E-mu ESI-32

Price Paid: US $450 used

Ease of Use: 10
Hello,

I would like to know if there is a site or Parts Company that supplies Hard Drive such as IOMEGA 250MB ZIP and 2GB JAZ for EMU SAMPLERS.

I am Looking to replace the Internal 3.5 Floppy with an Internal ZIP or JAZ drive.

Also, Looking for the ESI-32 3.02 Operating system.

Memory cards for the MS-1 Sampler. Preferably ~20 to 40MB cards
PCMCIA typeII 5V card.

Please keep me posted.
Thank you.
Chgo,IL.
Mr.Roland Rik

Features: 9
ESI-32 nice as easy -Basic Sampler is a great tool.

I just need the Upgrades.

Expressiveness/Sounds: 9
VERY Useful tools and effects.

Reliability: 9
Great addition to Music Production.

Customer Support: 7
FINE! They just don't have the parts I need. Some items too old or too expensive.

Great help if you have current products.

Overall Rating: 8
Recommended any small to Midsized studio.

I would buy another. But I need to finish off the Current ESI-32 to be fully functional.

Please kee me posted.
Thank you.
CHGO, IL.
FAURUK@AOL.COM

Submitted by Mr. Roland Rik at 10/03/2005 14:42

Price Paid: US $200

Ease of Use: 7
I'm a little biased on this review because I have to compare this sampler to what I have been using - an ensoniq eps 16+. I bought this as a second sampler, to use along with the eps.
I've found so far that the esi is fairly easy to navigate and simple tasks can be acomplished rather quickly. The only place that I notice a difference is in the actual sampling itself, there are a few more extra steps too take before you can hear the sample compared to the rapid sampling abilities of the ensoniq units. Also the display screen pretty much sucks for live performance, it's so dark that even with the contrast adjusted, the thing has to be right in front of you to scroll through the menus. Lfo, filters, etc. are easy to adjust with instant results. Overall, not to bad to work with, if you take time to read the manual.

Features: 7
My esi came with OS 3.02 - the last upgrade, which was created in '97. Apparently this offers several functions which the earlier os didn't come with - many more filters to choose from in the VCF and something called a "harmonic enhancer" which I have yet to figure out. Standard features include a scsi port - which I know from the eps 16+ is an essential feature on a sampler. Even if you don't plan on using a computer to edit samples/import/export, the scsi allows connection to a harddrive or cd-rom which speeds up loading times for instant gradification - rather than waiting several minutes to load 2 floppy disks.
No onboard effects. Samples can be looped, reversed, truncated, normalized, cross-faded. Vcf, vca - both with envelopes which are measured in time, lfo with 3-4 waveforms and an auxillary envelope- which can be set to change other functions, such as lfo rate, pan, crossfade over time. The features included are pretty decent and sound good, but compared to the eps 16+ (which came out 4 years before this) are rather limited. Should be fine for many users, but won't have many of the things you find on higher end units - thus less flexiblity.
I should note that there are 10 programmable trigger buttons on the sampler itself which are nice for one shots when not hooked to a midi controller.

Expressiveness/Sounds: 8
The samples are only going to sound as good as your sample source. However, the included factory sounds range from ok to quite good. Emu is also producing cd rom's for this unit which include samples of their newer proteus units as well. Plus, it has stereo inputs and outputs

The vcf section on this unit sounds ok-good, it's not analog, but usuable. But compared to the rez filter effect on an eps 16+, it's thin - that sucker can blow out a speaker!

Reliability: N/A
I've only had it a week, but I would trust it. I hear good things about EMU.

Customer Support: N/A
Well I emailed about getting some replacement rack ears and they haven't responded yet, so again I can't say

Overall Rating: 10
I picked this up bare bones for about 120$ I invested 20$ to max out the ram, 25$ on a harddrive and planning on another 25$ to get a cd-rom. For the cash, it's a great deal. These routinely sell for very little on ebay. I am not at all sure why - with 32 mb of ram you can sample up to 3 minutes in mono - more than enough for my needs. I understand there is a turbo kit available for this with more filters and a s/pdif connection. But the aftermarket for the upgrade is nearly 500$ - and used prices for a turbo esi is about 500$. Personally, I'm very happy with 200$ for a very usable secondary sampler- with plenty of support on the web.

Submitted by Anonymous at 02/12/2003 18:31

Price Paid: US $245 used

Ease of Use: 8
This sampler is really easy to use after you read a few things in the manual.A lot of its features aren't that hidden.Placing samples across your keyboard [or an rm1x]is pretty easy.Setting up different presets[like programs for akai]is easy.The only thing I dont like about the os is no graphic waveform editing.I have this thing on a scsi chain to my pc and I run my edited samples from soundforge and esi-win to it flawlessly.

Features: 7
It has 32 voice polyphony enough for me.No effects you got to buy the board separate.Mine came with scsi and you can get 6 more outs with the effects or digital i/o.Midi control is good cc,p/b, but no sysex.No sequencer

Expressiveness/Sounds: 10
It has awesome low end[more than an akai s2000]good for dance,hip hop experimental this thing kicks ass for an older model sampler.

Reliability: 10
Has not failed me yet.I would gig it.

Customer Support: 9
The people at Emu answer the phone and reply to emails.

Overall Rating: 10
If it were lost or stolen I'd look for a deal on one of these or another esi model like the 2000 or 4000.

Submitted by nick at 01/31/2002 00:44

Price Paid: 2995 (NLG)

Ease of Use: 9
Tremendously easy to use. Enough buttons, enough on the display.
The manual is perfect, couldn't say anything else.

Features: 9
With v3.01, a ZIP-drive, a CD-rom, a harddrive and 8 megabytes of RAM (30-pins, mind you!), this is my best piece of equipment.
You should always add a SCSI adapter and get more than the standard amount of 2 megabytes of RAM. The FX-board is okay, I guess (don't have it), but I'd prefer to invest that money in an external FX-processor.

Expressiveness/Sounds: 9
The factory samples are quite nice, but I got some from the Emulator library that are even better. Also sampling yourself gives a good quality sound. Transfering cd-extraced samples from the PC gives anormous power!

Reliability: 7
It crashed once and I still don't know why. Might have been a SCSI problem. Addressing external SCSI drives sometimes gives some errors, but most of the time it's because of bad wiring or hard-to-read CDs.

Customer Support: N/A
Don't know, didn't need any support.

Overall Rating: 8
Fine piece of equipment, certainly worth 400 to 500 US$ second hand, provided it has SCSI and at least 8MB ram!
Of course the ESI-2000 or ESI-4000 are a better deal, if you can get one. A bit more expensive, but more features.

Submitted by Bastiaan at 08/27/2001 11:16

Price Paid: 450 (GBP) used

Ease of Use: 7
OS 3.01/Turbo

Well, aspects of it are pretty easy to use - the basic menu system is Pretty straight forward - the basic menu system is easy enough. I find it less arcane than the baroque S-760. However its difficult to keep track of zones (E-mu speak for sample to keyboard range assignments) in your head with no graphical representation of them.

Features: 3
It plays back samples... up to 32 mono/16 stereo, each sample through one VCA/VCF with a single LFO, it doesn't do much else. Turbo effects aren't good for much except delay.

Expressiveness/Sounds: 3
Pretty minimal synthesis capability, fairly weak sounding filters. Some odd design decisions which seem to have been made only to prevent the ESi competing with E-mu's more professional models. For example no envelope depth modulation is possibile at all, not even by velocity - velocity modulates VCA/VCF *level* only. Realtime control is minimal and realtime assignments have no range control - its all or nothing (this causes filter zipper noise)

Reliability: 3
My model needs a noise suppressing power strip to prevent it crashing.

Customer Support: N/A
Helpful but not terribly useful

Overall Rating: 5
I bought it because it was cheap, had plenty of outputs, supports SCSI sample dump and isn't an Akai. It wasn't the best move I've ever made but it gets more use than my S-760 (which is a far superior piece of kit) simply because the SCSI sample dump makes it quick to go from having a sample in the PC to makeing some noise with it.

Submitted by Anonymous at 04/03/2001 05:54

Price Paid: US $799

Ease of Use: 5
OS 3.01 32MB RAM. Turbo Card. My unit is full-blown to the max.

The main drawback with this sampler is the stripped- down OS- it is still a fully-featured OS with the usual truncate, reverse, time-stretch, all kinds of digital tools) it's just getting around is a real pain and saving to disc is wasteful (you can only Save whole Banks!). E-Mu evidently wants you to spend the big $$$ bucks on their Pro samplers like the E4 that have their full-blown EOS Operating System.

Features: 6
32 voice polyphony.
I have the Turbo card, which I use mainly for its digital spdif I/O. I got ripped off bad by E-Mu ordering direct from them...$499! I found out only later than Sam Ash sold the Turbo card for about $350! The FX that come with the card suck pretty bad. No big deal- I've got tons of outboard FX. comes with midi in/out of course and a SCSI port. I use the SCSI with my PC and Wavelab to extensively cut up beats and send them to the Esi-32-- sounds just killer. The Esi-32 beats sound better than the source! Really warm sound. The digital filters are a weak point but are still useful. These filters are not as warm as in older E-mu samplers.

Expressiveness/Sounds: 10
This sampler blows everything else away for the money. A couple of years ago I walked into Sam Ash ready to spend $999 on a Akai S2000. I paid $799 brand new for this unit instead and it blows away the Akai 5000's and 6000's that cost $$$ thousands. The E-Mu CD-Roms are OK, some CD-Rom sampled sounds better than others. This samper is best starting with good samples and beats ripped off of audio CD's. Again, this unit is a good deal at its low price just because of how it sounds. Very warm compared to Akai or Yamaha. -Not the easiest sampler to program, but can't beat the sound for the money!

Reliability: 8
I have never had it go down. The only problem is an occasional SCSI buss error when I have it hooked up to the PC, but I think this is the fault of Windows and Mr. Bill Gates, not E-mu.

Customer Support: 7
E-mu has been helpful. The only time I needed them was to order the Turbo card and get a source for 32MB 30-pin RAM.

Overall Rating: 8
I would buy it again at its Used Price (now about $400). It fits really well into my home project studio along with my PC, my Roland JV-1010 synth, and my VS-1680 recorder.

Submitted by Anonymous at 02/24/2001 22:08

Price Paid: GB Pounds 600 used

Ease of Use: 5
The basic sound of this unit is it's strong point, but even so gone are the warm filters of the E111. Used for applications where filter resonance is unneeded the sound is basically good.
Setting up presets(AKA patches,keygroups) is a little archaic. Doing the obvious is easy, but where subtle programming tricks are needed the machine becomes work intensive.
Samples cannot be allocated to something like Rolands 'Partial' before they're applied to the keyboard enabling quick re-use of certain setup parameters. The newer EMU's now have something called a 'Voice'. But EMU have decined to upgrade the ESI's OS to include this and other useful functionality.
Presets are assigned to each of the 16 MIDI channels, as opposed to the other way round, so layering is not easy, although it is possible. ie. to keep all ones drums on 1 channel and swap just the hihat sounds means re-editing the preset.
The digital processing; Compression, timestretch, eq, and related functions are good, and fairly fast. Truncation and looping are made harder by the 20*4 Character LCD display, imposed by the price of the machine, those who have used a waveform display will scream.
IMHO the file functions are the least well thaught out aspect: Once the multi mode (Multi timbral assignments)are set up one can save ONLY the whole bank (or contents of memory) So any presets one has loaded/created auditioned and rejected must be individually erased from memory, along with it's samples. (whereas one can save a 'performance'(on a Roland) or 'multi'(Akai))
The file system is not clever, in that a favourite preset (ie a large string multisample) will be saved each time a new 'song' it features in, is created, potentially wasting vast amounts of disk space. Also, if that sample/setup is improved, it should be re-saved back to the source banks. Entailing the re-loading of each bank...

Features: 7
32 note polyphony, 32 meg max ram.( 2 meg standard, disposed of when upgraded). no built in effects or expansion board. SCSI and digital input expansion boards for use with storage media and digital sampling respectively. Importing of Akai format samples (From CD ONLY)
fine for a machine in this price bracket.

Expressiveness/Sounds: 8
The sounds can be made extremely realistic. (Except for analogue synth type sounds) and assignment of controllers is fairly comprehensive, making for good expressive capability.

Reliability: 7

Customer Support: 2
Polite and responsive. But for a machine launched 2 years ago, EMU don't appear to be upgrading (or updating) it's OS any more. (this is needed to bring it's compatibility with other sample formats into line with other samplers). At EMU's homepage, Although promised, E4 Software upgrades have not been downloadable for PC users for many months.

Overall Rating: 4
Overall then, in a pro environment, this machine is best used for monotimbrall use. ie. memory hungry multisamples, Used alongside other samplers/instruments with more effective system architectures. For semi-pro, it's useable as a main instrument, but not ideal.
I baught it as a scratchpad, to write songs on, but this relies on getting the ideas into the studio easily. (The Akai 2000xl is better). I would not buy it again.

Submitted by Grant Ransom at 01/21/1997 11:47