Trend price : 300€
Hybrid wave synthesizer with digital waveforms and analog filters.
Overview
61 velocity keys. Main panel features a VDF 80 characters display, 54 buttons and a 1 data slider. On the left side there are 2 wheels for pitch bender and and modulation.
Back panel terminal connectors:
-
main out stereo
-
Midi interface
-
tape interface
-
2 footswitch inputs
-
control voltage pedal input
Voice
core is a Motorola 6809 CPU manages 8 voices. A basic voice is composed by 1, 2 or 3 short samples with individual parameters:
-
volume mixing
-
octave height
- tune coarse / fine
- hard sync mode: OSC2 restarts its wave cycle when OSC1 finishes
- ring modulator AM
Wavetable
ROM is a 64 Kb (32 x 2 EPROM) wavetable coded at 8 bits resolution. The wavetable contains 32 different short cycled waveforms organized in various subgroups:
- mathematical pre-calculated waves
-
additives waves with variable harmonics contents
-
formants
-
elementaries like pulse or saw)
- acoustic
multisamples
Performance
Esq-1 manages up to 8 parts
Filter
analog low pass at -24dB/octave resonant (not self-resonant) VCF based on 8 Curtis CEM 3379 with key tracking level.
LFO
3 modulators and many destinations including: pitch, filter and amplitude
Envelope
4 assignable EGs each with a 4 stages ADSR + 3 time levels.
All EGs can be freely set to:
-
EG VCF filter
- EG
VCA OSC1
- EG VCA OSC2
- EG VCA OSC3
Sequencer
8 tracks with real-time record or step mode recording with quantizers, copy tracks, merge and loop function.
Memory
-
40 RAM patches
- 2400 RAM notes
- 10000 notes with memory expansion
Audio demo:
Video Clip:
Review
OK: filter
NOT : heavy-bulky / compressed waveforms
"Some distinctive character, fun, and surprising!
good for filtered pads and analog-digital strings lovers. "
Text , review, special demos copyright polynominal.com / Eric Pochesci