Company history
Ensoniq was founded in 1982 by former
MOS Technology engineers Robert "Bob" Yannes (designer of the
MOS Technology SID chip for the
Commodore 64 home computer), Bruce Crockett, and Al Charpentier.
Their first product was a software
drum machine that ran on a
home computer.
In January 1998, ENSONIQ Corp. was acquired by
Creative Technology Ltd. for $77 million. The fusion with
E-mu Systems and
Creative Labs sealed Ensoniq's fate: their products and support
vanished soon afterward.
Musical Instruments & Digital Systems
Ensoniq entered the instrument market with the
Mirage sampling keyboard in 1985. At the price of
USD$1500 it cost significantly less than previous
samplers such as the
Fairlight CMI and the
E-MU Emulator. Starting with the
ESQ-1, they began producing
wave table based synthesizers. Following the success of these
products, Ensoniq established a subsidiary in
Japan in 1987.
Ensoniq products were highly professional. Strong selling points were
ease-of-use and their characteristic "fat", rich sound (generally
thought of as being an "American" quality, as opposed to the "Japanese"
sound which was more "digital" and somewhat "cold"). After the Mirage,
all Ensoniq instruments featured integrated sequencers (even their late
'80s and early '90s
samplers) providing an "all-in-one" "digital studio" production
concept instrument. High-quality effects units were included, along with
disk drives or
RAM cards for storage. The manuals and tutorial documents were
clearly written and highly musician-oriented, allowing the users to
quickly get satisfactory results from their machines. In 1988, the
company enlisted the
Dixie Dregs in a limited edition promotional CD "Off
the Record" which featured the band using the EPS sampler and SQ-80
cross wave synthesizer.
The company's heyday was in the early 1990s when the VFX synthesizers
offered innovative performance and sequencing features (and terrific
acoustic sounds), along with the ASR series of 16-bit samplers which
also integrated synthesis, effects and sequencer into a single-unit
digital studio. The TS synthesizers followed the legacy of the VFX line,
improving several aspects such as the
polyphony, effects engine, sample-loading capabilities and even
better synth and acoustic sounds. The DP series of effects rack-mount
units offered parallel processing and
reverb presets on a par with Lexicon's offerings, but at affordable
prices.
Despite these strengths, early Ensoniq instruments suffered from
reliability problems. The company didn't manage to reinvent its
workstation concept in order to survive the mid and late '90s, and no
lower-budget versions of their keyboards were offered. Excellent
synthesizers like the VFX or TS models lacked cheaper rack-mount
counterparts. Finally, while the competition's products were continually
evolving and newer technologies such as physical modeling were
introduced, Ensoniq failed to follow the late '90s market orientation,
often recycling old concepts on their new products.
Timeline of major products
Multimedia Sound Cards & Semiconductors
Ensoniq was known not only for their innovative musical instruments
division, but also for their computer audio chips. In 1986, after making
an agreement with
Apple Computer, the same Ensoniq 5503 chip utilized in the Mirage
and ESQ-1 keyboard was incorporated into the
Apple IIGS personal computer. The Ensoniq ES5505
(OTIS or OTISR2),
ES5506 (OTTO) and ES5510 (ESPR6, ESP stands for Ensoniq Signal
Processor) were used in various
arcade games. They were all manufactured on the
CMOS process. The OTTO was licensed to
Advanced Gravis for use in the
Gravis Ultrasound card. In 1994 production began on
PC sound cards for home computers.
Ensoniq's sound cards became immensely popular, no doubt due to their
many wins with the big
OEM system manufacturers. Towards the end of the
DOS gaming era, every game supported the Ensoniq Soundscape. In fact
Ensoniq was the first to come up with an
ISA software audio emulation solution for their new
PCI sound cards that was compatible with most DOS games. It is
likely that this was a big motivator in the Creative/E-MU purchase of
Ensoniq because
Creative Labs had not developed a high-compatibility method to
support audio in legacy DOS software. According to one source, because
of the wide range of patents Ensoniq had involving the PCI bus support
for the sound cards, and the fact that Ensoniq wanted E-MU's
technologies, the buyout of Ensoniq became the best of both worlds.
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