i get you and didn''t mean anything by it. just thought that if anyone was using this and sister site, daw's being around for so long, and thousand of free tuts available, even a relaive beginner would be saavy.

 

Last edited: Dec 21, 2023

I did have a couple third party cartridge sounds but got lost in a moving accident. One was called 'crystal' something an another was maybe 'kid nepro' or maybe not but I do remember tht name for the ESQ or perhaps my CZ synths sounds

 

I've been asking arturia to make a ASR-10 vst for years lol.. I want one so bad just for nostalgic reasons .. will they ever do it .. probably not but if they did the marketing right and had digital floppy disks man they would make alot of money

 

Ensoniq devices as VST instruments would be a dream ...a dream I've been dreaming for a long time

 

archive dot org has some sample disks and things

https://archive.org/search?query=ensoniq+samples

 

The complete Mirage factory waves have been shared here and there. Google takes you to Gearspace. There used to be a Mirage-like plug-in, but it doesn’t work anymore, I think. In terms of samplers, you can also pretty easily find the EPS factory content and the expansion disks online - then just convert them. I know it’s not the same thing, obviously.

UVI have their version of the VFX-SD inside their Digital Synsations. A few ESQ-1 patches are in Synth Anthology (4).

Arturia’s SQ-80 can also read actual ESQ-1/M sysex. I used to have one (ESQ-M) and I converted all my user patches into the plug-in - works great.

I believe there was also an Ensoniq CD-ROM library which opens in E-MU X3.

That being said - Arturia should really do more emulations of classic samplers, the Mirage, ASR-10 and Akai MPC-60!

 

Last edited: Dec 21, 2023

The ESQ-M has an actual analog filter which sounds really awesome. Other than that, it’s a DX7-era digital box. A lot of the sucky factory patches tried to replicate FM-like tones, but when you program it, then it really shines.

It’s a REALLY capable deep synthesizer with numerous modulation options.

 

Yo, I wasn’t even aware this plug-in exists. I actually also have a hardware DP/2, but it’s similarly broken and has some strange funky issues. Don’t have the know-how to fix it.

 

112db - Morgana works fine https://www.112db.com/plugins/instruments/morgana/

 

Ensoniq DP-4 SERVICE BY DON SOLARIS

 

There was an attempt to make one but Kickstarter was not successful https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1779138678/ensoniq-sampler-emulator
https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=436941

 

The ESQ slostring presest souned absolutely amazing blended with a gainy guitar with a midi guitar. Pretty sure it has to do with its lower bit rate or whathaveyou. Only other thing I tried doing a similar thing back then was with a Korg X5DR and the sound was so, I guess 'f'ull frequrencied'' that it didn''t mesh with the guitar without eq'ing. Which I couldn''t bother dicking with cuz I'm a lazy bastard lol. But damn that slowstring patch with guitar was awesome

 

On the bright side the Ensoniq ES-5506 (OTTO) chip which was used in Ensoniq VFX/SD-1 and TS10/TS12 synthesizers ASR10 samplers is successfully in emulated in MAME emulator but still work-in-progress

Big collection of CDs for Ensoniq Samplers here https://archive.org/details/ensoniq-cd-collection

 

For Ensoniq hardware repairs.

http://www.thesoniq.com/

 

I'm a 30 plus year Ensoniq lover. Got my first sampler, a Mirage rack, in 1989 and used it a few years until getting an EPS 16 and was thankful to not have to remember the numeric codes for everything, lol. After a while I got the EPS 16+, and then graduated to an ASR 10 with those amazing effects. Had the Waveboy ASR10 EFX discs. Used the ASR 10 for years, later had a 2nd ASR 10 and ASR 10 rack, later picking up and hating the ASR X and ASR X Pro and loved my expanded MR rack. I've owned a PARIS system for 25 years now and have expanded it over the past year. Ensoniq was the last USA manufacture to make their own DSP chips. Mike Audient has access to the EDS code and he ported over a bunch of the DP series EFX to PARIS, as they use the same DSP chips and code. Mike has kept PARIS working on modern DAW's and today PARIS can run on up to WIn 10.

 

Last edited: Dec 22, 2023

There is a decent free VSTi emulation of the SQ-80:
http://www.buchty.net/ensoniq/

 

Here's my crazy story with Ensoniq. My very first sampler was the Ensoniq Mirage in 1985. That thing was a beast, and amazingly everything had to be, and could be, edited from it's simple "88" LED display. I actually got pretty good at it and got some samples on some hit records at the time. But first..

Ensoniq used a proprietary disk floppy disk format to maximize storage, however they sold one disk for several Pounds each. I'm also a hacker, so the first thing I did was reverse engineer their 3.5" floppy format. At the same time an engineer in the USA had also started documenting the memory and IO of the Mirage and published it in a small enthusiast newsletter called the Transoniq Hacker. Armed with that info I hacked my Commodore 64, with a third-party MIDI expansion card plugged in the back, to talk to the Mirage memory bus directly. Once that was working, I wrote a cross-compiler, which allowed me to write Motorola 6809 assembly language, using Commodore's Intel 6502.

First program I wrote was a Mirage floppy formatter utility, and set out formatting floppies. I went down to Denmark Street in London and sold them through Rod Argent's Keyboards shop. They were so popular they often couldn't keep them in stock. I also put ads in Sound on Sound and some other musician magazines and made mad money just from selling these in the store and in the mail. Eventually Ensoniq wisened up and lowered the price of their floppies considerably, so I got out of the floppy business and instead sold my formatting program by mail order, on a floppy, for 20 pounds, giving everyone infinite floppies.

At the same time as I was doing this I also was creating novel sample collection disks. For their time, they were quite ground-breaking sounds, IMHO. I showed them to Rod Argent and he offered to also sell my sample disks in his shop. This store, BTW, was well known to all the top pop artists at that time. Almost every time I went in there I'd recognize somebody.

One day I'd swear I heard one of my samples in a song on the radio. Turned out it actually was! I checked with the keyboard shop and found out lots of big names had been buying my disks. Before long, I'd heard my samples on songs by The Cure, Madness, Go West, Janet Jackson, Mick Jones (B.A.D), and many more artists which I've now totally forgotten over the last (gasp) 40 years.

Oh, I almost forgot.. I also wrote (and sold) a Mirage visual editor for the Commodore 64, which made creating and editing samples 100x easier.

One day I moved away from London and set on a totally different life/career direction not related to music. I often wonder, what if I'd continued working as a sound engineer and sample designer in London. Nevertheless, It's a fun memory, glad I could share it with people who might appreciate it.

 

I bought an ESQ-1 in 1986 when it first came out at the Sam Goody's on Queens Boulevard in Queens, NY. I went there to actually buy a DX7 but there was a fellow there who was a customer and not an empoyee who when saw me puttering with the Yamaha and decided that his mission in life was to persuade me to get the Ensoniq. I wasn't a keyboard player, not in the least although we had the worst sounding though impressing looking double winged Wurlitzer baby grand parked in our living room, I never really played it because it was never in tune and for some reason my parents thought it not a priority. I thought that having a synth would be great to write songs with in addition to the guitar. Anyway, this fellow sold me on the 8 track sequencer and the filter. He was possessed of the Ensoniq spirit and I became a convert to the ESQ-1 kult of synthesis. Sadly I left it at a my at the time girlfriend's barn when I left the east coast for the west and never saw it again. I drove across country and had no room for it because of my guitar gear and other stuff that I traveled with. Bummer!

 

You must mean Sam Ash out by the courthouse. As far as I remember Sam Goody just sold records and not anything like musical equipment.

I bought a lot of stuff there in the 80's (Sam Ash). There was always price reductions after synths been out a while. Went there once i was so plastered, I bypassed the store and went a few blocks over to a big emply lot with a bunch of shrubbery on it nd passed out inside it for bit. Then I got up, still pissed but servicably functional, and went into the store but completey forgot what I came there to buy. So I bought this atrociously bad sounding little fender tube amp. IIRC Fender produced some awful amps in the 80's. Didn't drive that time but by bus & subway Even little tube amps are heavy and being in a box made it worse and much worse drunk, lol

Being a huge Zep fan, I wanted a Gibson doubleneck so bad. Finally saved the money, went to that store and the fukking sales guy actually talked me into one of those exotic looking doublenecks at the time, that one being an Aria Pro Supertwin, like this....

was stolen in '92

Think back then stores didn't the have liberal return policies like in the past 20 or so years without being a real hassle.




Wound up finally getting my Gibson doubleneck in the beginning of the 00's.

 

Last edited: Dec 22, 2023

I got my brand new 1976 Gibson Les Paul Deluxe in wine red at their store in the Green Acres Mall (living in Green Acres, Valley Stream was a few minute walk...the parking lot eventually turned into THE place in NY with the most stolen cars anywhere).The store on Queens Blvd was in Rego Park I believe. I bought my first album with my own money in Green Acres, A Journey Through The Past by John Mayall and then my second, The Grateful Dead's Europe '72.