About
E-MU Morpheus is the first PCM synth with Z-Plane filter. With the Z-Plane, the original waveforms can be radically processed by 'morphing' between various filter types.
E-MU Morpheus (1994)
A PCM synthesizer with 8MB PCM ROM.
From the Morpheus manual....
The Morpheus filter is made of 7 filter/PEQs. A filter character is made of the combination of 20 parameters of Frequency, Bandwidth and Gain.
As it's a hard work for users to set all 20 parameters, E-MU made more easier way to control the filter by only 3 parameters.
A cube filter is like a 3-dimensional space of filter characters. Using 3 parameters - X, Y and Z axis positions, it's possible to morph between various filter characters. Morpheus has 197 preset patterns of vertex filter character arrangement, and they make the filter types.
Here are my first experiments with Morpheus.
A saw wave is processed by various Z-Plane filters in the examples below.
To show how each Z-Plane filter sounds like, I used the same Saw wave and simple settings. Only one oscillator is used with no FX. The examples are shown by their filter names, and grouped by my impression.
Bell AHmBnd.4
Digital synth Ensemble Flanger Lo-Fi Filter Variation LPF Multi Mode Peak Resonator Vocal
E-MU UltraProteus is a version of Morpheus with a different PCM ROM. Its 16MB ROM includes the waveforms of Proteus 1 and Proteus 2, and part of Proteus 3 and Proformance. The filter types are increased to 288.
Emulator IV was the high-end Z-Plane sampler. It has 64 polyphony and 21 filter types.
E-MU UltraProteus (1994)
Later, E-MU made many genre-focused modules, using Morpheus engine. The series include Orbit, Planet Phatt and Carnaval. The filter types decreased to 17.
E-MU Emulator IV (1994)
E-MU Planet Phatt (1996)With Audity 2000 and Proteus 2000 series, the synth engine is bettered to 32/64/128-polyphonic, 20-bit D/A. The ROM size is increased to 32MB, expandable up to 64/128MB. They have 50 filter types.
The series includes many genre-focused versions like Mo'Phatt, Planet Earth and Xtreme Lead, etc .
E-MU Mo'Phatt (2000)
YAMAHA CS6x and MOTIF have various filter types. They are made by combining 2 filters. This filter section can be seen as related to Z-Plane, though E-MU combines 7 filters, not only 2.
YAMAHA MOTIF (2001)
Deep Synthesis: Home
1.25.2007
Update 1.26.2007: Z-Plane description added