E-mu Emax

The E-mu Emax was an 8/12 bit sampler released in 1986. This was the third sampler that E-mu systems released, the first two being the Emulator I and the Emulator II.

The Emax, while successful, was not a revolutionary technology the way E-mu's earlier Emulator samplers were. It was a hybrid eight/12 bit sampler that came out when the market already had a number of affordable true 12-bit samplers, such as the Akai S900, the Korg DSS-1, and the Sequential Circuits Prophet 2000. This 8/12 bit hybrid technology (the converters were 12-bit, but only eight bits were used to store each sample) gave this unit an inferior sound compared to its competitors.

The Emax's successor, the Emax II, came out in years later and had 16-bit high-fidelity sound. The Emax II was followed by the rack-mount Esi-32, the Esi-4000, and the Esi-2000.