E-mu Systems SP-1200

E‑mu Systems’ products changed popular music, perhaps none more so than the SP‑1200 sampling drum machine.

The origins of E‑mu Systems go back to California in the late 1970 when three young student friends, Dave Rossum, Steve Gabriel and Jim Ketcham, having experienced a Moog Model 12 in the flesh, decided to try to build a synthesizer. Whilst ordering parts for this endeavour, they were asked for a company name for the paperwork and made up ‘E‑mu Systems’, despite not officially being a business. The following summer, an old school friend of Rossum, Scott Wedge, needed some less adventurous pursuits whilst recovering from a skydiving injury and, as he was also interested in technology and synthesizers, joined the cohort. By the end of the summer they had their first synthesizer, which they called the ‘E‑mu 25’. This project served as a prototype and experiment rather than a commercial product, but in 1972 Rossum and Wedge filed papers to make E‑mu an official company and by 1973 they’d developed a sophisticated modular synthesizer called ‘The E‑mu Modular System’ that could rival the Moogs and ARPs of the day.

Whilst analogue was the dominating technology at that time, E‑mu were already aware of the potential for digital; for example, by 1974 they had a polyphonic, digital‑scanning keyboard that was licensed for use in the Oberheim polyphonic synthesizers of the mid‑’70s, and as part of the development of the E‑mu modular, they’d also created an early digital sequencer.

In the mid‑’70s, E‑mu began two fateful business partnerships. Firstly, Rossum worked with Ron Dowe of Solid State Music to create a set of analogue chips that reduced the footprint of oscillators, filters, amplifiers and envelope generators significantly. These integrated circuits became known in the industry as ‘SSM chips’. Secondly, E‑mu decided to help a customer, Dave Smith of Sequential Circuits, who’d previously used their services for parts for his own creations, such as an oscillator that clocked his Model 600 sequencer.

Dave Smith had an idea for a polyphonic synthesizer with global panel control, patch memory and a digital tuning system. This ambitious project required resources that E‑mu were able to provide and they agreed to do that without upfront cost in return for a $75 royalty on the sale of each of the production units. E‑mu gave Smith access to their hand‑built development system, which he used to design the software, and Rossum did the analogue design, provided the digital scanning keyboard and, via SSM, the integrated circuits. Initially a 10‑voice synthesizer, the instrument overheated badly and so the upper board of circuits was removed making it a five‑voice. Launched in 1978, the Prophet‑5 was an enormous success for the time and has had a permanent impact on the music industry ever since.

For a couple of years, all was well and E‑mu received a steady flow of payments for the Prophet‑5, but in 1980 they received a letter from Sequential Circuits saying that they’d redesigned the Prophet‑5 around rival Curtis Electro Music (CEM) integrated circuits for supply and reliability reasons and that, as competitors were using digital scanning keyboards in their products and not paying royalties to E‑mu, they were ceasing payments entirely.

Whilst a resolution was sought, E‑mu had the double issue of losing an income stream and having to pay legal costs. They needed a product of their own and they needed it quickly. Somewhat ironically, they’d been developing a sophisticated multitimbral, digitally‑controlled polyphonic synthesizer called the Audity and had shown it at the AES convention that same year, but this was the wrong sort of product to dig them out of a financial hole as it was going to cost around $60,000 per unit (around $240,000 today) and it would likely take time to sell the first unit as it was so specialist. E‑mu dropped the Audity project, with only a prototype having been produced, and changed tack.

Emulation

In the late ’70s, Rossum and Wedge had seen two products that caught their eye, firstly the Fairlight CMI and secondly the Publison DHM89 B2. Amongst their respective features, these two units had something in common; they could capture audio signals into digital memory and then the sample could be replayed at different pitches by the keyboard. E‑mu decided this was to be the central concept of their next design.

A breakthrough was when they realised that by using direct memory access (DMA) it was possible to achieve polyphony from a single memory chip, which kept the cost reasonable whilst giving the open‑ended sonic benefits of using digital audio as the tone source. The product was developed throughout 1980 and wound up as an eight‑voice sampling keyboard that could play back two different samples either side of a keyboard split. Sounds could be sampled directly into the instrument itself via the mic or...