I purchased an ASR10 From ebay and i got it yesterday and i must say holy crap this thing is a beast. I thought maybe because its quite old it would be limited. hell no this things sampling engine is incredible I'm able to take samples and just destroy them(in a good way) in ways the mpcs and other samplers can't. Im blown away by the effects and the different ways i can stretch and make synths with my samples. The cons are obviously the long loading times the sequencer is kinda trick y the weight of the thing and floppy discs and ****. but damn I'm blown away. this is the best keyboard sampler and i think it holds up with todays standard in production.

Somebody needs to bring Keyboard samplers back! i love this thing
Anybody else still down on the ASR?

My mate used to some crazy stuff live with his ASR10, he used to manipulate samples using modwheel changing pitch and length of the samples. Completely messing up a sound beyond what a lot of other samplers I've heard and used.

Yeah i love being able to set certain perimeters to the mod wheel. Like i said the sampling engine is really great even in todays standard, so you can sculpt all kinds of sounds with it.

I understand you are happy with your purchase and rightly so.

But are you really entitled to call it the best? Did you really try them all?

I can not reason it out anymore, but i sold my ASR 10 some 20 years ago and bought a K2000 instead, which i then upgraded to a K2500 later on. Obviously i found the K2k better in comparison to the ASR.

So far i did not try the V-Synth, which is fabled to be the best too...

well yeah i really haven't tried them all but i would definitely put my chips on the ASR. Im just amazed at the things you can do with it even in this day and age. The sequencer is mediocre but you gotta admit its a great instrument.

The sequencer is excellent.
I was in a band in the 90's, and we sequenced our entire first album on the ASR10. Most of the sounds and effects came from the ASR10 too.

Give us a short jam vid with it?


I like watching members jams.

It's the one hardware sampler I still want! Gonna replace my S1000 with one eventually. Is the workflow on the rack version much more limited? I can't fit another keyboard.. Gonna have to downsize soon as it is.

I used the rack version once and the layout is pretty much the same.

It's also worth mentioning how good the effects are, I think it's the equivalent of a DP-2 in there.
Funny enough, it has also become sought after by the Hip Hop guys, because Kanye West makes a lot of his beats on the ASR10.

^ Kanye, Pharrell, Timbaland, RZA, Daft Punk... it's a long list of famous users actually.. The ASR-10 is a mind blowing sampler even by today's standard. I've owned just about every unit from the MPC60, SP1200 all the way to Octatrack. I even had the infamous K2000 in the 90's... incidentally hated it with a passion. The ASR however is stellar, something very special. The converters, the transwave synthesis, the FX.... I hate to be hyping it so much but it certainly ranks among the best, if no the best sampler ever produced imo.

My friend bought one new and we used to make these complicated setlists on its sequencer for live shows. I was blown away with what that machine could do at that time. It was a very powerful workhorse. My friend still owns his, still uses it and loves it as much now as the day he brought it home from the store. I suspect he'll be buried with the thing one day.

I just got an EPSm for a different flavor of sampling than my Akai's. I'm dying to see how the Ensoniq way of doing things will inspire me.

Good score on that ASR! May it serve you well like it has for my friend all these years.

Yeah though I don't use mine very much anymore I'll never sell it, I used to do everything on it back in the 90's. The converters on it are awesome, lots and lots of warm bass!

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man i don't know i use a 2000xl and coming from that sequencer (which is beautiful) to the asr's Sequencer its kinda rough. for me anyway haha

Yeah I'm one of those hiphop guys who had to have it. I got an Mpc an ASR and now i need an Sp1200 to complete the trifecta

Word no doubt. Its a brilliant machine anybody who hasn't had the opportunity to use an ASR is missing out. But i mean seriously I'm blown away that i was able to make sounds on it that are more complex and bizarre than on abeltons sampler. It really lives up to the hype

I might be able to do something like that...

It was sought after by hip hop guys back in the 90's. Because Timbaland used one. And Kanye too. That's mainly with sample based producers who treasure them just like other classic hardware including the MPC60 and SP1200.

But most modern hip hop is EDM influenced and produced mainly with DAWs and software synths. It is not economical to use samples any more.

Boom Bap and sample based hiphop has made a comeback in the mainstream. Mpcs and ASRs are Sought after still to this day.

Joeybada$$
Kendrick Lamar
Schoolboy q

Just a few guys who use samples and keep it real with samplers

Messing around with the sequencer and samples a good while back and the dark heart if the ASR.I like the loose vibe-

So what features are you finding are able to mangle the samples? The effects are top notch for sure and the quality from the AD convertors are fantastic. The sound is magic in a box for sure. Lots of button pressing to edit samples though. Ensoniq was a great company. Someone definitely needs to bring back this quality of a sampler that more hands on.

I hear ya on bringing sophisticated samplers back, a keyboard could be cool too.

It does take a lot of time with the buttons i must admit but For mangling up samples i found using heavy effects+wave time compress/expand can give you tons of options. i also love the way this thing can crossfade samples for a seamless loop.

Thats really sick dude aint gunna lie

ta....

Yes. I would call ASR-10 one of the best sounding samplers ever made.

I own following samplers: Emax I SE, Emulator II+, Emulator E5000, Ensoniq ASR-10R, Akai S1100, Akai S3000XL, Roland S-550, Roland S-770, Roland V-Synth, Yamaha TX16W, Yamaha RS7000, Dynacord Add One, SCI Prophet 2002, Kurzweil K2600R, NI Kontakt.

While it doesn't have extensive modulation routing options of E5000 or K2600R, what it does have is instant SOUND and some crazy sound processing facilities not found anywhere else (for average beat maker, probably not important, but for serous sound designer, endless source of inspiration).

These organ sounds were created out of 50 byte sample data:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZpzS0gfvsg

I find them sounding more interesting than 5 Gbyte Kontakt sample packs for Organs. So i guess size or modulation routings aren't everything. Sometimes it is about cool effects and processing the machine offers.


Try to make this on K2k:

ASR-10 synthesizing industrial sounds | donsolaris.com

the 50 byte organs blew me away, it sounds so fat! and 50 bytes jeeesus. I'm so happy this machine exists And damn those Synthesized industrial sounds out of the 909 are INSANE

Yeah nice one, indeed.

I am quite sure tho, that you also know some examples what V.A.S.T was able to do, which no other sampler could do. Not to mention that ASR couldnt read my S7x samples, which was important, back then. However, as mentioned i dont remember all the reasoning. Its 20 years past.

K2500 and S760 are still with me btw. So i guess my thoughts were good enough.

There is no doubt the ASR is/was an excellent sampler with an own sound. My comment was merely pointing at calling something best, without knowing the competition.

Actually, when it comes to synths and samplers, i think its silly to call anything "best".

Those cats are in the minority. Listen to what's played in the clubs and on commercial radio. Also nobody wants to pay to clear samples in this market. The prices of 2nd hand MPCs has also dropped significantly. With the only exception being the 60 and 3000 because they are ultra rare. But the 2000xl, 2500 and 1000 can be had for cheap nowadays. The same with Roland samplers.

And hiphop is altogether very progressive and always striving to push barriers. Technology has always influenced hiphop (and most other styles of electronic music to be honest). From the introduction of drum machines, samplers, synths which created a palette for all electronic music in general. The current shift from hardware to ITB setups has also changed the sound. You're starting to get a lot more eclectic and experimental stuff that mixes up genres coming out.

Not K2k, but PC3:



The sort of windy sound that "rises" and "falls" is actually looped drum samples from ROM through several bandpass filters in parallel (you couldn't do this on a K2k or even a K2600 because it requires more than three Layers to be linked together). Anyways, I'd still love to mess around with an ASR-10 some day.

sure things are strange with the new electronic hiphop sound but that still doesn't change the fact that a lot of mainstream hiphop still samples. even if we look at club and radio **** drake niki manaij they got tons on samples on who sampled. and as far as the sampler hardware. its not all that cheap and on some of the samplers on ebay (particularly mpcs) you got either like 20 people watching or simulatiously bidding on ****. sampling in hiphop is far from dead

Dunno about 1000's, but 2000 is usually 500-600€ over here. 2500's are even more expensive, more than they were when they were new. I've seen them for 1500€.

Fair enough! Which is why it is hard to let them go. In fact when listing samplers in the post above i totally forgot i have EIIIXP. Each of them has something i like which makes things ... harder. My only complaint about ASR10 is voice allocation thing. You can not lock i.e. sound XY to have 2 poly, sound ZZ to have 5 poly etc. It is either mono or poly.

Good work!

The ASR is really a sample based synthesizer. Its built upon Ensoniq's transwave synthesis, which is more or less wavetable synthesis.

Basically, you can assign any available modulation source to sample start, end, loopstart, loopend, or loopposition. So say for example, you have a sample that goes hello, with loop position controlled by the mod wheel. You can move the loop frame forward and back through the word while you have a key pressed down. For example you can loop on the H, then move the modwheel to the L, then to the O, and back to the E. Or you could use an LFO and make it go hellollehellollehellolleh....

To my knowledge, no other hardware sampler can do that. Not sure about software, as I haven't kept up with the scene. Anyway, glitch is childs play with the ASR-10, and its not always easy to get smooth results, but you usually can with some effort and the right waveform.

(By the way, the EPS16+ also has transwave functionality. As does the TS-10/12, which can't sample but can load ASR format samples.)

Also, as mentioned by someone else, the ASR has several crossfade looping algorithms which, when used on the sources suggested by the manual are highly effective. But I also wanted to mention the algorithm called synthesize loop. This takes bits and bobs of the sample and constructs a loop out of it. They could have called it the 'loop-anything' algorithm, because it can...

I love the ASR-10 and I doubt I'll ever part with mine. But my personal favorite Ensoniq sampler (despite being the inferior machine) is the ASR-X. Its just soooo fast workflow wise and I value that.

synthesize loop was a favorite feature for sure-

it is a 100% crossfade loop (kind of a more accurate description)- I would have done this all day long if it weren't for the slow motorola 68000 series processor in the ASR (which meant you could go brew coffee and come back- still the ASR would be chugging along.... calculating the synthesized loop).

truly magical to me - back then- and I still have a loop of from that process that I love.