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The ASR-X was my first step in getting a 'serious' sampler/workstation. I first had a Gemini phrase & loop machine that was fun but very limiting in its use. After a salesman demonstrated the use of the ASR-X I was convinced this was for me. He showed me the MPC2000, which did not have as many features as the ASRX for the money(pre MPC2000XL era, of course). I wanted a machine with sounds as well as sampling abilities & other goodies and the ASR-X was my choice. I purchased the Turbo version, which came with the Urban Dance Card & SCSI port already installed. That was summer of '98. Since then I done research on samplers & the history of them (good/bad) and I compared my ASR-X with the rest of them. For starters the ASR's is an easy machine to use. It's sampling engine is great, with its resonant filters, internal resampling features, envelopes per voice & sampling in stereo; too much too mention folks! The way you want your samples to sound can be manipulated in so many different ways. The pads are laid out like piano keys so when you spread out your sounds, you can play 'em like chords as well(in case you don't have a MIDI keyboard). The sequencer's 16 tracks are enough for me to write my tracks. The 40 effects/algorythms are immaculate and using them with the sampler can make your sounds, well, godly(checkout the reverbs, delays & distortion)! I wish that it came with more sampling time instead of the measly 2mb but I upgraded shortly after I bought it so it wasn't a major issue. The overall sounds on the Urban Dance Card are pretty good. The drums are what I mostly use as some of the sounds are kinda so-so. The organs & bass I also like. Some of the synths are useful if you can work 'em right.
I wasn't thrilled with the sequencer numbers on the small LCD screen skipping sometimes; I thought it was a problem with my unit before I found out that the amount of functions in the ASR-X 'chokes' the data. This should be corrected as it makes the sequencer sound a little uneven at times, even after you quantize your tracks. There is no note-event editing so you have to record in step form if you want your hits to be precise. Before I purchased a Syquest 270mb drive saving on floppy disks was a royal pain in the ass! Loading & saving time took forever & there were some wack incidents where the screen would read 'disk read failed', losing a few good pieces of work. The Syquest drive solved all that though. Luckily I didn't buy a Zip as I heard that it's got a load of problems saving to one.
Last year I've bought a used ASR10 workstation after reading how well it sounded. Compared to the ASR-X the sequencer is much tighter and the editing capabilities are better although it only has an 8-track sequencer.
Ensoniq's customer service dept. has been pretty helpful explaining my machine's capabilities & the web support for the ASR-X is immense, to say the least...
Despite its glitches, overall it's a good machine that more than does the job for me. It is NOT a complete workstation to do all your production but it's as close as you can get to one for the features and the price. Memo to Ensoniq; fix the sequencer timing and add note event editing and this machine will be a classic. Peace, I'm out...KD
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