KVR Audio

THK · Post by **THK** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 1:32 am

thorau wrote:I didn't find any sites with syx files. Can someone provide any links?

http://www.synthzone.com/midi/ensoniq/sq80/

http://www.synthzone.com/midi/ensoniq/esq1sq1/

tomg · Post by **tomg** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 1:40 am

Some are dupes and best of but I've got 78 banks.

Here's the first 5....

http://www.ele4music.com/plugins/esq_001-005.zip

Have fun.

tomg · Post by **tomg** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 1:49 am

Ohhh... Just wait until I find those Star Trek patches you guys are gonna crap all over yourselfs!

thorau · Post by **thorau** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 2:03 am

Many thanks for the link, mates!

Teksonik · Post by **Teksonik** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 2:18 am

Thanks for the heads up on this one Convolve! I still have my ESQ-1 and have stumbled across the buchty site many times over the years and never saw this plug so it must be new. I spent an hour reliving old times with patches like "Eowww" and "Tribels" still looking for "Floon". I've got some custom patches on the Rom cart but don't know if it's worth hooking up the old 'Q just to check them out. I've been asking for an ESQ/SQ80 emulator for a long time and this one comes pretty close. It manages to retain the grit and noise of the old Ensoniq units. Great Blast from the Past!

Ildon · Post by **Ildon** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 2:38 am

Awesome! I have an ESQ1 too, but I never got to use it because it's broken.

I heard demos on Synthmania and it sounded neat. Now I can use one (almost!)

Thanks, Convolve.

Ildon · Post by **Ildon** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 2:48 am

Holy crap, this is great.

It just screams, "PLAY ME."

!!

I think I'd definitely buy the full version. Wow. ^_^

inverseroom · Post by **inverseroom** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 2:51 am

My favorite SQ-80 patch ever is "Logged." The aftertouch raises pitch in crazy increments...you can do these insane expressive sweeps!

The only problem with this plug is that, in order to take full advantage of the patches, you need polyphonic (not channel) aftertouch...and one of the only keyboards that has it is...of course...the SQ-80. And if I'm going to control it with my SQ-80, I might as well use my SQ-80.

tomg · Post by **tomg** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 3:28 am

inverseroom wrote:My favorite SQ-80 patch ever is "Logged." The aftertouch raises pitch in crazy increments...you can do these insane expressive sweeps!

The only problem with this plug is that, in order to take full advantage of the patches, you need polyphonic (not channel) aftertouch...and one of the only keyboards that has it is...of course...the SQ-80. And if I'm going to control it with my SQ-80, I might as well use my SQ-80.

ESQ patches aren't a problem.

maximilians1 · Post by **maximilians1** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 3:31 am

tomg wrote:Some are dupes and best of but I've got 78 banks. Here's the first 5....

http://www.ele4music.com/plugins/esq_001-005.zip

Have fun.

tomg · Post by **tomg** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 3:41 am

maximilians1 wrote:
tomg wrote:Some are dupes and best of but I've got 78 banks. Here's the first 5....

http://www.ele4music.com/plugins/esq_001-005.zip

Have fun.

I got 1-42 done. 13 may be a dupe of 12. I'll have to do some organization to get the rest. A couple came up empty.... I'm working on it..

http://www.ele4music.com/plugins/esq_001-042.zip

anothercomposer · Post by **anothercomposer** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 3:51 am

thanks.. tomg .. much appreciated

AdmiralQuality · Post by **AdmiralQuality** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 5:42 am

I'm very impressed with this emulation. It might even qualify as best emulation VSTi EVER.

I downloaded the original ESQ-1 soundbank, loaded it into SQ-8L, and A/Bed it with the few original patches I still have on my ESQ-1. (They'd be all gone if not for the battery replacement surgery I mentioned above. But soon I'll do a test after syncing all the same patches between them through sysex. Just have to backup the patches currently in my ESQ-1 first. Actually, this thing should make a great ESQ-1 librarian too!!!)

The sound is VERY close. The oscillators are right on (which you'd expect for wavetable playback... the ESQ-1's flaws are actually it's major feature... and it's quite easy to reproduce these flaws in software). But even the filters sound very close. However The SQ-8L seems noticeably brighter than my ESQ-1... the filter tuning doesn't match -- but on this 20 year old ESQ-1, even it's own filters don't exactly match each other anymore... they've all drifted some. But the emulation's filter sounds almost an octave above the real one, which is a lot. But the actual sound... I expected to have more complaints. I'm a hard guy to impress, but I must admit... I'm impressed!

One thing I did notice was that the sounds didn't match until I tweaked the Modes page | RESTART VC=ON/OFF setting. The first patch I brought up was WAVBELL (as that's the most signature ESQ-1 patch in my memory) and it seemed to make an odd staccato kind of sound when the same key is played repeatedly. I didn't remember that from the original and I compared it to the ESQ-1 (mine is rev 2.30) and yes, it was different. Changing the RESTART VC setting on the SQ-8L fixed it. Oddly, changing this same setting on the ESQ-1 has no effect that I can hear. Was this a bug in the original ESQ-1, or in the emulation? What does RESTART VC mean? I understand what all the rest are... guess I gotta find the original manual.

But that's the only real issue I've found so far.

Tell me... people have been talking in this thread about "when this product goes commercial". Well, what features are missing that would make this product commercial? It seems mostly done to me. Not sure what you could add that would convince anyone to pay for a copy, considering they already have the free one. I don't see any mention anywhere of plans to commercialize this (and I'd think there'd be possibilities of legal difficulty... if nothing else, they stole the sample ROM which somebody must still own copyright of.) I do see mention of "full version" in the readme. Nothing mentioned there that would make it any better an emulation, just "extras" stuff like more voices, better GUI...

By the way, analysis of the binary shows it's programmed in Delphi.

A very impressive product for a freebie!

AdmiralQuality · Post by **AdmiralQuality** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 6:24 am

Ah.... reading the readme answered many of the questions I posted above.

Also, the filter being way off might be explained by:

SQ8L readme.txt wrote: - The modulation range of the filter has been doubled:
The value 32 in SQ8L corresponds to a value of approximately 63 for the SQ80/ESQ1.

That would account for a major offset in patches that use filter keyboard tracking at 100% (which would be most of them). That is definitely NOT the way to go about this. If you want to expand the range, then you should expand it while keeping the same values. So if the old modulation range went from 0 - 63 (as it does) if you want to expand on that then you need to make the new range go from 0 - 127. This way, original ESQ1/SQ80 patches will still sound right, but new SQ8L patches can use the extra range if needed.

ouroboros · Post by **ouroboros** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 6:28 am

AQ - have you tuned the hardware filters or are you addressing something else?

SQ80 emulating VSTi available