E-mu Planet Earth

Price Paid: US $350.00 used

Ease of Use: 9
I have the latest OS 2.26 for this and it works like a charm. Absolutely flawless. I am very familiar with the Proteus line of OS since the 90's tho. ;)
The screen could be bigger, but hey, i knew what size it was when i bought.

Features: 9
The only thing i wish it had was a couple more control knobs but that's cool. Its nice to have the four knobs .....my old EMU World Proteus 3 module didnt have any control knobs, so this is awesome with four. My PX7 has 16 :-) so im not too kranky about this one only having four, but if i didnt have the PX7......

Expressiveness/Sounds: 10
This module SHINES in the sound dept. There is nothing like it. #1 hands down winner. zero competition. EMU has the world ethnic sounds down!!
Sound is authentic, rich and full of texture that is a real treat to use!

Reliability: 10
I've been using this Module for several years now and never had a problem. All knobs are still tight, everything works great. These are made very well.

Customer Support: 7
Nice people, but i dont know how much support they offer. Dont worry though because you will not need them. You can get much better support on line over at Yahoo forums for EMU related topics.....way better than emu support.

Overall Rating: 9
I have to give this a 9+ just because there is nothing else i could replace this with. Well, the ROM in this unit deserves a 10+ and can be moved (thankfully) to my PX7 should i wish to have it in the command station. THAT is very cool. The hardware on the Planet Earth deserves more like a 8 since it has some limitations. The best thing really is to get the ROM (world expedition) and put it into a command station or one of the 128 voice rack module like the Vintage Pro, OR even into one of the later emu keyboards like vk6 or mk6. All of those choices give you further control options over and above this rack module. So, move the ROM into your more capable EMU machine, if you have one, and sell this "empty" and you will come out smellin like roses. The ROM is a real keeper for most people who come across it, so it is hard to find. Grab it !

Submitted by RO at 12/24/2004 19:07

Price Paid: US $300 used

Ease of Use: 5
A very nice collection of (mostly) ethnic percussion with smatterings of plucked, bowed, wind, etc instruments...and a few synth sounds too (has one of the meanest bass synth presets I've heard from a sample playback synth). It's good that so many of the presets are good right out of the box, but when you want to actually change things you become mired by a painful interface and skimpy lcd screen...editing this thing is REALLY painful...lots of scrolling, squinting and an esoteric patch listing method...I used to have an EMU E64 sampler, and it was a pleasure to program sounds in...it's almost like another company entirely made the Planet Earth. The quick access manual is decent, but not adequate. You only get the full manual on CD-ROM...I know most everyone is doing this now, it doesn't make it right. For what you're paying for the equipment, you should get a hard copy manual, end of story.

Features: 8
Polyphony is great. 64 voices, more than you'll ever need. The effects pretty much SUCK. Reverb is only tolerable at low levels, and unfortunately Emu saw necessary to drown every patch in that tinny, horrid reverb, so you have to stop what you're doing, page down, and twist the effect knob down. Emu's never been reknowned for effects, though. There's an expansion slot for one 32 meg board I believe...this makes these modules very competitive against the JV1080's (not in the user interface dept though). MIDI features are excellent, you can also use the preset and programmable ARPEGGIATORS to control external equipment. Very nice. The Beats mode is cool, but somewhat of a gimmick...not very useful to me other than entering Groovebox-Monkey mode. The biggest sucko thing is only stereo outputs...the old Proteus modules came with 4 extra outputs...this limits your ability to selectively process sounds...very cheap, Emu.

Expressiveness/Sounds: 8
The percussive sounds are excellent, and the filters work excellently in adding dynamics to them. I'm not as impressed, however, with the majority of the instrument sounds.....the World card in my Roland JV1080 sounds alot more dynamic on the instrument sounds...they kind of have opposing strong and weak points. This unit would be good for any flavor of music that needs world sounds or organic percussion elements. The onboard effects, as I've said, suck the big one, don't even think of them as a bonus...NO effects processor and extra outputs would've been the way to go. It reacts very nicely to playing, very dynamic with velocity and aftertouch.

Reliability: 9
Only had it a week or so....it seems pretty solid.

Customer Support: N/A
Never dealt with Emu...although since Creative took them over, they've noticely started to suck like the rest of Japanese conglomerates when it comes to supporting their products. A sad day indeed when Emu was bought by them.

Overall Rating: 7
I like it, but the user interface is very obstructive to editing, and I really like to go in and tweak my synths. I'm considering selling it while I still won't lose money on it and picking up an Mp-7 with the World Expedition rom in it. It kills the Roland World board as far as percussion, features, and variety goes, though Rolands string and wind samples are alot better. If you plan on using an editor or not changing things much, disregard my comments.

Submitted by LEe at 09/16/2004 10:00

Price Paid: US $459.00

Ease of Use: 10
This module is almost too simple. Every feature is right at your fingertips. I love the Emu layout and interface. Very easy to navigate and tweak.

Features: 10
This modlue has features that were only dreamed of just a few years ago. All the Emu products are loaded with em. The filters alone are just incredible!

Expressiveness/Sounds: 10
Simply the best ethnic sounds out there bar none. Completely kills the Roland ethnic stuff. Way better and way more varied. You wont find finer ethnic stuff anywhere. This is it! Hand down winner for any kind of ethnic touch to your music.

Reliability: 9
Seems solid as a tank. Bought it 3 years ago and never had a problem at all.

Customer Support: 7
EMU just got bought out by Creative Labs, so we'll see about support. EMU used to be one of the best in the customer support area, but seems as though creative labs fired a bunch of the tech assist dudes according to word on the street. too bad.

Overall Rating: 10
There is no way I could give this less than a 10 overall. There is nothing else in its league period. I searched long and hard for this type of unit and will never sell it. If it was stolen, Id get another one ASAP if I could find it. They are almost impossible to find tho and bring top dollar. Saw one on ebay sell for $500 just a couple of months ago. The resident ROM called the World Expedition ROM for this module can also draw top dollar. Saw one go down on ebay last nite for $300. that's just the ROM. Remember the rush on the old Roland R-8 drum machine Ethnic card in about 2001? those were selling for $250 and only had like 28 sounds. Well this is way way nicer than that so I
guess $300 for the emu World ROM is a steal in comparison. Forget Roland ethnic sounds. This is the real deal in every way. If you see either the Planet Earth or the World Expedition ROM by itself, you'd be nuts not to grab it. You may go a long while before you will find another one. The best ethinc sounds I have been able to find anywhere. And there's over 500 of em to work with!
Best money I have ever spent in over 10 years of gear hunting.

Submitted by Anonymous at 02/15/2004 14:52

Price Paid: US $400

Ease of Use: 9
Extremely easy to use as all emu modules seem to be. I will subtract one point for small display tho.

Features: 9
Amazing pile of features considering the price. Other reviews list these very well. All I can say is that there is way more stuff in there than I will every need to use.

Expressiveness/Sounds: 10
oh man, this is where this module is absolutely wild. There is nothing like it on the market. The BEST earthy organic ethnic stuff I have ever found in a module. I dumped my Proteus 3 cuz this completely smokes it. The sounds are inspiring to say the least.

Reliability: 10
All emu gear holds up well.

Customer Support: 10
These people are real humans....very rare in the synth biz. They have helped me with other emu gear questions repeatedly and with patience and kindness. I dont know of any other company out there that I could say that about at all. Nobody else even comes close. These guys are fully approachable and actually act like they WANT to help you. Amazing!! Great folks at EMU!

Overall Rating: 10
Im very happy with this product and would definately buy another. I like emu products because of the awesome quality and cuz the people down at the head office are very cool. I never worry about being stuck with an emu product either. The resale value is very high on any emu product. The module is definately my favorite one of the entire line of emu romplers and I own a whole rack full of them. I could not do what I do withou this Planet earth. Id be lost without this baby. I would recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone who likes the earthy ethnic sounds and want a "world" touch to add in the mix. This is your best choice for sure!

Submitted by Bubbaloha at 12/27/2002 02:54

Price Paid: US $399

Ease of Use: 7
Just upgraded to OS 2.26. Easy to use the basic features and when in performance mode, but when you start editing presets it can be a royal pain scrolling through choices and punching buttons to move the cursor all over. Most of the presets are great though, so no editing is really required.
It came with a small "Quick Start" manual which is good, but the full 280 page manual is only included in PDF on a CD. This stinks, but a lot of companies are doing this now to cut costs and save paper. When trying to do some deep editing it would be nice to have a hard copy of the manual to reference instead of having to go over to the dang computer to pull it up! The manual is well written and useful, though.

Features: 9
Planet Earth is basically a Proteus 2000 box with just the World Expedition ROM set installed. 64 voice polyphony, 32 MB soundset,12 real-time control parameters, syncable arpeggiation functions and E-MU's exclusive SuperBEATs Mode. Dynamic 12 pole filtering. Two built in effects processors. Multi-timbral mode. One expansion SIMM slot. Very cool "audition" mode for demoing presets. Full MIDI capabilities.

The arpeggiator functions on Planet Earth are great and you can have multiple channels arpeggiating at once for some truly wild sounds. Then there's BEATS mode, which plays pre-programmed percussion grooves triggered and latched by keys, and you can also mix in more percussion loops dynamically using the front panel knobs or mod wheel. Very, very cool! The programmed patterns can't be edited, but they are all useable and there are like 200 of them. You can get some seriously badass tribal grooves going on this thing very easily.

Has four real time control knobs on the front that can be used to control anything from filter cutoff and resonance to effects and LFO levels, and in BEATS mode, the complexity of the groove. Great idea.

Expressiveness/Sounds: 9
The Planet Earth has some great sounds on it, and a (very)few not so great, the same as any synth. All of the percussion sounds are excellent and very realistic. Amazing variety of percussion sounds from hand drums and various shakers, to tuned percussion, mallets and even electronic drums. Next best are the plucked instruments, then winds. Bowed instruments are OK. Not many good special FX sounds, I wish they would have put some good jungle noises on this thing! The built in effects are decent, good reverbs and delays, but pretty limited.

Reliability: 8
Don't know, seems pretty sturdy. It's just a box that plays back samples.

Customer Support: 5
Don't know, never dealt with them. EMU's website is OK, but not great.

Overall Rating: 9
I would absolutely buy Planet Earth again, this is an amazing little box. For world or exotic sounding music, it has (almost) all the sounds you need, minus sitars and tablas(!) and a few other things. It sounds very organic or should I say 'earthy', and NOT techno. If you want techno, look at Planet Phatt instead.

I loaded mine up with the Protozoa ROM, and now have all the original Proteus 1,2 and 3 sounds as well, for some nice sounding orchestral and 'standard' instruments to mix in. This is a pretty specialized unit, but at $399 I just couldn't pass it up. I have been having a blast just learning it's many great features, it's really fun to use and not an exercise in frustration like some synths. I would give it a ten, but I'm subtracting a point for the difficult editing interface and lack of a full printed manual.

Submitted by DC at 11/26/2002 09:26

Price Paid: US $400.00

Ease of Use: 10
Extremely easy to use. No problems at all. The front knobs cover 12 diff. parameters and the "audition" button really helps.
Sounddiver goes way deep if you want.

Features: 9
This thing is very versatile. The only thing I wish it had was a full on sequencer but hey, for this price...

Expressiveness/Sounds: 10
Top quality ethnic sounds. I have had a Proteus 3 forever and this compliments it nicely. The 16-part arpeggiator is wicked and helps you design some nasty grooves quickly. The sound is very real and natural for most settings. Remarkable. EMU rules!

Reliability: 10
no problems. I have the latest software. built solid. knobs solid.

Customer Support: 10
EMU is one of the cooler companies with really nice techs & great support

Overall Rating: 10
I absolutely love this thing!! The sounds and patterns (arps) are wonderful to work with and they are very "earthy" as the name indicates. :}} Some of the best ethnic stuff Ive heard so far and I do have some killer sample cds. Anyway its well worth it. Im gonna stuff this baby with the XL-1 ROM and really go nuts!! :))))

Submitted by RIP at 07/13/2002 17:39

Price Paid: N/A

Ease of Use: 8
OS 1.24 (World-Expedition-Board in a XL-1turbo, but the same as Planet Earth). The presets sound great, some people say, that they´re "thin", but have you ever heard "fat"-sounding wood or something like this? the ones which must sound "fat" are sounding okay.
Editing patches is horrible with the P2K-series, as you all know...
the manual is nearly okay, but SHOULD be much informativ! so my ease of use is rated WITHOUT editing patches

Features: 8
great polyphony, built-in effects (especially the FX-routing) is out of age, not understandable why EMU took out this artifact instead of giving these great modules acceptable FX. it can be expanded by one ROM out of the P2k-serie. the best help&special feature are the 16 arpegiators, the superbeats and the audition-riffs, which are very useful to play the presets in the right way.

Expressiveness/Sounds: 10
the sounds are superb, also compared with the roland-stuff. the EMU-sounds are more exotic and usable, coz the most of them are fantastic percussions which sounds great in nearly all kinds of music (I do Techno and electronic music and experimental). the onboard-FX are a shame for EMU!!! the presets react nice on Velocity, and many also have aftertouch and Mod-Wheel-reacting elements. many presets could/SHOULD be touched by the 4 control-knobs with all the 12 parameters!!! fantastic things would happen and make your tracks more living and different from all this PC-stuff

Reliability: N/A
totally okay

Customer Support: 2
I think I should not continue writing about EMU, coz this part of EMU is not worth to talk about...

Overall Rating: 9
if it would be stolen, I would buy ot directly after getting the money from the company where it was saved (sorry, I´m german, I mean "Versicherung"). it works totally nice together with the Proteus3 and all my other synth-stuff. Why I hadn´t choosen the World-board from Roland? simple: there are to much loops and this one hear sound much fresher and nicer and is for me more useable in my music!

I wish the f...ing FX-routing could be also updated...

it gives my trax new features (nono, not that cheap way as Safri-Duo)

I could highly say yes to anyone, of he asks "is it worth buying it?"

Submitted by MF/MDG at 04/07/2002 10:00

Price Paid: US $1085

Ease of Use: 8
v.1.23
Presets are very personal sounding, so it is easy to get started with musically interesting work without any editing.
Editing menus are difficult to use, perhaps because of the small screen and that the few knobs have different purposes on each layer.
Printed manual is good for first-aid. A more detaild manual is on CD-ROM.

Features: 9
64 voice polyphony and 32MB sound bank. This is a rack model.
I was amazed by the diversity and quality of the built in effects. The problem is that the effects menu is hidden rather deep down.
There is sort of a mini on-board sequencer to build phrases with. It seems cryptic to use; why bother when the presets are cool enough!
Another nice feature is the generous preview button ("audition").

Expressiveness/Sounds: 10
The musically aware arpeggiator function and the exclusive SuperBEATs Mode will move any ones' ass! That's what sets this machine above the competition.
This machine has an amazing collection of authentic rhythms and ethnic instruments. The sounds react very naturally on velocity. This works also in arpeggiator mode.

Reliability: 9
Reliability seems good enough. I thought it to be somewhat unusual to have the rack-mount screw-holders separate so that you had to put them on yourself.

Customer Support: 7
The web-support is not overwhelming.

Overall Rating: 9
I'm happy I did choose this unit instead of the World or Asia expansion boards for my Roland JV-2080. Even if I haven't compared the sound quality, the arpeggiator function and the SuperBEATs Mode are features that are hard to find elsewhere.

Submitted by Jussi Piekkala at 06/17/2001 08:57

Price Paid: US $740

Ease of Use: 8
ver 1.21
I will give the presets sound 85/100
Very easy 2 editing patches
The manual is so far so good

Features: 9
64 voice, no on-board sequencer
Unless u add the turbo option, if not, only one more card can be add

Expressiveness/Sounds: 7
There are many percussions in there; very detail!
The kits are good too, very useful!
There are not many loops in there, when I compared 2 Mo Phatt and Xtreme Lead.
The pad and whistle sounds are not that useful 4 me.
The wind section is acceptable.
Maybe b/c I hv Mo Phatt and Xtreme Lead, Planet Earth doesn't blow my hair away like the other 2.

Reliability: 8
Well....maybe I can depend on it......4 a while!
I hv the Roland XP30 and didn't go 4 the World and Asia card. Maybe I should give it a try now.

Customer Support: 5
Don't wanna say anything.
U know what I mean.

Overall Rating: 7
I won't buy it again if this got stolen. I will go buy the Roland cards or buy the Emu World Expedition instead. I don't really like this product but I don't hate it.
I hv the Mo Phatt and Xtreme Lead. I may go buy the Orchestral module, too.
REALLY SUCKS! VERY DISAPPIONTED!

Submitted by dan at 12/19/2000 11:08