Just a firmware update, right?
Yeah, if I recall. Was the firware on chips? There’s someone on Reverb selling them, so maybe. Cool sampler, though. I used it to do sample recordings of my band’s riffs and piece together songs Floodland-style. 
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Hi, I’ve just joined and seen this thread.
I have the EPS 16+ (2mb) and the ASR10 keyboard version.
The EPS was the main hub to all my live sets and yes, it did have hiccups, but worked hard and stayed strong(especially the amount of times it was bashed), and is still part of the studio. I love them and trust they will continue to serve.
I’m in the process of purchasing the Octatrack so modern will become the studio’s middle name.
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Welcome!
I just picked up an ESQ-1 so still a hardcore Ensoniq enthusiast.
BTW do you have the Waveboy disks for your 16+? If not i would highly recommend them.
I do all 4 of them. I’ve been researching options to upgrade the EPS and moreover the ASR with an SSD, but it’s been challenging.
Is this something you’ve achieved?
Oh, the EPS…used for the bulk of Massive Attack’s masterpiece Blue Lines - something we must always be thankful for 
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Alas, all of my EPS’ have always been stuck with plain ol’ floppy drives.
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I somehow managed to get a gotek usb floppy drive emulator flashed with HXC firmware, and all my EPS floppies backed up and loaded on the usb. But that was a while ago and don’t remember the nitty gritty of it all. There are some scsi to sd options for the EPS that someone makes, but i feel like you’d have to be using it constantly for it to be worthwhile over a floppy emulator.
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Very fond memories of my EPS. Had total muscle memory on it. Always wanted a 16 plus.
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This was the other option that appeared. Again, it does seem like a faff to sort out, and I’m technically minded.
It’s this reason I decided to move to the 21st Century, and buy a more radical and much spoken about sampler.
Got an EPS 16 Plus last year in a trade for a Reface CS. It has the expansion so I’ve been using the SCSI port to link it up to a SCSI2SD card. Sampled things from nearly all of my synths and have been using it to layer different sounds for gnarly new patches.
Haven’t even touched the sequencer or tried to make custom effects patches. Haven’t even tried drum sequences yet: only occasional drums as overdubs.
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Want EPS16+ or ASR-10 modern equivalent BADLY
not because of sound itself but multitimbrality, polyphony, traswaves, super nice pro sample mangling options (like fades, lfo to looped zone etc… ).
It’s possible to kinda replace it with software of course, but in hardware world there’s still nothing even close to Ensoniqs.
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Sound is actually a big reason too. They definitely sound different than software, and stand up to the best from Akai and E-MU on my opinion.
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Sure, the sound is really pleasant, but even if we look at options of ASR10 I can’t see anything similar nowadays… like 31 voice, 8 layers per instrument, 16 parts, 2 filters, killer effects (still useful comparing to modern devices or plugins… Elektron efx are not even close… ), wave looping and scanning options… would love to see something similar to this…
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Agreed I was blown away by the ASR10 when I first got it last year (only $450, so yes they can be had for a decent price if you keep your eyes peeled). Obviously it sounds great, but as you said, there’s nothing that can compete with it in terms of being a true sample based synthesizer. But when I use it, and judging from the manual and old instructional videos I’ve seen, my opinion is it seems like a lot of the advanced features come from the fact that at the time, due to having such limited RAM and storage space, making multisampled instruments sound dynamic and realistic was really tough. It feels like a lot of the features were included to get over the limitation that it wasn’t possible to make huge multisampled instruments by sampling every key of a keyboard or every note on a guitar 5 different times like you could today. So you use layers, different wavesamples, lots of keytracking, six stage envelopes, hard/soft velocity, etc instead to make things more believable sounding. For that reason I feel like we won’t see an instrument like that today…
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Yeah, and also I believe one of the reasons is that it was a truly “pro” instrument designed to cover needs of commercial studios, musicians and composers, so it’s full of options, but the interesting side is that we can use this arsenal in a experimental way.
Wondering what are your “tricks” and secret ways of using ASR / EPS? What else it can offer what other machines can’t?
I can’t call myself an expert, usually I use it to sample for the sound quality, or run things through the FX. I have been meaning to do more sound design on it, but it’s quite complex and takes a while to wrap your head around! Even the envelopes (6 stage) and their relationship with velocity was very confusing to me at first. I think it would be cool to load some single cycle waveforms for more traditional synth sounds and layer them with interesting samples. You’ve probably already seen Daydream Sound on YouTube, his videos are awesome and really informative on explaining the superpowers of the Ensoniq machines.
Also check this out if you haven’t already. Especially the Transwave thing looks really cool.
http://www.chickensys.com/products2/sounds/waveboy/
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I had a 16+ with the WaveBoy things. Those near-legendary disks were the main reason I wanted the 16+.
The Transwave discs are neat. I maybe didn’t appreciate them as much as I might have done, as I have an SD-1, Wavestation, PPG 2.2… so such sounds are easily had here. I did try my hand at making my own TransWaves for the 16+, a frustrating task that gave me much respect for the people at WaveBoy.
Ultimately, I sold the 16+ (and the WaveBoy discs with it) when building up funds for a Moog Modular. I kept the classic grey EPS, though, and, in fact, will be popping the hood later today to replace the floppy drive with a Gotek USB floppy emulator.
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Yeah wave boy is cool! Just learned a bit about it, makes me want ASR10 even more : )
A bit afraid that I will not use it much since I have tons of gear already and not “as much” enthusiasm as 20 years ago : ) I mostly work with my quite a large sample / loop / sound bank inside computer with Ableton samplers and just record samples with modular systems, vintage gear, analog polys, Elektron gear or acoustic instruments etc… As much as I want “standalone” powerful sampler, I’m afraid it will be a bit hard to learn and accept slow workflow. What do you think?
On the other side I have Ensoniq DP/4 and still use it (again, not as often as I should ) and I’m quite ok to program it, totally fine with the interface and design.
And yes, I’ve watched Daydream Sound vids. Very inspiring!
Perfectly, I would love to see a modern machine with same deep sample based “synthesis” but with recent RAM / storage etc… I had interest in new Kurzweil K2700, but there’s no rack version yet, and I’m not sure if it won’t be another great “headfkkk” experience after which I will still work with laptop…