Proteus 3

(World)

Overview The Proteus 3 was released in 1991, enabling musicians to access a tremendous range of Ethnic instruments without the need for an expensive Emulator. It contained 32 voices of multi-timbral samples, coupled to a basic synthesizer sound architecture. The sounds for the Proteus 3 came directly from the EIII library (with a bit of sample rate changing), and includes ney flutes, celtic harps, shofars, bagpipes , tablas, tamburas, banjos and didjeridoos. These are good ethnic sounds that still stand up today, and if you have an EII or even an EI, you may recognise the sounds ! Watch out for the bagpipes which are really badpipes.

XR The XR model has additional RAM for storing another 192 user presets. E-mu shipped these models with 128 new presets, and duplicated 64 ROM presets in RAM.

Filters & Effects There are none (!), even though the necessary digital filter chip had been designed and used in the Emax II - it was too expensive to use in the Proteus 3.

Configuration The Proteus 3 module implements a basic synthesizer - digitally. There are two "oscillators" called Primary and Secondary Instruments. They each can replay any of the 16-bit sampled waveforms. The waveforms are replayed first via a simple low pass tone control, then a digitally controlled amplifier (DCA) and stereo pan. The amplifier is modified by a dedicated envelope generator.

Verdict The Proteus 3 was very good in 1991, and it remains a cheap source of Ethnic sounds - if you are on a tight budget. Don't pay more than $350/£200, otherwise you might as well get a Proteus 2000 and Protozoa ROM, or an ESI2000 and a nice Ethnic sample CDROM.

Advantages: Wide range of Ethnic sounds, cheap S/H.

Disadvantages: Sounds are a bit limited now, thin sounding.

Protozoa ROM If you want the sounds of the Proteus 1, 2 and 3 then check out this ROM for the Proteus 2000. It has all the waveforms from these modules authethically reproduced.