About Vintage Keys - E-Mu Vintage Keys Operation Manual

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ABOUT VINTAGE KEYS

Vintage Keys utilizes digital recordings of real instruments for the basis
of its sound. This is similar to a tape recorder except that inside the
Vintage Keys, the sounds are permanently recorded on digital memory
chips.
To perform this modern miracle, sounds and instrument waveforms
are first sampled into the Emulator III, our top of the line, 16 bit stereo
digital sampler. After the sounds and waveforms have been truncated,
looped and processed, they are "masked" into the Vintage Keys ROM
(Read Only Memory) chips.
Conceptually, the sampling process is very simple, as shown in the
Basic Sampling System diagram. As a sound wave strikes the dia-
phragm of a microphone, a corresponding voltage is generated. To
sample the sound, the voltage level is repeatedly measured at a very
high rate and the voltage measurements are stored in memory. To play
the sound back, the numbers are read back out of memory, converted
back into voltages, then amplified and fed to a speaker which converts
the voltage back into sound waves. Of course, playing back 32 chan-
nels at different pitches tends to complicate matters, but this is basi-
cally how it works. In Vintage Keys, we have left out the Analog/
Digital converter stage since the sounds are already sampled for you.
Analog/Digital
Converter
14 Vintage Keys Operation Manual
Basic Sampling System
Memory Digital/Analog
Converter
10100101001
01010010100
1011001
1011001 1011001
10101010100
10101001010
3V
0V
-3V
1V 3V -2V -1V 3V
Amplifier
-1V -2V