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It was the plain keyboard only with no disks or no manuals, and the price was somewhat attractive at a glance.Īs I had had the chance to play around with Ensoniq EPS+16 for some years at a friend, I was of course curious about this very reasonably priced Ensoniq. Whilst shopping for a rack compressor, one of the shops I went to had a cheap second-hand Mirage DSK up for sale. My story with Mirage began around the turn of the century.
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If you want to read about the actual build project scroll down until you see photos. I’ll switch to story mode for a few paragraphs, as I seem to be in the mood for bla-bla :). Image courtesy of Johnrpenner / Wikimedia Commons. Finally, while the competition's products were continually evolving and newer technologies such as physical modeling were introduced, Ensoniq failed to follow the late '90s market orientation, often recycling old concepts on their new products.Ensoniq Mirage DSK. Excellent synthesizers like the VFX or TS models lacked cheaper rack-mount counterparts. The company didn't manage to reinvent its workstation concept in order to survive the mid and late '90s, and no lower-budget versions of their keyboards were offered to replace the aging SQ line. Through the early and mid-1990s, much effort was focused on improving the reliability of the products.
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#Ensoniq vfx os emulator series
The DP series of effects rack-mount units offered parallel processing and reverb presets on a par with Lexicon's offerings, but at affordable prices.ĭespite these strengths, early (1980s) Ensoniq instruments suffered from reliability and quality problems such as bad keyboards (Mirage DSK-8), under-developed power-supply units (early ESQ1), or mechanical issues ( EPS polypressure keyboard).
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The TSsynthesizers followed the legacy of the VFX line, improving several aspects such as the polyphony, effects engine, sample-loading capabilities and even better synth and acoustic sounds. The company's heyday was in the early 1990s when the VFX synthesizers offered innovative performance and sequencing features (and terrific acoustic sounds), along with the ASR series of 16-bit samplers which also integrated synthesis, effects, and sequencer into a single-unit digital studio. Later versions were produced with 32 sound-generating voices. This was a lower-cost line that included the SQ-1 (61 keys), SQ-2 (76 keys) and SQ-R (rack-mounted, with no keys or sequencer). The company had much success with the SQ product line starting in the early 1990s. In 1988, the company enlisted the Dixie Dregs in a limited edition promotional CD "Off the Record" which featured the band using the EPS sampler and SQ-80 cross wave synthesizer.
#Ensoniq vfx os emulator manuals
The manuals and tutorial documents were clearly written and highly musician-oriented, allowing the users to quickly get satisfactory results from their machines. Starting with the VFX synthesizer, high-quality effects units were included, in addition most synthesizer and all sampler models featured disk drives and/or RAM cards for storage. These were often called "Music Workstations". After the Mirage, all Ensoniq instruments featured integrated sequencers (even their late '80s and early '90s samplers) providing an all-in-one "digital studio production concept" instrument. Strong selling points were ease-of-use and their characteristic "fat", rich sound (generally thought of as being an "American" quality, as opposed to the "Japanese" sound which was more "digital" and somewhat "cold"). Following the success of these products, Ensoniq established a subsidiary in Japan in 1987.Įnsoniq products were highly professional. Starting with the ESQ-1, they began producing sample-based synthesizers. At the price of $1500USD it cost significantly less than previous samplers such as theFairlight CMI and the E-MU Emulator. The fusion with E-mu sealed Ensoniq's fate: after releasing an entry-level E-mu MK6/PK6 and Ensoniq Halo keyboards - essentially keyboard versions of the Proteus 2500 module - in 2002, the E-Mu/ Ensoniq division was dissolved and support for legacy products was discontinued soon afterward.Įnsoniq entered the instrument market with the Mirage sampling keyboard in 1985. for $77 million, and merged with E-mu Systems to form the E-Mu/Ensoniq division.
#Ensoniq vfx os emulator software
Their first product was a software drum machine that ran on a home computer. Here's some interesting information about Ensoniq.Įnsoniq was founded in 1982 by former MOS Technology engineers Robert "Bob" Yannes (designer of the MOS Technology SID chip for the Commodore 64 home computer), Bruce Crockett, and Al Charpentier. Most of our parts are used but, unless otherwise stated, all electrical parts have been tested for proper functionality. Keyboard Kountry carries a large collection of parts for many Ensoniq keyboards.