Ensoniq ASR-10 help, for ASRonians.

Syntaur wrote:

misslipsandhips wrote:I've heard so much about the ASR keyboards. I'd like to get my hands on one. Sometimes new equipment cannot recreate certain sounds.

To me, the ASR-10 is (a) so intuitive to use that it's easy be be creative instead of getting bogged down in O.S. BS, and (b) it has so much programming potential that when you do want to think "technical" instead of "creative", you can pretty much do anything you want to with it.

I've made a living programming ASR sounds for the last 15 years, and I can say that it sounds GOOD - but I'm not sure if I could say that it sounds UNIQUE. But then I haven't gotten nearly so intimate with other pieces of gear to make a worthy comparison...

What do you other guys (and gals) think - does it have a unique sound to it that other samplers/keyboards don't have?

Sam
Syntaur Productions

imo it has a dark refined tone.It kind of sizzles.Brings out detail and character.Its like old valve hi fi.Reminds me of a high quality radio tuner.I use it to spice up my mp4000.Great combination.Great job youve got Sam.cheers

drunkmonkey5556 wrote:thanks!

So when would I use the 3LP,1LP, and when would I want to use the 2LP,2LP?

And why do they have two filters on one page? I can sort of understand why they'd have the 3LP and 1LP, because they have different slopes so you could use a little of the 3LP and the 1LP to do some fine filtering but whats the point of having two 2LP's?

It gives you a choice of how steep of a filter you can use. With these combinations, you can have a 1-pole, 2-pole, 3-pole or 4-pole filter. To get the 4-pole, you have to use F1 and F2 together - the 3P + 1P = 4P, or the two 2P's together = 4P.

Don't lose too much sleep over this - in practice, it's usually a matter of just calling up a LP or HP filter (you DO need to know the difference there, and it sounds like you do), then tweaking the cutoff until it sounds the way you like it. If you can't get it the way you like it, then you can start adding poles together (adding filters together) if need be.

Sam
Syntaur Productions

I've got an asr-10 rack that works fairly well. Having gone through 'Sample Magic' a few times Im comfortable with chopping up samples and using the unit with my mpc. I'd reccomend it - as well as the official ASR videos (which look dated but do their job in explaining stuff).

All the buttons and dials work, and I rarely get the ERROR xxx - REBOOT ? screen - but I've noticed the following couple of things.

i) Sometimes, the headphone output crackles so much the sound is unrecognizable - it only happens sometimes, but when it does its quite bad. I've tried using different cables but to no avail.
ii) I'm running os 3.5.3 and stuff like SCSI etc. seems to work fine - but the unit gets REALLY hot. Im not really an electrician, but opened it up and used a can of compressed air to get the internals to a reasonable state, but I've heard of possible modifications to asr suck as a fan installed internally. Do you know of any examples, or have an idea of where I can get instructions for this.
iii) Sometimes when I load in a sound it sounds almost too warm. Even after turning the reverb off. Could this be down to general 'wear'. Is it fixable ? Are there any checks I can carry out ? (some sort of 'engineering mode' perhaps).

thanks
Zip.

Zip,

Glad you like the Sample Magic book!

The headphone issue sounds like a hardware thing. Are you getting an intermittent sound, like when you have a bad audio cable? And is the sound from the regular L & R outputs fine? On the ASR rack, the headphone jack has a wiring harness that plugs into the jack board on the back of the unit, and it could be a poor connection there. If the regular outputs are working fine, this will be an easy fix.

Practically everything made by Ensoniq runs hot. The ASR - particularly with any expansions - really taxes the power supply, and that's what is making the heat. It is normal. Some people have hooked up fans and such, and say that they are prolonging the life of the sampler, but the engineers at Ensoniq designed it to be that way and the boards keep on going... I wouldn't worry about it.

This power supply heat is obviously what is making your sounds "too warm" (lol). Seriously, given that this is a digital instrument, I don't think the character of the sound will change over time, or due to 'general wear', except for getting nasty distortion or something similar from a component failure. In other words, it either sounds right, or it sounds way wrong (or no sound at all). I think it must be the nature of the particular sample you are loading.

Sam
Syntaur Productions

Sam

Thanks very much for your help with this - I believe the L and R outputs are fine but will double check this evening just to make sure.
Also appreciate the clarification re: sound 'quality'.What with all the talk of convertors etc. I wasn't really sure about how these machines 'aged'.


Zip.

Zip,

If wiggling/cleaning the wiring connector to the headphone jack doesn't clear up the problem, you can replace the entire jack assembly pretty easily, for $10. You can see the part here:

www.syntaur.com/4114.html

It may be that the jack itself is broken. Good luck!

Sam
Syntaur Productions

wow great to have an expert around !! big up syntaur production

dsp wrote::D wow great to have an expert around !! big up syntaur production

+1

Again, Sam, thanks very much for your help. Really good to have more helpful knowledgeable people here.

Zip

Sam, do you think you could help me out a bit with understand how to use effects?
For example, I've been struggling with applying an effect to only one instrument. I think it's possible cause I think I remember doing it before. I saved it as the bank effect. But now when I do that, all instruments play through whatever effect the instrument i'm "on" has assigned to it. You know? So is there a way to do this?

I'd be happy to resample the wavesample with the effect on, it seems like that would make it a lot less confusing (I could make it so each wavesample has whatever effect I want). I don't see any drawbacks to that. But when I have tried doing that, something always goes wrong. I sample through the main outs, and my memory isn't expanded so I usually record in mono, which makes it half the volume and ruins the quality. So until I get my expansion, is this a bad way of doing it? Or is there a way of working around this? I remember sampling stereo once with an effect on and the quality still seemed like it was lower after.

So how do YOU use the effects?

Thanks.

Sam, do you think you could help me out a bit with understand how to use effects?
For example, I've been struggling with applying an effect to only one instrument.

Resample.

The Grublet wrote:

Sam, do you think you could help me out a bit with understand how to use effects?
For example, I've been struggling with applying an effect to only one instrument.

Resample.

whats the best way of doing that? this is what i would think to do:

turn on the effect, select my instrument, go to "Sample", make sure its on Main Out L+R, make sure the instrument is still selected, when it starts recording play the sample, then chop it to the right start/end points as needed.

but now that i think about it, is that the best way to do it? cause then, if your sample is chopped, you gotta do that all over again. so you would have to apply the effect early on in the process. sometimes i can only know what effect i need towards the end of the beat cause everything has to sound good together. but whatever. i guess i was just trying to see if there was a way to apply the effect to one instrument only, without resampling.

Close. your input monitoring level should keep you from having to chop the start point (if you set it right)


hint...


Press resample, have instrument you want to have resampled solo'd on your sequence,

press play.

Is there a reasample button or something? I'm using headphones so should I just do the main outs?

MGStudios wrote:Is there a reasample button or something? I'm using headphones so should I just do the main outs?

the headphones don't make a difference, i use them too. selecting the main outs just means the source is whatever would be going out the main outs if there was something plugged in. and theres no resample button, hes talking about the sample button.

Well thats what I thought, but when I choose main outs and try playing the sample nothing happens. Hm, I will look into it.