E-MU Proteus/1

E-MU Proteus/1

W × H × D (mm)	482.6 x 44.45 × 215.9
Rack units	1U
Weight	2kg
Type	Fully-editable ROMpler sound module
Manufacturer	E-MU Systems
Release date	1989
Parts	16
Max polyphony	32
Normal presets	Original 192 XR 384
Expansion	4MB Expansion Board Orchestral Expansion Invision Protologic Expansion

The E-MU Proteus/1 is a 1U rackmount sound module synthesizer created by E-MU Systems in 1989, made to the likes of units like the Roland U-220, being E-MU's first foray into making a rackmount synthesizer module. And much like the U-220 takes from sampled content from the S-series samplers, the Proteus/1 takes a lot of its sampled content from the Emulator III sampler.

Presenting itself with an average 16x2 character display and uniquely being made of plastic, the Proteus/1 takes another major economical measure of having no realtime effects, but did have a notable quantity of sound contents and 16-part multi-timbrality.

The Proteus/1 would be labelled the "Pop/Rock" module with later produced units, since the Proteus/1 focuses on a large range of instruments for contemporary production, and would be followed up by the Proteus/2 and Proteus/3, focusing on Orchestral and World instruments respectively.

The sounds of the Proteus/1 and the rest of the Proteus series would find themselves on later E-MU products and software. A digital version of the Proteus/1 is officially offered in Digital Sound Factory's "E-MU Proteus Legacy" Kontakt library, however the sound is often inaccurate.

Sound Generation

The Proteus/1 is fully editable ROMpler synthesizer. Presets are made up of 2 oscillators known "pri" (primary) and "sec" (secondary) that can hold one of Proteus/1's 125 instrument tones. An instrument tone can have its sound reversed. Along with a preset having its own global volume envelope/ADSR, each oscillator has pitch/tuning, panning, chorus and ADSR available.

Each oscillator also features 2 programmable LFOs with 5 waveshape options.

The two oscillators can also be split to different parts of the keyboard or interact with an editable crossfade across the keyboard range. Up to 4 presets can be linked together and split simultaneously.

Variants

Proteus/1 XR

The Proteus/1 XR features more RAM than the original module, adding an extra 192 user-programmable preset locations (with 128 of those being new presets), bringing the overall total to 384 (256 RAM; 128 ROM).

Protologic Invision Proteus/1

There was an expansion board created by Invision that would add 4 MBs of sounds to the Proteus/1, featuring 70 instrument tones and 128 presets of sounds like basses, keyboards, horns, percussion, synths, etc.

There were also Proteus/1s that had the expansion pre-installed, which had a distinctive yellow squiggle graphic to the side of the "PROTEUS/1 16 BIT MULTI-TIMBRAL DIGITAL SOUND MODULE" text on the module.

Proteus/1 Plus Orchestral

A Proteus/1 Plus Orchestral is another variant that features an extra 4 MBs of sounds, and all of the instrument tones and 128 ROM presets from the Proteus/2.

There was also an expansion board that upgraded a standard Proteus/1 to this model that was hinted at and eventually announced at an E-MU Audio Engineering Society exhibit in Los Angeles in September 1990. This was offered by E-MU for installation at their service centers.

Proteus MPS / Proteus MPS Plus Orchestral

The Proteus Master Performance System, or better known as the Proteus MPS is a keyboard version of the Proteus/1 that adds 2 effects processors with 32 effects, featuring 200 presets and is expandable to 300 with a RAM card. The piano preset from the original Proteus is also replaced with a mono version of the piano sound from the Proformance/1 piano module.

The Proteus MPS Plus Orchestral, similarly to the Proteus/1 Plus Orchestral, adds all 4 MBs from the Proteus/2 and more ROM presets utilizing them. And much like the Proteus/1 Plus Orchestral, there was an expansion board to upgrade a standard MPS to a Plus model as well.

Digidesign MacProteus

The MacProteus is a computer sound card version of the Proteus/1 produced by Digidesign for Macintosh computers in 1990.

Oddities

• The Proteus/1 responds to the standard MIDI panning message, however it is divided into 17 segments going in either a negative direction/left (-1 to -8) or a positive direction (1-8) with 0 being center and each value corresponds to an arbitrary MIDI panning number. Though, for some reason these values are slightly offset - a center panning message (0) is actually +1, or slightly right on the Proteus/1.

External Links

• Proteus Operation Manual, via Wayback Machine
  • synthmind.com mirror
• Proteus/1 Demo Sequence