I recogment you FabFilter Pro-Q. It's about the same price and known as a natural eq without timbre. I have the entire bundle but it is me recommended by Professor of Pro Audio & Recording school.
as for the ESQm - great synth!! it was my first "workhorse" synth, and i got much done with it. sold it years ago, and unfortunately passed one up a year or two ago for $60 (with RAM/ROM cart) or so at a local shop. went back and it was gone. still kicking myself for that.
if you're into software at all, i'd recommend the free SQ-8L softsynth. an almost perfect emulation of the ESQ/SQ.
__________________ your gear list does not impress me.
Its a great sampler I swore by it does wonders on drums. I ended up selling mine after not using it for a year about a year ago and now I sort of regret it but I know I wouldn't put it to any good use lol. It has a great character to it but its not a synth its a sampler and a great one. The SQ emulation mentioned before is totally different.
I like the ESQ-m a lot! Seems to be very rare in Europe whereas it's more common in the US. That said I also believe that the plugin is a very accurate emulation too...
and other people with horrible fukking attitudes. do you have anything positive to bring to this thread or are you just here to talk shit?
That JB punk is a shit disturber. Just ignore it and it goes away.
Get an ESQ!!
I love mine! Really good pad sounds, and can get into some PPG type sounds as well! I have a demo of mine kicking around somewhere, I can get it going for you if you like!
It's a nice synth but Ensoniq made a fatal error IMHO by using a smaller display than on the keyboard version which makes programming it a lot more complicated than it needed to be.
I have two; definitely worth getting. Ensoniq gear, especially the earlier stuff is entirely undervalued. As a previous poster said, not as many modulation options as some of the later gear but still plenty to explore. Also there are several people still selling add ons: an OS that gives you more waveform options( not really hidden waves but quite the clever hack), cartridges with switches that give you 16 cartridges worth of patches.
I managed to score one that was modified into an SQ80m at the factory. The second one I'll add the hidden waves OS to at some date.
There's quite a few resources on the web that'll give you more information on the specifics of this analog/ digital hybrid. Good luck with your purchase...
Last edited by spider; 29th December 2012 at 04:51 PM..
Reason: Typo
I have two; definitely worth getting. Ensoniq gear, especially the earlier stuff is entirely undervalued. As a previous poster said, not as many modulation options as some of the later gear but still plenty to explore. Also there are several people still selling add ons: an OS that gives you more waveform options( not really hidden waves but quite the clever hack), cartridges with switches that give you 16 cartridges worth of patches.
I managed to score one that was modified into an SQ80m at the factory. The second one I'll add the hidden waves OS to at some date.
There's quite a few resources on the web that'll give you more information on the specifics of this analog/ digital hybrid. Good luck with your purchase...
Whoa dude !
It would be cool if you could copy the OS and wave ROMs ? I would so put those into my ESQm modules (I have a ROM burner). I know that the hardware is a little different different, yet someone posted photos of the "SQ-80m" guts online. I can figure out where to go from there.
I have also two SQ-80 keyboards with the hidden waves. You can make some sick custom "drum kits" with those. I didn't buy the ROMs from that e-Bay dude, but burned them myself with info from the awesome Rainer Buchty site.
__________________ No fair ! It's my turn to be Skrillex !
Unfortunately I have no way to copy the wave ROMs or OS. IIRC they're the wtandard SQ80 roms ( which are a superset of the esq-m) plus a bunch of hardware and software modifications to handle the extra waveforms. What would I need to dump the waveform ROM?
You'd have to remove the ROMs from the PC board - easily done if it's your day job. Then you put the chip into an ROM burner, "read" the contents, then save 'em. From there you burn the contents into new ROMs.
You're right about the wave ROMs. I put the "lower" SQ-80 wave ROM into the ESQ-m and got the same sounds. The "upper" has sounds exclusive to the '80. When I put that one in, I got some "glitchy" sounds, but most didn't sound anything like an SQ-80. That's coz the OS ROM is still pointing to the old wave ROM locations, and they don't line up.
Now your ESQ-m has only space for one wave ROM. So to fit all the waves it has either a larger one (probably) or they stacked two of 'em.
It would be sweet to have an ESQ-m with the "hidden" waves. To do so is fairly easy if you have a code editor and a ROM burner. The change involves only a couple lines of code.
I can access hidden waves on my ESQ-m modules. Yet they are not nearly as interesting as the SQ-80 ones.
i think i will still get it, but i got a minibrute today, just by chance, the guitar center had , 1, and 1 only, messed with it a few minutes, got it, he also gave me 10 percent off cause it was the floor model, but it had only been out like an hour,,,,, but i am still going to get this esq, it sounds like it has a good reputation,
its good to ask on these type of forums, u never know what kind of old gear might have some reallly terrible flaw that you never heard of, but that dosent seem to be the case here,,,, all the advice, very much appreciated,
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