On the Proteus 2 probably the most famous patch no-one ever heard of is number 125 - Whistl'n Joe. It's the whistle sound used for the main melody of the X-Files theme.
My Proteus I has that patch as well, although it may have been internally upgraded to the II ROM set at some point as its a different # - there's like 200 some odd patches on this thing. But the encoder is a bit dirty so scrolling through them is a pain, gotta clean that sucker. "Phantasia" is also a decent imitation of the D50 Fantasia patch
Mark Snow's interview in Keyboard magazine was memorable. Back in the day, I would go to the "bookstore" if you remember those, grab a coffee, and read everyone's published kit list.
04:35 - this is what I mean when I say music has saved my life so many times. And most people do not understand why I am playing music. Thank you Dr Mix for making our lives happier.
amazing how the most uninspiring sounds can become inspiring again when you have been around so many incredibly deep and inspiring sounds for too long :D
OMG. I forgot that I have this piece in storage. It was a classic piece when I used to play live with my band in the 90s . I’ve always liked this piece 😊
Some of those sounds reminded me of the Nintendo 64. A quick Google search and I found out that this machine was indeed used for the soundtracks of Mario 64 among others. Fascinating, how those sounds are hardwired in my brain.
@@GabePickles3837 it wasn't all one machine. recently people have been going through to find the exact samples used in old vgm to restore the soundtracks
Yes, Claudio played an Eye in the sky by Alan Parsons Project BUT this particular Thunder Bass patch sounds VERY MUCH like bass used in Behind the Wheel by Depeche Mode. Perhaps this Thunder Bass patch based on sample from Emulator II sample library (used by DM).
I dig these old synth videos. I had one back in 1990. thanks for the memories. Still have my fully loaded Proteus 2K ,Extreme Lead and Vintage pro all loaded with 128mb of cards. Have not recorded with them in 15 years. Turn them on when drunk to remember.
Yup same here as I still own the Proteus 2000. I do have the Mo Phatt as well but I pulled the Pure fact card out of it moved it into the Proteus 2000. I kept my Mo phatt as a parts machine for spare parts since all the hardware is identical as all parts are interchangeable. Is better to buy the entire hardware unit for the same price as the cards as you get more bank for the buck to keep as a parts machine and pull the cards out of them. My Proteus 2000 already had the the Xtreme Lead card installed that I bought 2nd hand. I have one more slot left. I wanted the Orbit 3 but those are hard to find that's extremely rare. I did read the Extreme Lead 1 was based off the Adacity 2000.
@@eman0828 yes Extreme lead had all the waves from the Audacity. I basically have a orbit 3. I have both Rob Papen Cards plus the bonus presets In my Proteus 2000. Just not the orbit 3 presets in full.
@@christopherprice3226 So when you say not having the Full Orbit presets are talking about the User presets or the ROM card?. All the Proteus modules are actually all the same hardware that all part of the Proteus 2000 family. The only difference is the the i/O an Polyphony.
I can empathize with the excitement you get when you turn on an old synth and experience the sounds again after a long hiatus. We really do connect with the tones we choose to use and back then I would often reuse sounds with modified CC values - we didn't have unlimited storage like we do today!
THAT OPENING WAS AMAZING! Never expected you to sing The jungle track incredible like that! I'm a huge 90s jungle fan and I was not expecting that at all🎉
I was smiling all the way through this video until you chucked yourself on the floor and i nearly pissed myself!!! I had to watch it again. Man i love checking your videos out because they are full of positive energy omitted through your character. Thank you so much for all you do for music. Dan UK
I am so glad that we reached a point where creative and gifted people can share their skills openly with an unlimited number of viewers. Beside the enormous talent I find the amount humbleness and positive energy in these videos are amazing. What I love most about it is that it is all feels so genuine.
I had one of these! Got it from my dad. fortunately, I still have his old Roland D-20 at least. The blending feature was dope. I would still use some of the sounds to this day.
I bought up 5 broken Proteus 2 Orchestral modules a few years ago, and managed to get 4 working. At one point, I had them hooked up to a single midi keyboard, with each module set to a different instrument (cello, violin, a woodwind, brass, for example). Playing chords on the keyboard sounded glorious with that setup. A lot of the cheese of the instruments fades into the background when they're played together. It didn't sound realistic, but it had a 90s RPG soundtrack vibe that is hard to capture. One of the Proteus racks still has the expansion which contains the X Files theme song whistle sound, so I spent WAY too much time playing with that :)
Ah, it's in the P2! Btw, acronyms, like MIDI, are always written in block caps. Not least because just midi means midday in French, or medium in another language, and we also had midi hifi which obviously was nothing to do with MIDI!
@@thekeysman6760 that last fact, that midi was a size rather than referring to playback of MIDI files, eluded me for soooo long (partly because many ads wrote in block caps all the time)
@@kaitlyn__L Higher case is also part of legalese and not actually English! It's called a 'glossa/glosser and there are different styles like American Gloss. It's how our fictitious 'person/corporation' is stated on our fraudulent birth certificate when we are registered to the state and owned from birth. Oh, and another MIDI one for you. CC means control change since 1983 and never meant continuous controller, regardless of what Google or the web says! It's all in the original MIDI protocol but the world still gets it wrong!
I'm 27 years old and I bought 2 years ago Proteus 1,2,3 and a Pro/cussion. I mainly produce trap/hip hop instrumentals, sometimes DnB. As a Depeche Mode fan, I found in those sound modules the right source to shape my sound with vsts in Ableton. Thanks Doctor Mix for this kind of content! Grazie!
I have the official soundbanks for Emu ESI-32 which features all the Proteus 1,2,3 pro/cussion / orbit and all the different modules they released. I also had a real pro/cussion back in the days. The drumsounds really have some punch too them, perfect for Ntezer Ebb like drums also, not only Depeche Mode =)
@@christianfriedrichs I bought mine on ebay for like nothing. Its one of the official CD-roms in EIII library called "E-MU classic series VOL 7" (my ESI 32 is fully expanded., might be that some banks dont work on ESI with like 2MB ram)
@@christianfriedrichs when I googled "E-MU classic series VOL 7" right now, I saw that some kind person had a google drive in on of the toplinks. Just saying :)
Hi Doc, Thanks for putting this on. Love your enthusiasm . I rate romplers/samples, it's so less complicated, for septuagenarian's like me. Generally, they are now as cheap as chips. In their day , they cost a years wages . My first rompler, a Kurzweil micro piano . Piano sound OK, ish. My Son calls the sound fake. But the string sounds on it are great, for bass lines (yep), and psychedelic stuff . Next I bought a Proteus One/Orchestral. followed by a Proteus 2000. Next a Korg Triton rack, and lastly a Roland XV3080, expansion cards, if your lucky, and have deep pockets. My old school mate, from the early 60's , whoops, another age give away, He owns his own studio, which is rented most of the week. We record, our own 70's /80's, early 90's music in his studio on Sunday's . He uses Logic Pro as a recording tool. We never use Logic samples . I have literally thousands of samples. on my vintage gear. There is always a sound, we are looking for . Doc, you are bang on. If we find the perfect sound, we can beef it up with outside effects . Keep up the vintage stuff
I remember when started my audio engineering course in the early 90s this just landed in the studio. We were all in awe of it's multitimbrality. I remember the demo almost note for note. I was just starting to learn sequencing using just that and an Atari ST. I recreated Blue Monday using it. I do remember using that Moog bass sound in it too. I've got it on tape somewhere and I bet it sounds shite. At the time I thought it sounded great lol.
Yeah man. The multitimbrality, if that's a word!, was a big thing. I think they beat Ensoniq by a year! I still have the SQR Plus in an old rack, which is 8 part multitimbral but only stereo outs. The Roland W-30, which I also still have, was earlier than the Proteus and was multitimbral with separate outputs. It has been amazing to be a part of all this and watch the progression over the years. I too get nostalgic playing certain patches from the past! Btw, you sound like you got your Proteus a few years late! It was released in 1989. And did you have the 520st or the 1040st? 😉 You were lucky either way, because at first I just had the 1040, S-900, and Juno 106! No 'multitimbrality' as per the Proteus, but did have 8 outs for the 8 voices of the Akai. Big deal! Not.
What an amazing box of sounds. I really love the InChoiririe 4:16. I could listen to that all day. I had to go back and play that over about 6 time. Love it.
My brother had one of these & the kits alone are amazing. The strings & pads are a joy to play & some extra release added lots of spaciousness if needed. These modules are the best.
I remember reading that issue of SOS, and drooling over the Proteus on the cover. Eventually I got a Proteus FX that I still have. Though now I also have sound fonts of the base Proteus family. :)
Its one of my favorite modules for sure! As others have pointed out it reeks of 90s nostalgia from TV shows and plenty of amazing electronic music. Yes its a ROMPler, no there isn't a whole lot of editing you can do but really ROMPlers are exactly that - nice convenient boxes of presets. The creativity comes more with their musical and contextual use. Its all about imagination - the Korg M1 Organ 02 preset is a bad jazz organ sound for which it was intended but man it slaps as a bass sound. Not as hard as the Seinfeld slap bass patch tho. But I digress the Proteus is a good buy if you can score one - good imitations of both those things I mentioned from Korg as well as Roland etc. - Emu really wanted this to be a one stop shop of essential (in the 90s) sounds.
Ah General , takes me back to sprung dance floors and Jump up Jungle 1993. I loved this tune even though by some it was seen as selling out. By 97 it got too dark and I had had enough. Now drum and bass is everywhere and couldn’t be more commercial in some places.
Awesome synth. Speaking of Proteus, the Proteus 2 uses sounds from the Emulator 3 and was used in various media, most notably in children’s shows like Thomas and Friends and Barney and Friends.
@@thekeysman6760 not true. Romplers are indeed Synths! What's a Synthesizer if it doesn't have Evelopes, Filters or ARPs? All Synthesizers have at least those two things. A Rompler is not anything less. The only difference is they are PCM based synthesis opposed to analog or Virutal Analog. Each PCM wave form layer equals an oscillator in a Rompler synth. Infact the Yamaha MOTIF is marketed as a Music Production Synthesizer, perhaps my Roland Fantom-XR even says 128 voice Synthesizer/Sampler module printed right on the faceplate if it wasn't a synth!
@@eman0828 most virtual analogue uses single cycle samples of their waveforms too, so they’re just a different way of using PCM. Otherwise I totally agree with you, digital synthesis is just as valid!
@@kaitlyn__L Yes PCM is just another form a digital synthesis with sampling. Most people think of ROMplers as preset boxes when they couldn't be more wrong. You can create your own patches from scratch. most PCM based synth have your basic square, sine, saw, pulse waveforms. Wave table synths also use PCM samples. The Roland XV-5080 was very highly programmable. I have the Roland Integra-7 which is the successor of the JV-2080 and XV-5080 but also has all the Roland Jupiter 80 Super Natural sounds on-board along with all 12 SRX expansion boards. Its my favorite synth in my rack. I own about 5 different sound modules pretty much every popular one ever made which is all the sounds of 90s and early 2000s Hip Hop & R&B.
We Finns tend to just pronounce product names phonetically. And the song was "Eye In The Sky" by Alan Parsons Project. And one of the guitar sounds reminded me of "Right In The Night" sung by Plavka Lonich... song made by Jam & Spoon, at least the guys if not with that name.
more of these! We need to know what synths / samplers were used back in the days and what are the legendary sounds in what synth everybody knows 707.808.900 but hese rare samplers are very unknown actually first time I see this sampler in action. the bass track @ 6:30 is The Alan Parsons Project - Eye in the Sky 🤪
Only for windows though, that plugin. So I have all the Kontakt versions that Digital Sound Factory made. It's nice to have Mo' Phatt again! They have the sole licence of all the E-MU libraries.
Great Dr. you are incredible, the ease you have to improvise is incredible... I congratulate you and wish you much success. Keep it up with more great content
I went looking for the Proteus 1 and found a Proteus 2000 so bought it after reading a review, I like the sounds on both, the 2000 has a lot more knobs on the front for quick access though 🙂
It's a rompler not a synth, and if you think it sounds full I pity you! It sounds thin and hollow due to how much they compressed the samples. Pain to always have to fatten it!
I LOVE a piano sound layered with a string or pad. I was already eyeing the Proteus. That Heaven patch seals the deal. I need a Proteus. You should do more rack units. They are under appreciated. I have a Roland R8-M rack mount drum sound module. It's fantastic. You can get cards with other sounds including 808 and 909. You should get one and compare those to an original 808 and 909. And get the ethnic card. It has awesome African and Asian percussion. The R8-M is my go to for drums these days.
@@althejazzman Ah! Correct 😀. The Yamaha XG cards were very good at the time too. I just remembered how my boss cried with laughter when we watched the demo video for the Soundblaster, or it might have been the Yamaha soundcard because we sold a lot as a Yamaha dealer, and way more than the Roland cards. The American voice-over artist said MYDI ! And somehow nobody corrected him! Hehe. Happy days. Mid to late 90s.
@@thekeysman6760 well, a lot of terminology is different in computers than in musical instruments. Those sound cards often called expanded rompler ROMs “wave table” even though it didn’t granularly scroll through a table of single waves like musicians would think about wavetable. But just because the samples it did use, were logically arranged in a grid (as they’d have to be, but hey). Similarly, MIDI morphed into meaning any external sound module as opposed to internal sound, then morphed again into meaning higher-quality onboard sound when they integrated them into the cards but kept FM capability. In that context a “MIDI sound” is anything other than the beeper speaker or OPL FM, even though of course the OPL chip can understand MIDI. So it’s very strange for musicians, with instruments still using regular MIDI version one, to hear computer collectors say things like “why did MIDI die?”. Because of course it’s still alive. But in their specific and limited context it makes perfect sense, as modern sound cards/integrated chips need some other software to emulate it and output pure samples to the DAC. That branch of the usage tree _did_ die out. It used to bother me up until about 10, 12 years ago when I just came to accept the same word can mean different things in different fields, and even when those meanings are closely intertwined there’s no law of nature saying they must not diverge. You seem to know enough about computers though, so maybe you’re well aware of all this and just personally reject it. That’s fine for your own use of course, but it seems a bit obtuse to hold others to it when you can still tell what they mean!
Most of these sounds can now be found in the Proteus 2000 and its numerous incarnations (Orbit 3, Planet Earth, etc). I've got two of those. An incredible amount of sonic potential in a small package. Prices are creeping up, and asking prices can be a bit optimistic, but unless you're looking for every single ROM out there, you should be able to pick one up for not too much money. Or a Proteus/1, they're plentiful as well. The song is "Eye in the sky" by the Alan Parsons Project.
Never had a Proteus, but years later I bought a Midi Controller Keyboard which had a Proteus 2 VST bundled. Back then, I was more a Korg (T2ex) and Roland (JV-880, XP-80) guy. But I remember the Proteus being a staple in many studios and live setups (next to other early ROMplers like the Roland U20/U220).
Thse old ROMplers don't get nearly enough love nowadays. The hardware isn't that impressive by modern standards, but the E-Mu sample libeary is still awesome. I have a Proteus 1000 (a slightly cheaper version of the Proteus 2000), which has nearly the full library. Probably the most famous use was the "Whistle" sound for the X-Files theme. Unfortunately, this was on a later model, and isn't on your Proteus/1. Most of these are still pretty cheap, but they are getting more expensive. Be careful, though as they do occasionally break, and with the company out of business, they can be hard to get fixed.
It's never "too late" to use those sounds, last year I bought a Proteus/2 partly because that's the one with the whistle sound used on The X Files although I had to rescan the patches via midi as the previous owner had loaded a different patch set onto it.
Grazie mille, Claudio. Thanks to you, you brought me back memory lane some 35 years ago... I haven't seen my dear musician/producer friend Francis Mandin (of Clearlight and Music-Land fame) for a few years and first thing when we met again, he literally jump on me, overwhelmed with excitement, "well, listen to that, Jean, you won't believe it". "That" was a Proteus. And overwhelmed I was too. The last time we had heard such sounds was in the recording studio, with those daunting emulator and ppg wave (and other esoteric massive new treasures some of them friendly lent by one JMJ...)
Boy, these boxes were so great! I had a Proteus 1, a Proteus 2 (the orchestra one) and Proteus 3 (world sounds) in the early 90s ... bought them as soon as they came out! We used them all over the place! 😍
@@thekeysman6760 Oh wow that's earlier than I thought! Then I must have bought the first one in 89! I remember buying them like one year apart or so ...
@@MixedByDotRob Believe me, 50 in a month, I had go go back and check the info too! Hehe. Time is strange, over time ! Would love to have the Mo' Phatt now. I have all that Digital Sound Factory has done whilst holding the rights to the E-MU libraries, in Kontakt. The newer versions were multisampled too.
Proteus was a sea god in ancient Greek mythology and his main attribute was that he could take any shape he wanted. So it's a fitting name for this synth: it can take any shape, like an emulator. Another infotrash I got somewhere online is that it includes the original whistle sine sound that was used in the X Files theme by Mark Snow.
Fun video! The M1 came out years before the Proteus and wore the “best short but almost believable samples” crown for years. The “D50” sounding patches are not the same samples or Roland would have shut them down. They are copies of that programming approach but as you show, don’t sound as good 😊
The M1 came out just a year before the Proteus. And the pcm samples in thr D-50 were used as attack transients to make the synth aspect more believable. Hence the M1 after.
still have one of that Proteus 1 on my rack and never been turned on nor used in decades.. it was awesome in its time though... great video and trip to memory lane claudio! thank you!
Your channel is definitely entertaining and very informative as well. Definitely subbed! I have the Proteus 2000 and a Korg Kronos X. Big learning curve with them. Great video!
N9 Junglist massive, big up yourself! Representing, 29 years later! 🎶 Still got my tape recordings of the pirate stations. What a time. So many stations squashed on that dial! Remember?
"Junglist massive", actually. Which is why he says "all the original junglist massive" straight after that! He means the crew, the followers of Jungle.
