For many of us who witnessed the dawn of sampling, although the Emulator was a fraction of the price of a Fairlight, it was still around £8000 in 1981, so not a purchase for most. This changed when Emu launched the Emu Systems Proteus, and everybody wanted one!
It was one of the first romplers, the word 'rompler' is a portmanteau that combines 'ROM' and 'sampler'. Unlike samplers, romplers can't record sound. They may share some sound editing capabilities with samplers, like combining multiple waveforms and tweaking them using ADSR envelopes, filters, and low-frequency oscillators. There were other models like the Roland U220, but this was an Emu!
The Proteus series emerged as a powerhouse, bringing the Emu sounds in a cost effective format. The Proteus 2000, in particular, released 10 years after the first Proteus marked a significant leap forward. It wasn't just an iteration; it was a sonic leap that expanded the horizons of what a sound module could achieve. It was a rom player with extensive synth type control.
Featuring 128-voice polyphony and 32-part multitimbrality, the Proteus 2000 was a music producers dream. It offered a seamless blend of rich, layered sounds with modulation capabilities that rivaled conventional synths. Its architecture allowed for an impressive array of patches, each with up to four layers and independent controls, ensuring that each note could be a unique expression.
Full Technical Specifications
Audio Channels: 128
MIDI Channels: 32
Presets: 1536 (512 RAM (user), 1024 ROM)
Layers: 4
Sound Memory: 32 MB (expandable to 128 MB) Internal Expansion slots: 3 additional
Expansion format: ROM SIMM (32 MB/16 MB), Flash Memory SIMM (16 MB/32 MB)
Filters: 6th order (17 different types)
Data Encoding: 16-bit linear, 18-bit DAC’s
Signal to Noise: >92 dB
Frequency Response: 20Hz - 20kHz ( +2/-1dB)
THD + Noise: <0.02% (1 kHz sine wave, A- Weighting) Power Consumption: 15 Watts
Voltage Input: 90VAC - 260VAC at 50 Hz - 60Hz Maximum Output Level: +4dB
Output Impedance: 1000 Ohms
Effects Engine: 24-bit internal processing
Expansion
The ingenuity of the Proteus didn't stop at its sound. It broke away from tradition by moving from hard-wired factory sounds in favour of a flexible SIMM card system, paving the way for endless sonic exploration. Up until this point, to get a different flavour of Proteus meant buying another version of a Proteus hardware module that contained a different sound set, the ability to expand with cards gave users access to many of the sounds in the earlier models;
B3 (B3 Organ) - 2000
Mo'Phatt (Hip-Hop) - 2000
Virtuoso 2000 (Orchestral) - 2000
Xtreme Lead-1 (Techno/Electronica) - 2000
Planet Earth (World) - 2000
Orbit 3 (Synthesizers) - 2001
Proteus 1000 (Pop/Rock) - 2002
Turbo Phatt (Hip-Hop) - 2002
Vintage Pro (Classic Keyboards) - 2002
The Proteus 2000's interface, with its intuitive Sound Navigator and audition features, allowed us work fast. An overused phrase in modern music production, but the Proteus democratised sound design, giving both professionals and those of us working from home access to powerful multitimbral sounds.
Top Of The List
This wasn’t a gift, but I did own a Proteus 2000, and even though I didn’t take advantage of the expansion cards, it was still the centre of my music production system. Today it has been replaced by free sounds that come within a DAW, something akin to Xpand II, but at the time it was a music maker’s dream and on a lot of Christmas lists back in the day.