KVR Audio

blackboyrockinit · Post by **blackboyrockinit** » Thu Jun 05, 2008 6:35 pm

lol that thing looks stupid. I like it. I wanna see some funky ass mofo rockin this shit like awwwww yeah.

deastman · Post by **deastman** » Thu Jun 05, 2008 6:37 pm

What really turned me off when I saw one in the store was the cheap construction. Even the front panel graphics looked like an afterthough. The sound struck me as very thin, bright, and harsh... sort of like the worst aspects of the ESQ1 exaggerated.

Of course, that was many years ago, and I'm sure my perspective would be different if I heard one today. Does anyone know of some Fizmo mp3 demos? Might be fun to check out...

blackboyrockinit · Post by **blackboyrockinit** » Thu Jun 05, 2008 6:37 pm

Stupid American Pig · Post by **Stupid American Pig** » Thu Jun 05, 2008 6:39 pm

not to mention they do die quite often- bad pwoer supply design.

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Thu Jun 05, 2008 6:40 pm

Stupid American Pig wrote:I remember being half tempted to buy a Fiz when MF blew them out for 499.(which they did twice). I played with one at a music shop once and I think I was still to interested in analog gear to want it. I think the fiz is one of those classics in the making. someone will use it in a song in another few years and skyrocket the resale value.

They already are up there in value. Even worse if you want a Fizmo rack. It be interesting, but not for the amount of money people want for it. I played one when they come out. It wasn't all that interesting back then. I might like one now, but no thanks, it's not worth it to me.

Devon

emdot_ambient · Post by **emdot_ambient** » Thu Jun 05, 2008 6:50 pm

Looks like they're selling for $500 - $700 on ebay for the keyboard version.

You do have to be careful about their build. There was a power supply upgrade that took care of that issue. The $700 price on ebay was for one with that installed.

woodster · Post by **woodster** » Thu Jun 05, 2008 7:01 pm

Ahhh the Fizmo.

I had one that cost me £300 from Turnkey, Never had any psu problems with mine (although I did download the replacement walk through you can get off the net),I think I remember reading that it was mainly the US voltage that had the issues.

I sold it after about a year of hardly using it.
It did have some nice sounds, but the lack of a decent screen was a pain for editing, along with the colours and the panel legending.
You needed the software editor in order to edit the effects in any meaningful way, I could never get it to work.
Only a stereo out, and a bit misleading with some of the polyphony claims and preset voices, where each part of a component sound was referred to as a separate preset.
It was very thin sounding indeed, even with all four parts going at once but it balanced well with phat old Rolands and moogs etc.
A friend of mine used to say it was the poor mans Waldorf Microwave, but a bit like the 303 it will probably claim 300% of its original street price in years to come.
It came out at the wrong time, as it was released just as Ensoniq was gobbled up by Emu, who then ditched it instantly.

xoxos · Post by **xoxos** » Thu Jun 05, 2008 7:27 pm

i would agree on 'thin, digital' however the sounds it made tended to fit in a mix.

Neurotronic · Post by **Neurotronic** » Thu Jun 05, 2008 9:38 pm

I was also tempted to buy it, but I bought a Nord Rack II...
By the way, i am working on a Synth1 Random Preset Generator:
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 75#3098875

teomi · Post by **teomi** » Thu Jun 05, 2008 10:07 pm

Ugo nailed it, however, there is one thing that not many people know.

The Ensoniq ASR-10 is the only Ensoniq synth that can actually produce Transwaves from scratch, that is accept single cycle loops and create transwave patches. It also offers extenssive modulation features and the ability to crossfade between loops if you wish, to make them click-less.

If you search really well online, there are several 'secret' tutorials to make your own Transwave sounds on the ASR-10.

As far as I know, with any other Ensoniq synth like the Fizmo, you are bound to use the onboard loops and that's it.

Finally, here is an experimental short piece I composed about 10 years ago (OMG) using the ASR-10 alone. It's all Transwaves of short voice samples I recorded from the TV. I sampled it straight using an SM57 to my ASR10.

http://handheldsound.com/audio/rl.mp3

Before VSTs...quite amazing sound

Eitan

MarsHottentot · Post by **MarsHottentot** » Thu Jun 05, 2008 10:57 pm

That's my kinda music! Great job!

Here's a page with some Fizmo mp3's:
http://homepage.mac.com/synth_seal/html/fizmoc.html

I wrote Quinn @ Betabugs - anyone else?

Kingston · Post by **Kingston** » Thu Jun 05, 2008 11:05 pm

teomi wrote:Finally, here is an experimental short piece I composed about 10 years ago (OMG) using the ASR-10 alone. It's all Transwaves of short voice samples I recorded from the TV. I sampled it straight using an SM57 to my ASR10.

http://handheldsound.com/audio/rl.mp3

A gem!

Rarely one finds keepers on KVR.

bluedad · Post by **bluedad** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 3:36 am

create your own transwaves, I've been experimenting using them in Zebra2
I've about given up on getting a fizmo; they've really gone up in price the last couple of yrs.

ugo · Post by **ugo** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 1:45 pm

Stupid American Pig wrote:not to mention they do die quite often- bad pwoer supply design.

It's not the power supply but rather the regulator that fails. When it goes, it allows the synth to draw too much power, pushing the external power supply beyond it's design limits and causes that to fail too.

It took years for E-MU to figure that issue out, and may a Fiz has suffered because of it. I can't blame E-MU though. They inherited the Fiz from Ensoniq, and therefore inherited all of Ensoniq's last ditch cost cutting measures. To make matters worse, I heard that the docs E-MU got on Ensoniq's stuff were rather spotty.

My first Fiz died the day I got it. The second had it's mother board and power section replaced once. By the time it failed again, I found out about the regulator problem while on the phone with an E-MU tech who said they were seeing success with modifying the Fiz with a different type of regulator. He sent me one and my Fiz has been fine ever since.

emdot_ambient · Post by **emdot_ambient** » Fri Jun 06, 2008 2:52 pm

teomi wrote:Finally, here is an experimental short piece I composed about 10 years ago...http://handheldsound.com/audio/rl.mp3

Now you've done it...I really am going to have to dust off my Ensoniq EPS and do a demo of the loop glitch it had that probably inspired Ensoniq to develop their transwave technology. Your sound clip sounds very much like what some of my EPS instruments do, even though my instruments were using an OS glitch exploit.

I've mentioned this numerous times here before, but essentially if you had more than one instrument loaded on an EPS (it could hold up to

, and you were editing a loop on one of them, but you took the loop down to nothing, the keyboard would freak out and start playing seemingly random parts of all the instruments. If you played up the keyboard, you'd get a different set of seemingly random parts. So I'd either find ones I liked and record/resample them, or I'd assign the loop position to the mod wheel and make a "playable" glitched instrument. What was really cool to do was to resample 8 of these, load them up and do another one...glitched glitches. Amazing stuff.

So my project for the weekend is to upload some sound samples and post them.

Ensoniq Fizmo