1. WELCOME
1.1. History of Ensoniq
The company was founded in 1982 by engineers Robert "Bob" Yannes, Bruce Crockett,
Charles Winterble, David Ziembicki, and Al Charpentier and was originally called Peripheral
Visions and this was actually the same team that designed the Commodore 64. They had
grand ideas about designing and building another computer after the C64 and to raise
some capitol they agreed to design a keyboard for the Atari 2600. Unfortunately the project
was cancelled. Commodore then tried to sue the team so they changed the name of the
company to Ensoniq.
The first 2 products they released,first the Mirage sampler in 1985 then the wonderful ESQ-1
synthesiser in 1986 were an immediate success. In 1988 the SQ-80 was released building
on the success of the ESQ-1 featuring an extra set of 43 waveforms, a powerful sequencer,
floppy disk and Ensoniq's patented poly pressure keyboard. It had an easy to use and
intuitive panel too with lots of info crammed onto the small display.
The artist Adamski used the SQ-80 to great effect on his hit single "Killer".
1.2. About the SQ-80
The SQ-80 was actually ahead of its time and was an early workstation. It had a very fat
and rich sound really. It was an 8 voice and 8 part multitimbral synth with an integrated
20000 note MIDI sequencer. Each voice consisted of 3 x DCO's (based on the DOC5503
chip) into 3 DCA's, an analogue CEM 3379 based low pass filter, a stereo DCA, 4 envelopes
and 3 LFO's. It has hard sync between the oscillators too.
1.3. Arturia's Version of the SQ-80
The Mirage and ESQ-1 were plagued by a few reliabilty issues but although the SQ-80 was
better you'd still be lucky to find a working one now. Transporting hardware synthesisers
around can be inconvenient and as a hardware device it can go wrong at a moments notice.
Hardware can also present certain workflow limitations, since devices can only serve one
function at a time.
At Arturia we pride ourselves on offering the best of both worlds - the uncompromised
quality and character of the original hardware, delivered in a convenient software package
that is adapted to a modern workflow. Arturia’s SQ80 V is a faithful recreation of the original
hardware, capturing all of its nuances and sonic character with utmost detail. In addition to
this, we have expanded on the original design with new features and capability not found
on the original unit, including:
• MPE implementation
• Phase Distortion & Transwave Synthesis
• Hidden Waveforms
• Unison Mode
• Arpeggiator
• Advanced modulation capabilities
• 4 FX slots featuring 15 high-quality effects
• Up to 16 voices of polyphony
• Run multiple instances with different settings
• Automate sound parameters from your DAW
• Unlimited patch recall
Arturia - User Manual SQ80 V - Welcome
2
Summary of Contents for SQ80 V
Page 1: ...USER MANUAL _SQ80 V...
