Review of the Ensoniq ESQ-1 Synthesizer
Ensoniq ESQ-1 is a hybrid digital-analog synthesizer released by Ensoniq in 1986. The ESQ-1 featured 8 voices with 3 digital oscillators per voice. Each oscillator could be set to one of 32 different waveforms. Some of these were standard simple waveforms such as sawtooth and pulse, while others were samples such as piano and voice. Each oscillator also had an associated DCA (not VCA) to control its volume in 256 steps. In addition to that, an ESQ1’s voice featured 3 LFOs, 4 envelope generators, a 4-pole resonant analog lowpass filter (VCF), and a final VCA with left/right panning. It also sported a 61-key velocity-sensitive keyboard, full MIDI implementation, memory for 40 patches, a memory cartridge slot, and an 8-track sequencer. A rackmount version called the ESQ-M was also released circa 1987, with exactly the same specification minus the sequencer. The ESQ-1 was produced until 1988.
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