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E-MU SP 1200

May 15th, 2008 thx1138

fonte: Craig Anderton, Manuale d’istruzioni dell’SP 1200, 1987

<<L’SP 1200
è l’ultimo membro della famiglia E-MU. Combina le più popolari
caratteristiche della nostra prima drum machine, il Drumulator, alle
capacità di campionamento, al design modulare e all’ampia serie di
messaggi da display dell’Emulator II. Grazie alla digitalizzazione del
suono a 12 bit, i suoni di batteria hanno una nitidezza e un’estensione
dinamica superiore a quella ottenibile con la più comune (e più
economica) tecnologia a 8 bit. Ma soprattutto, con la sua pur vasta
gamma di funzioni, l’SP 1200 è straordinariamente facile da imparare e
da usare. Anche dopo un breve periodo di dimestichezza, creare
partiture di batteria diventerà un’operazione semplice, naturale.
Abbiamo infuso ogni sforzo per rendere le operazioni dell’SP 1200 il
più possibile trasparenti, permettendovi così di realizzare i vostri
ritmi nel più breve tempo possibile. Amerete ciò che può fare
l’SP 1200.>>

fonte: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mu_SP-1200

E-mu SP 1200 is a classic sampler released August of 1987 by E-mu as an update of the SP 12.
It became famed for its gritty texture and ability to simulate the
sound of vinyl recordings. The SP-1200 became an icon of the golden era of hiphop
due to its ability to construct the bulk of a song within one piece of
portable gear, a first for the industry, which reduced studio costs and
gave groups more creative control over their own sound relying less on
studio engineers. Designed to be used as both a drum sequencer and sampler in one, the SP-1200 features 22 kHz (roughly half the fidelity of a compact disc)
and 12-bit resolution; along with the idiosyncratic SSM2044 filter chip
these machines were fitted with make for a dirty, gritty sound. One of
the attributes of the SP-1200 is its extremely small amount of memory,
roughly 10 seconds. The limited sampling time was overcome within the late 80s Hip-Hop production circles by sampling
33 1/3 records at 45 rpm with an additional pitch increase, then
replaying the sample from the SP1200 at a much slower speed (by the use
of ‘Multipitch’ and/or ‘Tune/Decay’ edit functions). This in
effect, "tricked" the sampler into expanding its total sample time. By
the early 90s, nearly every working Hip-Hop producer had adopted this
technique as industry standard until younger producers began buying
newer samplers such as Akai‘s MPC60, which came with a much higher bitrates and more sampling time.

Contents

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[edit] Features

From the SP 1200 Overview webpage:

“The SP 1200 can store up to 100 patterns, 100 songs and has a 5000
note minimum memory for drum sequences. It also has a mono mix output
and eight individual outputs, MIDI in/out/thru, SMPTE sync, and a
metronome output.”

There is one button that allows you to select between banks A, B, C
and D giving the user easy access to each of the 32 sounds. The front
panel contains several LED lights, buttons and eight volume and pitch
faders for each sound in the selected bank. Below each fader is a large
button to initialize the sound, or select the sound for editing, and a
switch to turn the trigger’s velocity sensitivity off or on.

The sequencer works in the familiar pattern-style of placing short
consecutive sections of samples into a song. The user can easily add
swing quantisation and tempo changes. The sequencer can sync the tempo
to SMPTE, MIDI or analogue clock pulses. Also, if one wanted, the
sequencer can synchronize the tempo to a tapping finger with the ‘tap
tempo’ button."^[1]

[edit] Differences from the SP 12

Unlike the SP 12, the SP 1200 does not contain ROM
based samples; all samples are stored in volatile RAM and loaded from
floppy disk. The AD/DA converters remain 12 bit, as 16 bit converters
were still expensive and found only on high-end gear, such as the
contemporary E-Mu Emulator 3 (EIII), which had a list price over
$10,000 USD. Maximum sampling time was doubled from the upgraded SP 12
Turbo, to over 10 seconds, but the maximum single sample was 2.5
seconds. The sample rate was reduced slightly also (from 27.5 kHz to
26.04 kHz) to maximize memory usage. The SP 1200 retains all of the I/O
capabilities from the SP 12, minus the cassette output.^[1]

[edit] Miscellaneous

Some albums that were produced utilizing ONLY this machine include :