mlp said:
ensoniq is a rare company. the newer the gear, the more unstable. the eps was solid, eps 16 good, asr 10 was nice but unreliable. some folks have no probs, others cant keepem from crashin. you wont know what you get till you got it. the asr x series was seriously ****ty.
my general ensoniq rule is to go for the older stuff. the original eps is the one for me. not much sample time on it, but if you are creative you can make some killer stuff on it. heres a link to some stuff that was done with ONLY the original EPS. nothing midi'ed up, no other samplers.
Hah. Maybe it is just because you happened to have old EPS why you think so?
I have had EPS16+, (many, both rack and kb models) ASR10 (two of them) ASR-X, ESQ-1, DP4 and DP4+.
And in my experience Ensoniq products developed much during the years -though there was some mistakes made too.
At first, 16+ keyboard that i bought 1996 had keyboard calibration errors -until i resoldered something, i dont remember anymore if it was cable or what.
Also floppy disks (or drive) were unreliable from time to time.
EPS16+ makes unwanted snaps and pops when trying to use low bass sounds. I always had to try to cover them with envelopes with moderate success.
-Good sides of EPS16+ is that is has good fx processor which Original EPS didnt have.. and it can load 3rd party fx, like those created from Waveboy. Try to make those demolition fx with some other machine.
When ASR10 came, Ensoniq had found cure to those problems with deep bass samples (like some bassdrums).
-16Mt RAM (16+ had 2Mt and 1Mt Flash ROM option)
-Wider support for SCSI devices also.
-Stereo input (if someone wants to use memory for stereo sampling. With this modest RAM amounts i dont see the point, especially when you can turn mono sample to stereo with editing some parameters and creating extra layers.)
ASR-X is one of those mistakes i mentioned. Nice product, but whole Ensoniq company would have made much better success with bringing updated version of ASR10 instead of ASR-X.
Userinterface in X was too different to old ensoniq users, advanced edits were hided, and usable with software editor only.. and so on.
To easier and cheaper solution for Ensoniq would have been ASR10 with built in resonant filters and few more fx processors.
Much less research and development work and a product that customers could actually use.
Built in synth was not bad idea. But instead of sampled sounds, synth with some real synthesis (FM/iPD/PD/Analog) brings more life to sampler than ROMpler sounds..
That biggest mistake in Ensoniq perhaps was that they listened customers and tried to create product with big success.. result was ASR-X.
Who listens customers after that?
Gladly Ensoniq made one good product after that; FIZMO. Bringing Transwave "synthesis" back to life.
Earlier SD synths were propably the most unreliable products Ensoniq has ever made -based to stories in Synthsites i have read. Though they are not always thruths, like we have seen here also.
-That newest one (i dont even remember its type) is propably just one of those romplers, and more EMU than Ensoniq.
Slava said:
To others who might read this afterwards; no it can not.
But it is possible to convert .wav's to .efe files with Awave (sound file converter) -and use EPSDISK (dos program) to move them to floppy disks EPS use.
EPSDISK can make much usefull things like format disks to use with EPS16+ too, but if i remember correctly i had to play pretty much with those things back then.. . . decade ago.
Maybe it was that Ensoniq didnt always accept disks that were formatted with EPSDISK or something.
Nowadays i use SCSI Iomega ZIP drive instead of floppies. (Made little modification to make it work).
I still have EPS16+. Rack model with CDROM+ZIPDrives.
lo e said:
does anyone here know the major difference between the ensoniq eps and the ensoniq eps 16 (or plus?).
-lo e-
Effect processor. Same one that it is used in DP4 & DP4+ -and it's programmable. Though no one after waveboy has not made new ones?
That doesnt mean that you could not create your own effects with DP's or EPS16+, of course it is possible -there is huge amount of parameters in every effect- but because that processor (ESP) is programmable, it is possible to create totally new ones.. if just having skills and knowledge to do it.
-And like someone already said, 16+ is 16bit sampler, Original EPS is 12bit.
