Akai s950 vs E-Mu Emax SE

This may be the wrong forum to post this, but being that I own a MPC 2000 classic I figured I'd try to post this here and see what happens.
In my research after purchasing my MPC, I've become intrigued by what people are saying about the tone of the s950. I love the era of when this machine was used most and would love to use one specifically for my drums.
In my research I've also read that the E-Mu Emax has tone similar to the sp1200 and utilizes analog filters. The SE has an expanded synthesizer section as well.
My question is have any of you used both of these machines? What are your likes and dislikes? How easy are they to maintain?
Thank you in advance for your help.

peace

I've actually used both machines side by side to compare. (also sequenceing from an mpc2000 mind you!) I really wouldn't say one is better than the other, very different beasts but I chose the s950 because I already knew how to use it, I was too lazy to explore the ins and outs of the Emax. Also I prefer HD floppy if possible so S950 made sense to me.

The main thing that the Emax has you can not get on the S950 is the aliasing noise on the lower sample rates. It's an indescribable effect, it's pretty extreme but it never destroys the sound, it was always a nice character I really liked it, . S950 sounds killer of course but it applies filter to hide the aliasing noise on lower sample rates so you don't that mysterious Emax sound.

If I remember correctly they have different looping options:

EMAX:
-YES 2 separate loop assigned to sustain and release of a sample
-NO alternating loops(?)
-YES crossfade loops(?)

S950:
-YES alternating loops
-YES crossfade loops

Other than that I think the Emax SE section was cool but it takes like 30 minutes sometimes to generate the sound into sample memory! So it's hard to really work up the patience to use it.

does the emax have a continuously variable sampling rate?

the s950 lets you assign the bandwidth/sample rate for each individual sample.

which helps in stretching that precious memory to go as far as possible.

The Emax is 10kHz to 42kHz variable. Vintage Synth Explorer says that you can get up to 52 seconds of sample time at 10kHz. Also the memory is not expandable unlike the s950.

fobedafied wrote:does the emax have a continuously variable sampling rate?

the s950 lets you assign the bandwidth/sample rate for each individual sample.

which helps in stretching that precious memory to go as far as possible.

the Emax has a different way to go about it, only 4 or 5 selectable sample rates for the initial recording, but after that the "pitch shift" function is used to resample at different rates by semitones. (I think this might only be with the SE operating system under "digital processing" )

thanks yall.

i find the differences in implementation between akai and e-mu to be interesting.


dont know much bout the SE features though.