I think I just answered my own question, hopefully I was to compress the spring a little and slide it carefully out of the holder

Same here, literally just died. I am so pissed.

There’s a fix, I’ll upload a video of the fix.

They’re all digital except the ensoniq mirage

nice! did you get a copy of the manual? i'd start there. I do hope to make more vids when my life isn't so busy again.

@@fabbrismidnight yes have the digital manual

Good thing about Ensoniq synths is that you can find all available information online (service manuals, Transoniq “magazine” etc.).

Yes! Thank you.

My thoughts exactly, and I feel your pain :-/

Ebay? Offer-up?

Very much, and the best part is/was that you get to bring your own wavetables to the party! That and the modulation capabilities on the EPS/16+ and ASR-10 (also TS-10, which you could load earlier Ensoniq sample formats into up to 8MB or RAM) made it a very formidable synthesizer, far more powerful than just a simple sampler-plus-effects.

I've been thinking about this a lot recently, too. I still have my TS-10 but it's mostly being used as a 61 key poly-AT controller, and occasionally twiddling with the built-in waves. Sadly, I lost the ability to transfer samples to it a while ago when I stupidly sold my ASR-10 🤦‍♂️; but I'm finding the Korg Kronos to be a very capable alternative with its wave sequences, fwiw. A bit expensive but so are second-hand ASR's, so... Anyways, I 100% agree. It would be amazing to see what Ensoniq would be producing today if they had survived.

adub303 Kronos is a monster machine. I occasionally see them pop up locally for $1500-1700. Would love to pick one up some day.

@@whenvioletsturngrey9597 They really are monstrous, and if you can snag one at that price I highly recommend it. If you're the type to replace studio equipment at all, it might be the bit that has you selling most of your other gear 😆. And my apologies for sort of derailing the topic from the original Ensoniq discussion, I've just been pining for some good transwaves, hyperwaves, and wavetables in general. ✌️

Sounds right to me. You can also think of it as a wavetable synth, with the restriction that all rows in the table have to be made from a section of the same sample. The rows can, however, be really long. With a long sample and careful offsets, you can get close to a general wavetable. (Glue your waves together into a long sample then chop it up with careful modulation of the loop offsets. Learned trick from Robin Bausewein on here. Tends to end up with its own character which can be difficult to tame and hard to create)

I'm not enough of a technical expert to answer conclusively, but I can tell you that I consider wavetable and transwave to be "functionally" very similar, to the point of being interchangeable in many cases. In both cases you are using a mod source to scan though a sample to create complex and evolving sounds.

@@crominion6045 I also tend to agree that they're essentially performing the same task. Ensoniq definitely offered a far more open and accessible approach as far as being able to use your own samples; which is a double-edged sword: flexibility at the expense of ease of wavetable creation. But the spirit was always more about the synthesis and exploration than about re-treading PPG's (et al) path, so you could end up in some pretty uncharted waters pretty quickly with very interesting and pleasing results 😀

@@fabbrismidnight I definitely agree that the EPS-16+ (and by extension ASR and TS series) have their own character. I'm kicking myself lately for not having leaned into the wavetable aspect when I had my ASR-10 keyboard years ago- mostly using it as a sampler and effects, albeit for some rather interesting, Ensoniq-tinged sonic mangling. I'm really appreciating your video breakdown as well as Robin's video series- and I have to say I'm extremely impressed by your continued attribution- it's a huge asset to the community 🙂

You can simulate a wavetable using one transwave sample - just “assemble” your smaller waves in necessary order and make them same size (let’s say 128 samples each). Can be done on computer and then sent to sampler using MIDI SDS. This will create ability to scan thru waves as simple wavetable (with corresponding parameters specified in sampler).

You can do it either way, MPC midi -> Circuit sounds or Circuit midi -> MPC samples. Make sure your input and output midi channels match and your tracks are assigned to the right ones and all that.

Good Q. IMO I would call Transwave synth. a specific way to do granular synthesis. You could call it "Esoniq's take on granular synthesis".

Also, in granular, I think the "grains" you loop are pretty small. This Transwave machine can do really long loops/grains. Just thought of this lol.