Join the Q! The ESQ-1 Gets a Huge Patch Boost – Sounds and Presets
Cherry Audio’s latest release, the Ensoniq ESQ-1, has brought back heaps of nostalgia for those of us who were cash-strapped musos back in the mid 1980s. Adding to the already substantial preset count, Soniq Odysseys gives you 100 more!
Sounds and Presets
Soniq Odysseys for ESQ-1 for Cherry Audio Ensoniq ESQ-1 by James Dyson
Cherry Audio hit it out of the park again yesterday with their latest synthesizer plugin release, a superb rendition of the classic Ensoniq ESQ-1, officially endorsed by Creative Technology Ltd. and featuring all 32 original ESQ-1 sample waveforms from the original hardware.
Ensoniq synths were many people’s first synth back in the day. They fused that magic combination of feature set and price point, allowing many of us to get close to the sounds our heroes were making without breaking our wallets.
And now we can wallow in the nostalgia alongside a new generation of users discovering the rough diamonds that were Ensoniq synths. As always, one of Cherry Audio’s sound design team, and perhaps their most prolific, James Dyson, has put together an extra bank for the new synth, swelling its already hefty collection of presets by another 100!
There’s the usual collection of styles included here that makes use of the extensive feature set of the ESQ-1. You may have noticed that Cherry Audio have given the ESQ-1 full MPE compatibility, and to support this, James has thrown in an extra 25 MPE presets for those of us with the appropriate controllers!
So if you picked up the Ensoniq ESQ-1 yesterday, treat yourself to this pack for just $9.99, available directly from the Cherry Audio webstore.
Landscape Observer for U•D•O Super Gemini by Nick Klimenko
U•D•O don’t do things by halves. George Hearn has produced some amazing synthesizers in the short number of years since he set up the company after working at Modal. The Super Gemini has to be one of his crowning achievements, what with its 20 voices, bitimbral, binaural synth engine and poly aftertouch.
It’s a beautiful design on the inside, making solid use of FPGA for its oscillator section, coupled with true analog technology with its filters and VCAs. It’s also one of the prettiest hardware synths you will see with a user interface reminiscent of classic Roland gear and the added bonus of a CS-80 style ribbon controller.
Landscape Observer sees LFOstore regular, Nick Klimenko, having a stab at creating a large batch of presets for this amazing synthesizer. They cover the gamut of styles, with all of them making great use of the modulation and performance features of the Super Gemini.
For your money, you get 64 new and exclusive patches, along with 64 performance patches. That’s 128 sounds in total and a ton of inspiration. So if you’re lucky enough to own a Super Gemini, you owe it to the synth and yourself to grab this bundle now.
Landscape Observer is available at the LFOstore website for just €27.
Slowing Time for Ableton Live by Ilian
We don’t often have presets for DAWs in this column, but here’s the exception to the rule. Ableton Live Suite 12 comes packed with a bunch of great synths, and it is the Meld synth, loaded into Live’s Instrument Rack, that gets the attention here.
Meld combines two polyphonic synth engines, each with 24 oscillator types, ranging from the simple to deeply complex. It’s the combination of these powerful and diverse synthesis methods that gives Meld its entirely appropriate name.
Specifically aimed at users who compose cinematic, ambient and atmospheric soundscapes, Slowing Time is a very apt name for this bank. The pack contains 50 patches, almost equally divided between pads, strings, textures and drones.
Every patch makes use of the eight available macros, making it easier to sculpt and shape your own sound from each preset. It must be noted here that this bank requires you to own Ableton Live 12 Suite or higher as the instruments used in this pack aren’t included in lesser versions.
You can grab this bank for $19.95 from the Anton Anru webstore.
Analog Dreams for Roland SH-201 by LFOstore
Has it really been 20 years since Roland released the SH-201? It would appear it is, and it has turned out to be a synthesizer that many people have forgotten about. I mean, it’s not the prettiest thing in the world, is it?
It didn’t get off to the greatest start by using a name that implied it might be a modern-day successor to the legendary SH-101, which it most certainly wasn’t. It’s an analogue modelling synth with 10 voices of polyphony and offers plugin integration, which was quite the thing back in the day!
But whilst it promised much, it didn’t really deliver and has become a bit of a pariah these days, a quality not lost on the LFO.store sound design team who cheekily poke fun at the 201’s plastic build and “unprofessional” sounds. I’m sure there are some devoted SH-201 owners hurling expletives my way right now!
But, alongside the jibes, they claim that it isn’t about the synthesizer itself, its about what someone can do with it, and I think that we can all agree on that. And so with this in mind, they have set about creating 32 new presets for the beleagured synth.
Incorporating solo patches, basses, pads, strings, sequences, arps, plucks and bells, they have certainly pushed the boundaries of what this little synth can do. So if an SH-201 is lurking in a dark, dusty corner of your studio, you might want to grab this pack for €15 and breathe new life into it!
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