{"id":370,"date":"2021-08-14T05:13:24","date_gmt":"2021-08-14T05:13:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/?page_id=370"},"modified":"2023-12-12T01:30:16","modified_gmt":"2023-12-12T01:30:16","slug":"ensoniq-esq-m","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/ensoniq-esq-m\/","title":{"rendered":"Ensoniq ESQ-M \ud83e\uddfb\ud83e\uddfb\ud83e\uddfb\ud83e\uddfb"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The old cat at the back of the cage<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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I\u2019ve owned my ESQ-M since 1987, the year it came out. I\u2019ve taken it all around the world and made a couple of albums with it. You have heard it on a few of the singles I made including Greater Reward<\/em>. It\u2019s why I use so many bell like sounds. My one is held together with rust and dried beer. It\u2019s called BOOFHEAD.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Best pumpkin sticker ever<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This was terribly modern in 1987. It\u2019s a bit like the Mirage, but with pre-recorded 8 bit waveforms, and a real honest filter and three oscillators, so you don\u2019t tend to make Mirage cyber-vomits on it. You make sounds which are a little bit analogue and a little bit clangourous. It\u2019s not really all the way to either a Juno<\/a> or a DX7, it\u2019s more like they had nasty sex and out popped this guy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have this box as part of my life, carried it around for THIRTY FIVE years. (Although to be honest, when desperately trading my keyboards for food in the bad years no one wanted this old guy or it might be gone.) Funny that something so long lasting and useful became invisible. I only just thought to write about it, having written about more recent toys, most of them not as well loved. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I turn it on regularly but I don\u2019t use it much because there is a VST made by a man who also loved this thing<\/a>. A virtual BOOFHEAD called SQ8L<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I transferred my patches to the VST and was impressed just how close the sounds are \u2013 certainly close enough for music making. As it uses the same 8 bit samples it means the hardware filter has been very closely matched – so much for authentic analogue. The software is for the SQ-80 which was the keyboard that Ensoniq made after they figured out all the half ass in this one. I owned one for a while but that was a big surfboard and I hate that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can design a sound on the software and (so long as you don’t use the extra SQ-80 waveforms) transfer the patch to the hardware, where you can hear just how similar they sound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I used the software on the Rhine<\/em> album, because I know so well how to get what I want out of a ESQ and it sits neat and tidy just about anywhere. The problem is that SQ8L<\/em> has never been updated for 64-bit DAWs and you will have to use a converter. According to legend the original author has died, there’s many ghost tales about the whole thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the SQ-80, Ensoniq made ever bigger versions of this idea, but I don\u2019t think they really moved on from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hear It In Action<\/p>\n\n\n\n