpractical via midi.

on top of that all midi messages can only be 0-127 no matter what the message is which is only ONE HALF of a byte of resolution. An integer's resolution is 2,147,483,647 assuming osc uses 32 bit integers....

on top of that you get the speed factor... midi is very unreliable there are instances of it overloading especially in cheap midi interfaces on the computers(not in hardware though)....

you can broadcast it over the internet as well as ethernet, you don't need midi interfaces. You can telnet to the device(file transfer, video audio transfer, settings editing) and so on at about the same speed as usb...

which means you could potentially stream audio or video back and fourth from the device digitally without having to run it through a sound module to convert it to analog....

you can have devices which are fully implemented into a daw or vice versa.

considering how limited midi is I would have to make a statement that osc unlimitedly improves every aspect of midi and will be the future. It is already used on several new devices with full sucess.

apart from audio and sound control, midi is also used in scientific experiments and other various areas which would all also benefit from osc.

Ruso · Post by **Ruso** » Thu Aug 23, 2007 10:24 pm

I'm reprogramming the setup rightnow btw, but it's almost done, I can make a video aswell, for now here's a picture:
http://cdn.virb.com/cdnImages/resize_51 ... CT0127.jpg

however I threw away the mixer and put a small keyboard instead and moved the kp over a little.... that's why I'm reprogramming it now I'm making it so it all works with velocity and so it's easier to play chords then it is using the stupid electribe keys.

I'm also rerouting the sound cause I wanted to utilize the tubes on the electribes. since they're not strictly for midi I figured I'd use them as preamps with the tubes so I can use a little bit of analog distortion on the groovebox.

also gives me a cue track preamp for the headphones so I don't even need the mixer any more.

supermel74 · Post by **supermel74** » Thu Aug 23, 2007 10:26 pm

I'm not saying it's not better than midi and admittidely I don't know much about it, but it will take some time to completely overtake midi, especially since a lot of people already have a lot of money invested in midi intensive setups. Will midi be able to be converted to OSC like CV/gate can be converted to midi? If so, then I can see it happening faster than if not.