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Average rating:
4.0 out of 5
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The drums and percussion sounds are kick ass all the way round. Other factory synth sounds didn't do it for me. I don't have the expansion card so I can't say about those. Love the large pads. Great effects. The sequencer sucks. Finding the sounds is a bitch. Sampling works good-editing could be improved. Display-so-so. Large sample files eats disks like crazy. If you sample alot get SCSI. The manual only provides a note map for the GM drum kit. It has about 5 other great kits but to map them you are on your own. You can also create your own kits-this is a big plus. But so far I have not found a way to trassmit this info in a midi track. If you know how let me know. Other then the demo disks there aren't any drum patterns. I have created a few and posted them on my web site: www.users.lynchburg.net/memomax Feel free to check them out. Overall I like the machine for my situation.
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This is a cool machine. I used to look down on Ensoniq gear a bit, but I changed my mind since getting this. Good things: pads are tough and responsive; operating system 2.5 has time stretching, pattern & song modes, and fixes a few early bugs. SCSI now ships as standard. Effects sound great and are highly configurable (10-30 parameters each). The MR synth engine is also very flexible. Resampling is great: you can sample the outputs directly or even a combination of the inputs & outputs - any sound you can hear can be resampled the same way. In fact you can pipe external audio through the filters and effects for fairly cool realtime manipulation (for example I can tweak the sound of a record while DJ'ing - you don't have to sample the audio stream to use the effects on it!). There are ~35 tuning tables (!). FX bus sounds are p-h-a-t phat - I've made samples of *cable-buzz* noises into very musical sounds. Good reference manual. Good filters, LFO waveforms. Parameters measured in real-world units (hertz!). Bad things: noisy pads click a bit, and it's distracting when playing at low volume levels (eg your bedroom after midnight). Small LCD (tho' easy to read), so fine wave editing is better done on your PC or Mac. Sequencer is a bit fiddly and doesn't have an event list, so again it's good to have a computer handy. It would be nice to have a little more flexibility on modulation routings, but I'm just saying that because they're so good already & I want more :-) Manual might be confusing for a beginner. Only one LFO per voice (but you can resample it or use the LFO in an effect). Floppy is slooow. Only 2mb RAM standard. I really have no complaints - this machine replaced an Akai sampler and I had more fun on the frst day (and made more new sounds) than I did in 2 months of owning the Akai. Ensoniq has a more accessible interface and better realtime control. Better synth engine too in my opinion. The tiny LCD is the only drag - no real waveform editing is possible except by ear. If you have a computer available for fine sequence/wave manipulation (and storage too via SCSI) then it's a no-brainer: get this one and write some music.
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