BLAST FROM THE PAST: ENSONIQ EPS

The Ensoniq Performance Sampler – or EPS – would open up whole new horizons for sampling

Ensoniq EPS

US company Ensoniq had a lot to live up to in 1988. Their price-busting Mirage had put sampling into the hands of 30,000 workaday musicians, albeit with a rather compromised 8-bit fidelity. Still, such lo-fi sound was standard when the Mirage was released back in 1985 – after all, E-MU’s own high-end EII was also an 8-bit sampler and cost nearly five times what Ensoniq were charging for the Mirage and, despite E-MU’s lofty reputation, Ensoniq’s sampler outsold the EII ten times over.

However, by 1988, the Mirage was looking a bit long in the tooth. Roland and Casio both offered sleek 12-bit machines with better display options than the Mirage’s woeful 2-digit hexadecimal display at prices that, while higher than that of the Mirage, were still considerably cheaper than the Emulators and Fairlights so beloved by the charttoppers who could afford them.

Clearly, something was needed to build on the momentum created by the Mirage, and maintain Ensoniq’s new rep as an innovative company.

Enter the Ensoniq Performance Sampler, or EPS. The EPS shared a design with the company’s now-classic ESQ-1 wavetable synth, with a big, bright, vacuum fluorescent display, and bulky, angular plastic casing. However, it earned the ‘Performance’ e’ in its moniker by allowing samples to be loaded while the userwas user was playing other samples from its keyboard. That keyboard, by the way, could respond to said aftertouch polyphonically – a rarity even today. Additionally, two ‘patch select’ buttons above the pitch and mod wheels allowed for instant access to three variations on the currently loaded patch.

Sample memory was meagre, with 480Kb of stock RAM that could be doubled via optional memory expander. Sample times ranged from 5 to 41 seconds, depending on the selected sample rate which, incidentally, could be pushed all the way up to 52kHz or plumbed to a low 6.25kHz. Unusually, the EPS was a 13-bit sampler, and as such has become beloved for its ability to impart a crunchy, gritty sound when the system was artfully abused.

Samples could be manipulated in a number of ways. A multitude of looping options were offered, and loop points could be modulated. A design flaw caused random bits of sample memory to be randomly played when loop points were set too close together. A literal glitch machine, then!

The Mirage’s lovely analogue filters were replaced with multimode, non-resonant digital jobs. LFOs with a wide variety of waveforms were included, as were six-stage envelope generators. Interestingly, the EPS allowed users to modulate between two different envelope shapes – one for soft and another for hard velocities.

The EPS’ 16-track sequencer could record and play back up to 80,000 notes. Extensive editing options made the EPS sequencer seem more like a computer software sequencer than the simple sequencers on onboard jobs.

The EPS would eventually give way to the EPS 16-Plus, a 16-bit sampler with built-in effects and wavetable synthesis functions. Today, both models are recognised for their sound quality – or lack thereof. Secondhand models are risky – the EPS was notorious for its instability. Still, they remain inexpensive and are still worth a play, even if only to add a bit of grit to your tracks.