Ensoniq EPS

Ensoniq EPS

The EPS (Ensoniq Performance Sampler) was one of the first few affordable samplers on the market. It was manufactured from 1988 to 1991 by Ensoniq in Malvern, Pennsylvania, USA. The EPS was a 13 bit sampler.

The EPS had a straightforward interface that was easy to use, with configurable controls geared for live performance. Because it had two processors, you could load and play up to eight instruments simultaneously (with another eight on reserve). The display was a 22 character single line vacuum fluorescent display. It booted from an integrated floppy disk drive (sourced from Sony or Matsushita), or from a SCSI drive connected to the expansion bay. The EPS came with 256 Kwords of RAM on board. Ensoniq offered both a 2x (512Kword) Memory Expander and a 4x (1Mword) Memory Expander with SCSI interface. A company called Maartists offered both 4x and 8x memory expanders, allowing a total of 2Mwords RAM. Extra RAM offered longer and higher quality samples. The "2x" expander contained three 4x256Kbit and one 1x256Kbit chips, for a total of 13x256Kbits in addition to the onboard memory. The EPS was unusual in having a 13-bit sample memory wordlength, left-justified into the most significant bits of a 16-bit word.

The EPS used double-sided double-density 3.5" disks, formatted to 800k with ten 512-byte sectors per track. It could also read (but not write) Ensoniq Mirage sample disks.

The EPS uses MIDI and can be used as a controller of other instruments, or linked to a PC or Macintosh.

The EPS was eventually superseded by the EPS 16+ which upgraded the sample-size to 16-bits and added a 24-bit effects system. Other improvements included CD-ROM support in the optional SCSI interface and FlashBank storage for the OS and favourite sounds.

The EPS and EPS 16+ were both succeeded by the Ensoniq ASR-10 which was able to read EPS samples and disks.