Ensoniq ASR-10

SCSI2SD v5.5 Plug-In Drive (for asr10)

| kelvink273

Although the Ensoniq ASR10 is aging tech, there’s something about it that I just love. Its iconic effects, the excellent feel of the keyboard, the extensive modulation options, the unique envelopes, and the excellent transwave capabilities are some of the reasons why I will never part with it.

I purchased mine with the SCSI board, which I would highly recommend unless you’re happy to deal with floppy disks for all your storage functions. Originally, I had an external SCSI hard drive, which was fine but bulky. After parting with that (the drive died), I went with using the external Iomega Zip drives. That works, but anyone who has extended experience with these knows they will die eventually unless they are incredibly lucky.

I was having trouble with mine, so I decided to do some research into newer tech options. After some research and a very useful video by Dick Hifi, I ended up getting the SCSI2SD v5.5 Plug-In Drive from Chicken Systems.

So far, I’m loving the ease of use and the super small form factor! The drive fits in the palm of your hand and is super light. It plugs right into the SCSI card on the ASR, with no need for an SCSI cable, making things nice and neat. The only cable needed is a provided USB cable to power the drive. When you purchase the drive, which uses a removable SD card for storage, it is partitioned into four drives and already contains the ASR10 O.S. It was literally as easy as connecting it to my ASR10, powering on the ASR, and then browsing the partitions via the ASR10 buttons to create sub-directories when you want to store sounds!

And it is quick and silent.

For me, this option is well worth the $110 I paid for it and brings using the ASR10 right up to date! If you are looking for a storage option for your ASR10 and have the SCSI card installed, I recommend adding this option to your list of things to investigate.

Gear Spotlight – Ensoniq ASR-10

| kelvink273
Ensoniq ASR-10
The Ensoniq ASR-10

The ASR-10 is one of the oldest pieces of gear in my setup but still holds a very central role. I use it as my main keyboard (the weight of the keys on the 88-keys keyboard is very nice and it feels familiar), and I also use it to add lo-fi character to clean samples.

I grew up on sample-based music during the “golden era” of Hip Hop & House. Due to the technology of the time, those classics that I grew up on included subtle gear noise, bit reduction, and aliasing imparted by the popular samplers of the day (MPC, SP12, ASR mainly). So, for me, the ultra-clean sound of today’s production is – well – lacking something.

Here’s my general process for dirtying up a clean sample:

  • Find a clean sample I like and throw it into Ableton Simpler
  • Sample the clean version in MONO into Maschine
  • Record the clean version through the Soundcraft mixer into my (Technics RS-TR355) cassette tape deck
  • Sample the cassette tape version into the ASR (with or without any ASR onboard effects).
  • Record the “dirty” ASR sample into a new pad in Maschine
  • Link the dirty version and the original clean version pads in Maschine and mix the levels to taste
  • Play them together and resample in Maschine to a single pad
  • Have fun

With my (Soundcraft Signature 12MTK) mixer this process is pretty quick. The Soundcraft’s multi-track USB audio interface allows any VST/AU/AAX/TDM/RTAS plug-ins to be inserted on any input channel. Then, sending output to the tape recorder is just a matter of turning up a send on that mixer channel.  The output of the cassette recording is connected to a dedicated channel on the mixer and I have a dedicated channel send that sends audio to the ASR.

I find that playing the original clean sample together with the dirty one does much more than adding some unique character. It also obviously fattens up the sound as you’re layering samples. The end results can be much more interesting and (here’s the point!) unique to you.

Of course, you don’t need an ASR to try this yourself, it just ads an extra bit of ASR-10 character that I enjoy! (There are some great plugins like Decimort that include vintage synth emulations including the ASR-10).

You could just use a cheap cassette recorder and/or cheap mixer. The main point is to take things out of your computer and then bring them back in using any gear that is likely to leave a sonic imprint on the original sound.

Curious about the ASR-10? Find out more about why people love it in the short video below.

ASR-10 Specs can be found here.

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