E-mu Emulator III

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The E-mu Emulator III is a sampler made by E-mu in 1987. It featured 16 bit, 44 kHz stereo sound quality while its predecessor, the Emulator II, only had 8 bit, 27 kHz mono sound. It was comparable to the samplers of the day such as the Casio FZ1, or Fairlight CMI series 3.

Despite what was thought before the Emulator III was not the sampler that Todd Rundgren used to create all the sound on his album A Cappella, Visit Youtube and see that he is actually using a Fairlight CMI sampler to create permutations of his own voice, designing drums, backing vocals, and environmental noise from it. Depeche Mode on the album Violator however did use the EIII extensively.

The Emulator III came in two versions, an initial keyboard version first followed by a rack mount version. The keyboard version had numerous problems, enough to cause the near bankruptcy of E-mu. It should be noted that this sampler wasn't as popular as its predecessor, mainly due to Akai and other manufacturers' competition at the time.