Ensoniq EPS
Encyclopedia
The EPS was one of the first few affordable samplers
on the market. It was manufactured from 1988 to 1991 by Ensoniq
in Malvern, Pennsylvania
, USA. The EPS was a 13 bit sampler.
The EPS had a straightforward interface that was easy to use, with configurable controls geared for live performance. Because it had two processors, you could load and play up to eight instruments simultaneously (with another eight on reserve). The display was a 22 character single line vacuum fluorescent display
. It booted from an integrated floppy disk drive (sourced from Sony
or Matsushita), or from a SCSI drive connected to the expansion bay. The EPS came with 256 Kwords of RAM on board. Ensoniq offered both a 2x (512Kword) Memory Expander and a 4x (1Mword) Memory Expander with SCSI interface. A company called Maartists offered both 4x and 8x memory expanders, allowing a total of 2Mwords RAM. Extra RAM
offered longer and higher quality samples. The "2x" expander contained three 4x256Kbit and one 1x256Kbit chips, for a total of 13x256Kbits in addition to the onboard memory. The EPS was unusual in having a 13-bit sample memory wordlength, left-justified into the most significant bits of a 16-bit word.
The EPS disc drive could read/write/format disc on both a machine specific format (by default) and read/write MS-DOS discs.
The EPS uses MIDI and can be used as a controller of other instruments, or linked to a PC
or Macintosh.
The EPS was eventually superseded by the EPS 16+ which upgraded the sample-size to 16-bits and added a 24-bit effects system. Other improvements included CD-ROM support in the optional SCSI interface and FlashBank storage for the OS and favourite sounds.
The EPS and EPS 16+ were both succeeded by the Ensoniq ASR-10
which was able to read EPS samples and disks.
The keyboard
is of thick plastic construction of a dark gray color with 61 weighted keys. There are assignable pitch, modulation wheels, and two patch select buttons. The interior of the unit is accessed by removing four hex screws under the front of the keyboard and swinging open the rear-hinged control panel.
The whole unit was configurable through a custom operating system (latest version was 2.49 for the EPS and 1.30 for the EPS 16plus). After the system boots from the floppy drive, it flashes a "Tuning Keyboard - Hands Off" message while it calibrates its polyphonic after-touch keyboard. The 16plus was capable of storing the OS in the optional FlashBank, which removed the need for a bootdisk.
An optional Output Expander module allowed you to access eight discrete mono outputs on the machine, allowing you to separately mix levels and effects for each loaded sample.
The key limitations of the EPS were its proprietary disk format, and later a lack of support from Creative Technology
, the current owner of Ensoniq. A 19" rack-mount version of both machines were also available in limited numbers.
This model was superseded by the Ensoniq EPS-16+, released in 1991. The EPS-16+ was very similar to the EPS. Its main addition was integrated DSP effects and stereo audio routing. Due to the upgrade to 16-bit audio, the Output Expander on the 16plus was different, instead providing three pairs of stereo outputs, two from before the new effects chip.
The interface, although operating through a single line fluorescent display, offered rapid access to all functions by the intelligent way that functionality was broken into Modes and Pages.
Modes were: Load, Command, and Edit.
Pages were: Instrument, Sequence, MIDI, and System.
In addition to eight soft instrument buttons, it had a number pad (0-9), four cursor buttons, a value slider, and 'Yes' - 'No' buttons.
The vast majority of functionality could be accessed with less than three clicks: Mode - Page - Number Pad.
There was also a dedicated button for Sampling, and three for the built-in sequencer. The 16plus also had a dedicated button for configuring the effects DSP.
Easter Egg: There is a hidden menu in the Command-ENV1 page which contains Software Information, the names of the designers, a DC Offset Adjustment, and a keyboard calibration command.
Compared to the Akai MPC60
The two samplers where at the market for the same time the main choice for bands for their budget.
While under the name of "Perfomance sampler" except the keyboard, both samplers where comparable:
. The Ensoniq manuals were famous for including quality tutorials for sampling and editing new sounds.
Sequences depended on having instruments being loaded into one of the eight instrument banks in the right order. Banks of instruments could be saved which could be loaded in by a song sequence so that loading the song loaded up all the appropriate sounds into the right places so everything would just play when you started the sequencer. In the 16plus, an effect was also assigned to a bank.
True to their very user-oriented approach, the EPS boot disk not only contained everything needed to run the sampler, but also a tiny operating system with the ability to create a bootable version of itself. This was an improvement on their earlier Mirage
sampler, which required a special boot disk with a formatting program, and could not make copies of its own boot disks.
Notable Users: Craig Burrows, Damon Betz from Ninety Nine Foot Man, Ice Dog
Sampler (musical instrument)
A sampler is an electronic musical instrument similar in some respects to a synthesizer but, instead of generating sounds, it uses recordings of sounds that are loaded or recorded into it by the user and then played back by means of a keyboard, sequencer or other triggering device to perform or...
on the market. It was manufactured from 1988 to 1991 by Ensoniq
Ensoniq
Ensoniq Corp. was an American electronics manufacturer, best known throughout the mid 1980s and 1990s for its musical instruments, principally samplers and synthesizers.- Company history :...
in Malvern, Pennsylvania
Malvern, Pennsylvania
Malvern is a borough in Chester County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 2,998 at the 2010 census. The main road through the borough is King Street, although the borough is also bordered by Paoli Pike on the south, and is near US 30 on the north. The primary cross street is Warren...
, USA. The EPS was a 13 bit sampler.
The EPS had a straightforward interface that was easy to use, with configurable controls geared for live performance. Because it had two processors, you could load and play up to eight instruments simultaneously (with another eight on reserve). The display was a 22 character single line vacuum fluorescent display
Vacuum fluorescent display
A vacuum fluorescent display is a display device used commonly on consumer-electronics equipment such as video cassette recorders, car radios, and microwave ovens. Invented in Japan in 1967, the displays became common on calculators and other consumer electronics devices...
. It booted from an integrated floppy disk drive (sourced from Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
or Matsushita), or from a SCSI drive connected to the expansion bay. The EPS came with 256 Kwords of RAM on board. Ensoniq offered both a 2x (512Kword) Memory Expander and a 4x (1Mword) Memory Expander with SCSI interface. A company called Maartists offered both 4x and 8x memory expanders, allowing a total of 2Mwords RAM. Extra RAM
Ram
-Animals:*Ram, an uncastrated male sheep*Ram cichlid, a species of freshwater fish endemic to Colombia and Venezuela-Military:*Battering ram*Ramming, a military tactic in which one vehicle runs into another...
offered longer and higher quality samples. The "2x" expander contained three 4x256Kbit and one 1x256Kbit chips, for a total of 13x256Kbits in addition to the onboard memory. The EPS was unusual in having a 13-bit sample memory wordlength, left-justified into the most significant bits of a 16-bit word.
The EPS disc drive could read/write/format disc on both a machine specific format (by default) and read/write MS-DOS discs.
The EPS uses MIDI and can be used as a controller of other instruments, or linked to a PC
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
or Macintosh.
The EPS was eventually superseded by the EPS 16+ which upgraded the sample-size to 16-bits and added a 24-bit effects system. Other improvements included CD-ROM support in the optional SCSI interface and FlashBank storage for the OS and favourite sounds.
The EPS and EPS 16+ were both succeeded by the Ensoniq ASR-10
Ensoniq ASR-10
The Ensoniq ASR-10 was a sampling keyboard produced by Ensoniq between 1992 and 1994. It is the keyboard model of the ASR-10R rackmount module. It was a follow up product to the very popular Ensoniq EPS and Ensoniq EPS-16+ performance samplers, and was also available with a piano style weighted...
which was able to read EPS samples and disks.
Construction
Musical keyboard
A musical keyboard is the set of adjacent depressible levers or keys on a musical instrument, particularly the piano. Keyboards typically contain keys for playing the twelve notes of the Western musical scale, with a combination of larger, longer keys and smaller, shorter keys that repeats at the...
is of thick plastic construction of a dark gray color with 61 weighted keys. There are assignable pitch, modulation wheels, and two patch select buttons. The interior of the unit is accessed by removing four hex screws under the front of the keyboard and swinging open the rear-hinged control panel.
The whole unit was configurable through a custom operating system (latest version was 2.49 for the EPS and 1.30 for the EPS 16plus). After the system boots from the floppy drive, it flashes a "Tuning Keyboard - Hands Off" message while it calibrates its polyphonic after-touch keyboard. The 16plus was capable of storing the OS in the optional FlashBank, which removed the need for a bootdisk.
An optional Output Expander module allowed you to access eight discrete mono outputs on the machine, allowing you to separately mix levels and effects for each loaded sample.
The key limitations of the EPS were its proprietary disk format, and later a lack of support from Creative Technology
Creative Technology
Creative Technology Ltd. is a Singapore-based global company headquartered in Jurong East, Singapore. The principal activities of the company and its subsidiaries consist of the design, manufacture and distribution of digitized sound and video boards, computers and related multimedia, and personal...
, the current owner of Ensoniq. A 19" rack-mount version of both machines were also available in limited numbers.
This model was superseded by the Ensoniq EPS-16+, released in 1991. The EPS-16+ was very similar to the EPS. Its main addition was integrated DSP effects and stereo audio routing. Due to the upgrade to 16-bit audio, the Output Expander on the 16plus was different, instead providing three pairs of stereo outputs, two from before the new effects chip.
Use
The EPS is a performance sampler. It contains two processors configured so that playing can be done whilst loading another sample. The one processor handles the I/O while the other is responsible for keeping the audio running without interruption—this made the EPS especially useful for live performance situations.The interface, although operating through a single line fluorescent display, offered rapid access to all functions by the intelligent way that functionality was broken into Modes and Pages.
Modes were: Load, Command, and Edit.
Pages were: Instrument, Sequence, MIDI, and System.
In addition to eight soft instrument buttons, it had a number pad (0-9), four cursor buttons, a value slider, and 'Yes' - 'No' buttons.
The vast majority of functionality could be accessed with less than three clicks: Mode - Page - Number Pad.
There was also a dedicated button for Sampling, and three for the built-in sequencer. The 16plus also had a dedicated button for configuring the effects DSP.
Easter Egg: There is a hidden menu in the Command-ENV1 page which contains Software Information, the names of the designers, a DC Offset Adjustment, and a keyboard calibration command.
Compared to the Akai MPC60Akai MPC60The Akai MPC60 was an electronic musical instrument produced in 1988, by the Japanese company Akai in collaboration with celebrated designer Roger Linn. It combined MIDI sequencing and audio sampling with a set of velocity/aftertouch-sensitive performance pads, to produce an instrument optimized...
sampler
The two samplers where at the market for the same time the main choice for bands for their budget.While under the name of "Perfomance sampler" except the keyboard, both samplers where comparable:
| Feature | Ensoniq EPS | Akai MPC60 | |
| Sampling rate | 13 | 16 (saved as 12) | |
| Memory built in | 256k | 750k | |
| Memory max upgrade | 1MB | 1.5MB | |
| Polophony | 20 | 16 | |
| Outputs | 2 (stereo) | 8 mono + 2 (stereo) + 1 effect send | |
| Outputs (upgrades) | 4 mono | n/a | |
| Original selling price | $2400 | $5000 | |
Instrument
Instrument pages would be prefixed by clicking a Mode (Load, Command, or Edit) -- yielding functions relating to loading, editing, and tweaking EPS sampled instruments. Instruments could contain a number of discrete samples which were patched into Layers - each with their own ADSR-like envelopes and keyboard ranges. A loop editor allowed you to define envelopes, cross-fades, and sample start-end, and loop points in real-time. It was possible to modulate the loop start with any source to give complex evolving sounds. On the EPS-16+ the Transwave loop mode allowed the start point to be modulated in exact "single-cycle" steps, giving effects similar to the PPG WavePalm Products GmbH
Palm Products GmbH was a highly-regarded manufacturer of audio synthesizers. Founded and owned by Wolfgang Palm, PPG was located in Hamburg, Germany and, for 12 years from around 1975 to 1987, manufactured an acclaimed and eclectic range of electronic musical instruments, all designed by Palm.-...
. The Ensoniq manuals were famous for including quality tutorials for sampling and editing new sounds.
Sequence
The Sequence pages allowed you to define sequences and songs. Simple quantization was available, and a crude, but effective step-editor to tweak individual sequence elements. Sequences (with up to eight instruments playing simultaneously) could be assembled into Song Steps. In assembling songs, you could define the number of repetitions of each sequence that comprised a song step. This made it relatively easy to score and arrange a song.Sequences depended on having instruments being loaded into one of the eight instrument banks in the right order. Banks of instruments could be saved which could be loaded in by a song sequence so that loading the song loaded up all the appropriate sounds into the right places so everything would just play when you started the sequencer. In the 16plus, an effect was also assigned to a bank.
MIDI
The EPS supports polyphonic-aftertouch on its 61 keys, and therefore allows a fair amount of expression as a MIDI controller. Sys-ex messages were supported over MIDI, and can transmit and receive on multiple MIDI channels simultaneously.System
Because the EPS contained two processors, sound generation and disk I/O were handled separately. You could boot the EPS and load some sounds while playing the ones that are already loaded. Then sample in a new sound, only to find that you're out of floppies to save your new sample to—the EPS OS will allow you to go ahead, format another floppy disk, and save your new sound without the system function getting in the way of playing the audio.True to their very user-oriented approach, the EPS boot disk not only contained everything needed to run the sampler, but also a tiny operating system with the ability to create a bootable version of itself. This was an improvement on their earlier Mirage
Ensoniq Mirage
The Ensoniq Corporation's Mirage was an 8-bit sampler introduced in 1984. Priced below $2000 with features previously only found on more expensive samplers like the Fairlight CMI, it became a best seller....
sampler, which required a special boot disk with a formatting program, and could not make copies of its own boot disks.
Repair Tips
- Persistent key calibration (tuning) errors are usually fixed by reconnecting the interior connecting cable.
- Problems with the cold solder connections can disable the vacuum fluorescent display; this is remedied by resoldering.
- Since the ROM chips were in sockets—sometimes after a couple years, the unit would fail to boot, and give strange characters on the display. Simply opening the unit and reseating the two ROM chips will fix this defect.
Notable Users: Craig Burrows, Damon Betz from Ninety Nine Foot Man, Ice Dog