A rackmount sound module created by Emu. This is, I believe, the fourth in the proteus line, which included the original proteus, released in 1989, which I recall as focusing on pop and rock music; the proteus 2 which focused on orchestral music, and the proteus 3 which focued on world music. Since the Proteus 2000 was released around 1998, about nine years after the original Proteus, it featured a far superior set of samples which now make the original Proteus sounds seem pretty flat.

The Proteus is very similar to the Audio Production Studio, with the main differences being:

  • It's a rackmount, not a card.
  • It has more memory
  • It doesn't use soundfonts, it uses some other proprietary Emu format.
I believe that a lot of Emu's other sound modules out right now are based on the same technology, with just some different branding and a different set of pre-sets, but I'm not positive of that.