UVI USQ-1

[starflakeprj]

so as far as i understand this is a nearly great emulation of the ESQ1?
if so what maybe is better than the SQBL1 cannot do? i dont wanna spend 50 bucks for nothing .

Well, since it's a sampled instrument, you can't hardly call it emulation?

my bad, but the ESQ1 was also only sample based?

but i think you could import samples? if so in USQ1 not?

I don't think so. I think the ESQ-1 is a digital synth with analog filters. Someone should correct me if I'm wrong. So no rompler as far as I know.

I'm also pretty sure you can't import any samples in either ESQ-1 nor USQ-1. I purchased USQ-1 yesterday, because I think it sounds good, not because it has been sampled from ESQ-1. Well, a little maybe, because about 15 years ago or so, I was offered to buy an ESQ-1 for less than 100 EUR, but I didn't. I bought a DX7 for about 140 EUR instead

[Saukar30]

Like most ppl here have said, I just don't dig their presets. UVI makes everything sound like "UVI" and not the original thing it sampled. Each synth has character and when the same preset designers make everything sound the same, I think it misses the mark of what could be done with those samples.

+1 Exactly!

And another problem is that not only is there overlap (always the similar arps, bell sounds etc.), but also a ton of those completely unusable patches like those aggressive BRRRRRRRRAAAAH EDM-type sounds (?) that they always seem to put in there.

I think that a lot of the similarities with these products also come from using the same effects.

I've been GASsing for the hardware version, and was planning on buying this today, but after watching Norrin_Radd's video above, I don't think I will...

Is there something specific you wanted out of this library? As in, what were you hoping to use it for, and for what kind of music?

I am no expert at all, and my video series is usually meant for similar people (non-experts technically, but fans of the sounds and nostalgia in general), but I can't quite see a better or more accessible version of this particular synth around right now. You can mess with the SQ8L VST, but it is still 32bit and a monumental pain to edit.

The fundamental sounds that I would come to the ESQ-1 for all appear to be here for on this library. If I wanted to recreate something John Carpenter had made, I would definitely load this up over the SQ8L, for example.

So I guess it all depends what you are wanting out of the synth in general. Is it something you don't see this library being able to do that the SQ8L could, or even the real synth?

I don't think it's a technical question of what USQ-1 is able to do. It's more of how it sounds & some of the effects.

So for instance, 1 of the audio demos explores the brass sounds quite a bit. Going by the video you would never know that USQ-1 is capable of that. It doesn't show any of the oscillator sounds besides the arpish ones. And usually on most of the UVI synth videos those arps, modulated sounds & pads are always the main part of the preset list that is featured.

We also know what Falcon can do... and there are way more effects than just the basic Sparkverb, delay, phaser/chorus, drive modules that are on all of their synths (sometimes the older bitcrusher maybe added). There's really no variety. I understand that this combination is a driving point of the UVI libraries (to have similar functionalities for new & previous users to get used to). However, once someone spends sometime with a few UVI libraries that combo gets old & basing most of the presets on the those particular effects may have its downfalls for more experienced users.

And btw... I'm not knocking your video at all. It was very informative & well put together. Personally, with something like this I just think the main point is that this synth has been sampled, but rolling your own is what will yield more satisfaction. Pretty much as you did in the video.

EDIT:
This one right here shows some the versatility of USQ-1. Complely different than the other demos. Are those drum sounds from USQ-1 as well?
https://soundcloud.com/uvi-official/usq ... ond-thomas

[Timfonie]

The ideal simulation is a model which incorporates all parameters to be able to steplessness recreate all possible sounds.

The next best thing would be a well sampled library to enable a variaty of extremely usefull sounds. I think that's what UVI libraries are about. Yes, they are less flexible than simulations based on circuit models with a lot of parameters.

Nonetheless they contain lots of very usefull sounds to make musicians happy. I mean, in the past only a piano or organ inspired many composers to create wonderfull music with only those instruments. What if only one (of the many many included) particular patches of a synth would becomes such a standard?

Nowadays a synth can make an almost unlimited amount of usefull sounds. Apart from finetuning, a dedicated library like the superb ones of UVI can be of huge help to those primarily focussed on songs instead of focussed on sounds.

Song creators can welcome UVI libraries. Sound creators will demand fully parametric simulations. Synth lovers will demand inifinite possibilities. Musicians will demand some very useful sounds. Who does buy preset banks? (I do!)

The only critisim: UVI libraries are protected by ilock It's the only reason they are a no-go to me.

[Teksonik]

Like most ppl here have said, I just don't dig their presets. UVI makes everything sound like "UVI" and not the original thing it sampled. Each synth has character and when the same preset designers make everything sound the same, I think it misses the mark of what could be done with those samples.

Very well said.

I only own the DS-1 package and there is just something "generic" about the sounds they sampled. They completely missed the mark with their VFX module and I fear they may have done the same thing with the ESQ-1 module.

Yes it might sound "nice" but what's the point of sampling a hardware synth if you don't capture the sounds that made it famous ? As I said earlier it would be like sampling a DX-7 and not including a Tine Piano or Tubular Bell sound etc.......

[Gamma-UT]

Yes it might sound "nice" but what's the point of sampling a hardware synth if you don't capture the sounds that made it famous ? As I said earlier it would be like sampling a DX-7 and not including a Tine Piano or Tubular Bell sound etc.......

Because people don't enjoy getting done for copyright infringement. It's the same reason why there's only one D50 sample library with the factory presets that's survived more than a few days in the wild once it gains any prominence. And it comes from a company that has a licence deal with Roland.

Sampling an instrument with custom presets means the lawyers (mostly) leave you alone.

[Teksonik]

Yes it might sound "nice" but what's the point of sampling a hardware synth if you don't capture the sounds that made it famous ? As I said earlier it would be like sampling a DX-7 and not including a Tine Piano or Tubular Bell sound etc.......

Because people don't enjoy getting done for copyright infringement. It's the same reason why there's only one D50 sample library with the factory presets that's survived more than a few days in the wild once it gains any prominence. And it comes from a company that has a licence deal with Roland.

Sampling an instrument with custom presets means the lawyers (mostly) leave you alone.

You're confusing sounds with patches. You can't sample patches done by someone else without permission but you don't have to copy factory presets 1:1 to capture the essence of a synth. How many Tine Piano patches are there for the DX 7 ? Must be hundreds. I'll play them all for you and you tell me which one is the factory patch. Same for the Tubular Bells sounds and so on.

My point is the essence of the VFX was it's Transwaves Patches yet they barely make a tiny appearance in the DS-1 library.

If the UVI patch programmers don't capture the essence of a synth then why bother ? Especially when you set out to:

"The Ensoniq ESQ-1 is a special keyboard at UVI. Used by many on our team, including being a personal favorite of one of our founders, our USQ-1 had to be great".

So if you don't sample patches that make you say "That's a sound I remember from the ESQ-1" then you've just created a generic sample library and don't we all have enough of them ?

Who owns the rights to the ESQ-1 Factory Patches and sample Rom ? Ensoniq was bought and sold so many times it's hard to know but if I were going to make a sample library of the ESQ-1 especially if it "had to be great" I'd at least try to contact them to see if they would allow sampling of the factory patches.

Failing that I'd at least try to capture the sounds that made the ESQ-1 famous in the first place.

I had some contact with the boys from Malvern back when their only product was the Mirage but I couldn't begin to remember their names or who did what at Ensoniq.

Anyway I'm only speaking for myself as a former ESQ-1 and VFX owner. If your sample libraries don't do them justice then I'm not interested. I've already got gigs of generic sample content.

[Ingonator]

Yes it might sound "nice" but what's the point of sampling a hardware synth if you don't capture the sounds that made it famous ? As I said earlier it would be like sampling a DX-7 and not including a Tine Piano or Tubular Bell sound etc.......

Because people don't enjoy getting done for copyright infringement. It's the same reason why there's only one D50 sample library with the factory presets that's survived more than a few days in the wild once it gains any prominence. And it comes from a company that has a licence deal with Roland.

Sampling an instrument with custom presets means the lawyers (mostly) leave you alone.

As i mentioend earlier here UVI USQ-1 includes multisamples of the the 40 raw Osc waveforms And most of the 40 original factory presets seem to be included with the raw multsamples too (those are available in the "wave selection" of the USQ-1 GUI).

[MrDuke]

Like most ppl here have said, I just don't dig their presets. UVI makes everything sound like "UVI" and not the original thing it sampled. Each synth has character and when the same preset designers make everything sound the same, I think it misses the mark of what could be done with those samples.

+1 Exactly!

And another problem is that not only is there overlap (always the similar arps, bell sounds etc.), but also a ton of those completely unusable patches like those aggressive BRRRRRRRRAAAAH EDM-type sounds (?) that they always seem to put in there.

I think that a lot of the similarities with these products also come from using the same effects.

I've been GASsing for the hardware version, and was planning on buying this today, but after watching Norrin_Radd's video above, I don't think I will...

Is there something specific you wanted out of this library? As in, what were you hoping to use it for, and for what kind of music?

I am no expert at all, and my video series is usually meant for similar people (non-experts technically, but fans of the sounds and nostalgia in general), but I can't quite see a better or more accessible version of this particular synth around right now. You can mess with the SQ8L VST, but it is still 32bit and a monumental pain to edit.

The fundamental sounds that I would come to the ESQ-1 for all appear to be here for on this library. If I wanted to recreate something John Carpenter had made, I would definitely load this up over the SQ8L, for example.

So I guess it all depends what you are wanting out of the synth in general. Is it something you don't see this library being able to do that the SQ8L could, or even the real synth?

I do all kinds of productions but personally I'm also heavily into the 80's sound, perhaps more towards the boogie / electro-funk / Prince / etc. genre than, say, Carpenter (who I also love, by the way!)

I realize you're not an expert and I didn't listen to your playing etc., but your video did give me a good overview of what kinds of presets were there...I liked a few here and there, but heard mostly sounds I wouldn't have any use for or that I already have in other UVI libraries, so I decided to pass.

I also don't have Falcon, so I'm stuck with UVI Workstation. I've got Puremagnetik's Esqone library, Binary Music's Crosswave library (which is the SQ80) - UVI's Synth Anthology II also has a few sounds from the ESQ-1.

Perhaps I'll score an ESQ-M one day, there are literally thousands of sounds for it

[Ingonator]

so as far as i understand this is a nearly great emulation of the ESQ1?
if so what maybe is better than the SQBL1 cannot do? i dont wanna spend 50 bucks for nothing .

Well, since it's a sampled instrument, you can't hardly call it emulation?

my bad, but the ESQ1 was also only sample based?

but i think you could import samples? if so in USQ1 not?

I don't think so. I think the ESQ-1 is a digital synth with analog filters. Someone should correct me if I'm wrong. So no rompler as far as I know.

I'm also pretty sure you can't import any samples in either ESQ-1 nor USQ-1. I purchased USQ-1 yesterday, because I think it sounds good, not because it has been sampled from ESQ-1. Well, a little maybe, because about 15 years ago or so, I was offered to buy an ESQ-1 for less than 100 EUR, but I didn't. I bought a DX7 for about 140 EUR instead

When USQ-1 is used in Falcon you should be able to use custom samples within the synth engine and also add additional synthesis and modulation modules of Falcon (while those do not appaear in the scripted GUI of USQ-1).
Anyway the raw multisamples except the samples of the raw waveforms make use of almost the full synth engine in the ESQ-1 including the filter and filter modulations while the Amp envelope should be adjusted in the USQ-1 GUI. The multimode filter in USQ-1 (which is the Xpander filter of Falcon) is just used to further tweak the raw multisamples, not to fully replace the filter of the ESQ-1. FWIW teh filter chip in ESQ-1 is a CE; 3379 while that in the hardware Xpander synth was a CEM 3372.

As i mentionedd earlier i got both USQ-1 and a real ESQ-1 here. ESQ-1 is a synthesizre (not a sampler...) that used 32 digital waveforms and/or samples for the 3 socillators and you can not load custom samples.

ESQ-1 has a complex synth engine that includes:
- 3 Oscs
- 32 digital waveforms/samples per oscillator
- Osc Sync of Osc 1+2
- AM/Ringmod of Osc 1+2
- each Osc has a dedicated Amp (DCA) besides the global Amp
- analog 24dB Lowpass filter (CEM 3379 chips that also include a mixer with stereo panning and a VCA)
- 4 multi-stage envelopes (3 levels, 4 times, levels are bipolar to get positive and negative amounts)
- 3 LFOs
- mod routings in the oscs, filter and Amps
- stereo panning could be adjusted and modulated
- Layers or splits of two patches (each of them then has 4 voices instaed of

With the dedicated Amps for each Osc it is possible to use a dedicated volume envelope for each of them.

ESQ-1 could use aftertouch as a mod source while the keyboard has no built-in aftertouch.
You could use aftertouch with an external MIDI controller connencted or when you send MIDI data to it that contains aftertouch.

The editing buttons at the ESQ-1 hardware also give a quite good overview of the signal flow:
https://www.amazona.de/wp-content/uploa ... 80x395.jpg


This is the signal flow for the SQ-80 which is similar in ESQ-1:
https://www.amazona.de/wp-content/uploa ... 80x435.jpg


This is a screenshot of an ESQ-1 editor for CTRLR:
http://ctrlr.org/wp-content/uploads/201 ... aseFOS.png

[Ingonator]

I just wanted to do a closer comparison of the raw factory presets multisamples included in USQ-1 and my real ESQ-1.
For that i wanted to use the "00-Init Mono" preset in USQ-1 and found that the filter mostly sounded quite different even if the filter in USQ-1 is set to maximum Cutoff without modulation. I then found that in the USQ-1 preset Velocity is assigned to Cutoff by default. Besides that the Resonance is cranked up to maximum by default.
For a proper comparison i will switch those off and/or set the filter in USQ-1 to bypass.

As mentioned earlier the Amp envelope has to be set in USQ-1 as the samples were created with minimum Attack and Release to allow tweaking this in USQ-1. Mostly this is also true about the Sustain level while some samples do not allow doing a sustained sound.

[Ingonator]

I just wanted to do a closer comparison of the raw factory presets multisamples included in USQ-1 and my real ESQ-1.
For that i wanted to use the "00-Init Mono" preset in USQ-1 and found that the filter mostly sounded quite different even if the filter in USQ-1 is set to maximum Cutoff without modulation. I then found that in the USQ-1 preset Velocity is assigned to Cutoff by default. Besides that the Resonance is cranked up to maximum by default.
For a proper comparison i will switch those off and/or set the filter in USQ-1 to bypass.

As mentioned earlier the Amp envelope has to be set in USQ-1 as the samples were created with minimum Attack and Release to allow tweaking this in USQ-1. Mostly this is also true about the Sustain level while some samples do not allow doing a sustained sound.

I just recorded a short improvistation using an Arpeggiator preset in UVI USQ-1 (preset "Tanguy Gerine") and a layer of two patches in my real ESQ-1 (multitrack recording) where one is a factory preset and the other one a slightly modified patch from the ROM cartridge that i got with the ESQ-1 when i bought it at EBay (the catrridge includes 8 banks with 320 patches):

USQ-1 + ESQ-1 Audio Demo 01

One of the ESQ-1 patches is a Bell/Choir pad and the other one the "SLOSTR" factory preset.
The ESQ-1 preset is a layer of two different Arps and both use a simple Sawtooth Osc waveform sample.

External effects used were Waves OneKnob Phatter (at 50% amount) for the USQ-1 Arp patch and Lexicon MPX Native Reverb for the two ESQ-1 patches. No furter editing/mastering was done.

Using the modified "00-Init Mono" preset in USQ-1 i just did a direct comparison of the raw "Slow Strings" multisample in USQ-1 (available in the "wave selection" at the GUI) and the corresponding "SLOSTR" factory preset in my real ESQ-1 which was also used as one of the two ESQ-1 patches in my previous audio demo (see the quote above).
In USQ-1 i did set the filter to "bypass" and removed the velocity Cutoff modulation (which even seems to work when the filker is bypassed...). The Amp enveleop in USQ-1 was se to fit the preset in the real thing. With both USQ-1 and ESQ-1 no external effects were added and the built-in effcts of USQ-1 were switched off.

Here is an audio demo of the "SLOSTR" factory preset in the real ESQ-1:
ESQ-1 - SLOSTR ESQ-1 Factory Preset Demo 1

This an audio demo using the raw "Slow Strings" multsample in UVI USQ-1 with the edited Amp envelope parameters:
USQ-1 - Slow Strings ESQ-1 Factory Preset Demo 1

The hardware was directly connected to my Focusrite Scarlett 6i6 (2nd gen) audio interface and recorded through the built-in preamps of the audio interface.

The 400 full presets in USQ-1 include a "Slow Strings" preset too but that is a a layer of two sounds (where one is the original "Slow Strings" multisample) that also uses some advanced features of USQ-1.

[Saukar30]

So I decided to give it a shot... like right before the intro sale ended for this. I flipped a coin multiple times and it always came up heads lol.

My 1st impressions of this is that it's pretty good actually. I didn't think I would like it. I dig how they have the original waveforms sampled... clean, but still dirty. I went through some of the presets and even though Im not a fan of all the weird modulated stuff the bass, flute, & synth patches are really quite nice.

I have to say gladly I was wrong in my pre-judgement. It has a nice feel to it. There is of course the UVI-ness to it, but if you turn off the FX you can get some good vintage flavor out of this one. Of course the architecture is different than the original, but getting some good sounds would be pretty easy with this. Glad I changed my mind.

[Saukar30]

Just to give an different example, Ive been messing around with USQ-1 all morning and wanted to give a small little snippet of some super basic sounds but to also highlight the drums in here. These are perfect for some old school hip-hop or drum & bass type of music.

The drums are kind of loud... sorry LOL

https://soundcloud.com/saukar/usq-1-practice

[Examigan]

I have USQ-1 but haven’t had a chance to try it out. I will be checking it out tonight, looking forward to it.

[Ingonator]

Yesterday i bought the Eventide Blackhole Reverb at the current sale and started using it with UVI USQ-1 instead of the built-in SparkVerb (which is nice on it's own but not really the same...).

IMO Blackhole is amazing for any kind of pad sounds and i get some really great results when using it with USQ-1. Will also check it with my real ESQ-1 soon.