Ensoniq Product Lines Back On Track

Newly designed silicon and software upgrades announced

February 29, 2000 -- E-MU / ENSONIQ has announced that its ENSONIQ product line is back on track with excellent availability and continued support of the ASR-X table top sampler, ZR-76 keyboard workstation, and PARIS digital audio recording system. The chip problems that have hampered availability of the ENSONIQ product line have been resolved using newly developed chips and the company has announced software upgrades for the ASR-X and PARIS system.

New Silicon fixes problems with previous design

The company has made public that the issues surrounding the availability of the product line stemmed from a problem with one of the chips used in the sound engine of the product line. The ASIC was totally redesigned and re-released, not only improving the performance of the chip but also eliminating the previous problems that were reducing yield of the chip, preventing the company from shipping the quantity of product that was being demanded by the marketplace.

"We are extremely relieved to have these problems behind us and the chip design crew at SEI (Silicon Engineering Inc.) did a fabulous job" comments CEO and President, Don Scott. "Chip design is a incredibly challenging area and we are glad we are into a new generation of chip technology that will allow us to address the needs of the market" he adds. The company also hastens to point out that the problems with the previous chip design affected only yield at the chip foundry level and had no impact on product quality.

For more information, go to www.ensoniq.com.