E-MU ESI Sample Format

Although Emu developed SF2 format to Creative, it's not the same as ESi format. ESi format is more or less a version of the Emu Emulator III and should not be mistaken .e3b. e3b is in itself EIII Windows format, but neither ESi or EIII can read this format. Only Proteus/Emulator X and E4 Ultra family can read .e3b format.
My suggestion to convert the SF2 files to ESi format is getting EMXP and convert everything to EIII format.
http://users.skynet.be/emxp/index.htm

Another tool that can be useful is esi-win
http://www.deepsonic.ch/deep/htm/esi_win.php

ok, so i've been finding out a bit more..
since an esi preset handles only 2 samples, primary+secondary,
how would you make a drumkit type preset, or a multisample
preset? you have to do that as a 'bank', and then the machine loads
only 1 bank at a time...you'd have to do some pretty nifty zone
management, even with the merge presets function.
how do the EOS machines differ (E4/E6400/e5000-is there an ultra as well?)

i'm seeing that only certain types of sf2 can be converted, right?

It should not be mix up sample, patches and sound banks with each other.
A sample is a single sound. A patch may contain one or more samples and filter settings that your sound requires. And sound banks contains so many patches and samples as the memory of the sampler allows.

The great thing about a real sampler like the ESI is that you can more or less split up your keyboard as many times as you have keys and assign a sample to each key. For example if you want your kick drum on C1, assign it to key C1 and if you want your snare drum on D1, assign it there. Then you have the kick drum on C1 and snare on D1 and so on.

If you want to develop it further, you can add a primary and a secondary sampler on the same key, which you can also repeat as many times as you have keys on your keyboard

yep, i now realise this, thanks..just had this temporary thing,
thinking maybe it was a sample PER PRESET, but no, it is much
like the other 'real' samplers, so everything is ok

but, if you were using pri/sec to do velocity layering, you would
only get two levels/layers, to akai's 4 - although you could do 2
presets, and link them to achieve this. and maybe a bit simpler
with treating samples as a single stereo sample rather than a L sample
and a R sample, as with akai.

You are absolutely right the ESi has only two voices. It is more or less a stripped down Emulator 3.

The ESi was a low cost sampler and was released around the time that Emu launched the Emulator 4. The E4 is more of everything voices, sampling memory, polyphony and more filters.

If you are looking for an Emu sampler and from the E4 series, you should go for an Ultra. The Ultras have better and newer hardware and the ability to use IDE hard drives. The Ultras can both read and format FAT-formatted floppy disks and read .e4b, .wav and .aiff files.