All user reviews of 4/5 for the E-MU ESI2000

64 polyphony, 128 MB memory max.
Turbo Card: Digital I / O, two effect processors.

Sampling in mono or stereo 22 kHz or 44.1 kHz 16 bit. With the turbo card can be sampled at other frequencies (up to 48kHz) and digital.

UTILIZATION

The interface is very simple, and it is easy to navigate through shortcuts (just type in the number of a menu to go).
Editing sounds is easy, the ESI has relatively few parameters from a synth, but the key is to be creative (envelope filter, volume, keyboard tracking, LFO etc.)..

For cons I read the manual several times and I still do not understand how to manage the placement of samples on the keyboard and the concept of "zones".

It is impossible to import anything other than Emax or Akai via SCSI. You can also import and export MIDI. Can not import WAV or AIFF, it sucks the rod, to be said ...

I use it with a 100MB external SCSI ZIP drive.

SOUNDS

Input converters are not transparent, they color the sound in the medium. I sampled my TX-81Z, Juno 2 and D-50 and each time I lost a lot of gloss and dynamics in the operation (although it is true that these machines have a big potato!).
Against the output from 18bit converters are very nice!

The filters are very well against very pleasant, and there is something for everyone from the low pass, high pass, band pass, flanger, phaser, effects of mouth Ah-Ah-Ei etc..

With the Turbo Card, the effects are not great, the same kind as those of the Proteus 2000 series.

I really like what you can do with it.
This is my first sampler and I have no experience with this kind of machine so I can only give an opinion "absolute".

OVERALL OPINION

I have 2 years but I do not really use it for a few weeks.
What I like is its interface is easy to use (although I cromprends nothing to "zones").
What I regret is that it is hard to make it import samples: it does not import WAV or AIFF, speaks only SCSI (something that is obsolete).
SCSI is no salvation without so you have to invest a little to equip devices.
I have not tried other samplers before buying this one.

The ESI allows me to complete my setup with the original sounds (voice, loops).
For € 160 I had an ESI-2000 with 128MB of RAM, the Turbo Card. I would do this choice.