I decided to get one of these older Proteus 2000 modules, so that I would get access to it's huge amount af Z-Plane filters. First I was searching for a Morpheus, but they are rare these days, end pretty expensive in comparison to the P2000 family of ROMplers.
http://medias.audiofanzine.com/images/normal/e-mu-proteus-2000-715299.jpgI intend on using it's deep editing features with it's 4 layer setup, for creating really huge pad sounds. I got 128 voices on this one, so it should give some rather cool possibilities, especially with the over 50 types af Z-Plane filters.
These ROMplers engine is really something... it's basically an E-MU E4 Ultra engine, but with a lot of extra stuff, and it can be expanded with ROMs (4 of them) for a total of 128MB of samples... this is nice, because then I do not have to mess around with creating samples for this.
I actually bought the E-MU X-Treme Lead 1 with just 64 voices, and the XL-1 ROM, but an additional Planet Earth - World Expedition ROM in it... the later is pretty rare, and one of the best ROMs E-MU did for this series of modules, and it sounds stellar for my Ambient projects. The XL-1 ROM will give me all the electronic music building blocks I need as well, and I plan on getting the two ROMs from the Virtuoso module that has a lot of Orchestral dry samples on them... this will be the perfect blend of samples for what I want of this machine.
The P2000 I bought without any ROMs in it... thus it was pretty cheap, and will be using that one for all the ROMs... so now I'm sitting here with a ROM empty XL-1 that I don't know what to do with
Somehow I wish I could find a 32MB FLASH SIMM module, so that I could author my own 32MB sample ROM for this machine.... but they're so rare they are seldom seen even on EBAY... so guess I can forget about that, but it would require an Ultra sampler to make that ROM anyway...
Besides the P2000, I've gotten a used Waldorf Rack Attack, which will serve be as my only drummachine... it fits my needs for SysEx control, is compact and sound darn good and snappy... very happy with it now that I've started creating drumsounds for it.