Ensoniq ASR-10

The texture you get from this guy is like if the MPC 3000 and the SP1200 had a baby... A sound that's sorta right in between the two machines that I so dearly love! After sampling, the keys make it super easy to find that sweet spot for where the sample sounds the best... not to mention that you can obviously play any sound melodically if you are a trained keyboardist. The effects are nutty if you can get a hold of those after market distortion discs! The resample feature makes the grittiest sounds ever! I kinda gotta have this in my studio because of it's own sound personality... like how? Oh, ya know, no big deal... it just sounds like the first couple Wu Tang albums

The ASR-10 stands for the Advanced Sampling Recorder - a completely digital music production studio. It's a 16-bit sampler that came in both keyboard and rack-mount versions. It shipped with 2 MB of sample memory which could be expanded to 16 MB for a few minutes of stereo cd-quality sampling time. It lets you choose from sample rates of 30 to 44.1 kHz and has all the professional sample editing functions you would expect to find from a pro sampler including autolooping, volume smoothing, normalize, crossfading, and time comp/exp. Even resampling through its effects, EQ, etc. is possible!

UTILIZATION

What's special about the ASR-10 is that it is a sampler using the synthesizer architecture of Ensoniq's classic line of synths from the SD-1 to the ESQ-1. Your samples are stored as part of its WaveSample memory. The ASR-10 can hold 127 WaveSamples, which can also consist of its two multimode digital filters, the LFO, one random noise generator, three envelope generators (hard-wired to the pitch, filter cutoff, and amplitude), and a modulation matrix with 15 routable modulation sources. Up to eight layers of WaveSamples can be combined to create your final sound. In this light, the ASR-10 basically looks like an advanced TranseWave (waveform modulation) synthesizer in which YOU create its WaveSamples!

SOUNDS

The ASR-10's sequencer has 16-tracks and with its 31 voices of polyphony you can create some pretty complete musical performances. The sequencer (reminiscent of the SD-1 and VFX-SD workstations) provides real time and looped recording modes, 96 PPQ clock resolution, an auto-locate function, punch in/out, and other useful features. And the ASR-10 can sample while the sequencer is playing. It can store up to 80 sequences or patterns which can be chained into a song (only one song can be in memory).

OVERALL OPINION

This is a fantastic keyboard, and it has been a staple in Hip-Hop Production for years! If you enjoy keyboard samplers, don't waste any more time - get this.

Everything you'd need in one place. The only knock to me is minited amount of tracks in the sequencer. 8 tracks plus 8 song tracks.

Price paid

1,500 in 1997

UTILIZATION

The interface is limited but it easily gets the job done. It took me a minute to learn it because it was my first instrument but after you get the hang it's a breeze. The manual has all the answers

It's built like a tank, very solid. I haven't had any problems with the keys/buttons.

SOUNDS

The sound is great, it also has a lot of editing possibilities. Resampling at a lower rate, onboard effects, etc.

OVERALL OPINION

I tried to sell it once but I got my mind right, It's definitely a classic. My kids will be playing it, I'm keeping mine.

Originally posted on FutureProducers.com
Posted by: Unknown ( 7-, 2003)

Very satisfied. has a super easy sequencer (use the pedal...its cool) and the effects are the best i've heard in a keyboard. only thing missing is probably the wave editing features and more sequencing tracks and outputs (16 would be nice)

price paid

$2200.00 (us dollars)

UTILIZATION

That really depends on the person and this board is fairly old now. it does not have the editing features that the new joints have so that may hurt most electronic muscians. this board works with you and not against you. for me.....it lets me express what i need with all the power it has to do so.

for a gig......no way!!!! but then again it depends on the type of music you play.....if you play keys (like in a band or whatnot) then i say yes.....but if you do hip-hop and you play your sequences on this board then you are in big trouble!!! you have to save all things to disk and it takes a few minutes to load all the sounds of a sequence (or song) and that is murder to a hip-hop head! for a live gig (band) you can pre-load all the sounds (up to 8) and then you can swithch between them very easy. never used customer support.

SOUNDS

Superb (no real hiss)! it really has no sounds in it but the sounds that came with it are cool to start with (i make hip-hop and new age) but the excellent thing about this is that you can load so many libraries from other models.....so nice! as i said above...the effects are great! i would like more outputs with out the expander (cost like 250 bucks!!) like 16 outs would be ideal....but probably not gonna happen!!!! (lol)

OVERALL OPINION

I have used and purchased many a board and nothing really comes close to the asr-10! i have a motif and i dont even mess with it much but to sample from (into the asr) or just use it for background textures and what not. if you are looking to have a tight package for production of hip-hop, this is probably the best on the market still......remember that its near 20 years old (according to the manual)

originally posted on futureproducers.com
posted by: unknown (january 1-, 2003)