When the Emulator II arrived in 1984, it fundamentally changed what a sampler could be for working musicians. E-mu took everything people loved about the original Emulator and rebuilt it with serious upgrades, creating an instrument that felt less like a novelty and more like a legitimate creative tool.
The EII is an 8-voice polyphonic sampler built around a 27.7 kHz sampling rate with 8-bit resolution, but here's where it gets clever: it uses digital companding to squeeze more quality out of those bits, and the playback engine reconstructs samples at 14-bit resolution for noticeably cleaner sound. The keyboard spans five octaves with full-size keys and synth action, giving you a proper playing surface. You get eight separate LFOs, one per voice, and a beautiful 24 dB/octave analog 4-pole lowpass filter with resonance that lets you shape samples with the kind of warmth you'd expect from a proper synthesizer. Eight individual audio outputs mean you can process or route each voice separately if you want to get creative with your mixing.
The control layout is thoughtfully designed around a numeric keypad with a backlit LCD display, two assignable performance wheels (one spring-centered for pitch, one free-floating for modulation), and dedicated pedal and footswitch inputs. Sample editing is straightforward: truncate, loop, reverse, velocity crossfade, and splice samples together. The machine runs on two Z80 processors and loads its operating system from dual 5.25-inch floppy drives, with optional upgrades including a 20 MB hard drive and extra sample memory. MIDI, SMPTE, and RS422 connectivity give you integration options that were genuinely forward-thinking for the era.
The Emulator II earned its reputation quickly among professionals and remained a studio staple through the late eighties. It's remembered as the first truly affordable high-quality sampler, and while modern gear has obviously moved far beyond it, the EII still holds up as a characterful instrument with a particular sonic personality that people still seek out today.
