Ensoniq was founded in the early '80s by some engineers from Commodore. Ensoniq's first product, a software drum machine, was aimed at the home computer market. One of Ensoniq's co founders, was responsible for designing the Commodore 64's three-voice synth chip. In 1982 he designed a portion of a PC that was similar to the sound synthesizer that ended up in the Amiga. It was this chip, the 'Q chip', that was used in the Mirage, the world's first affordable sampler and the ESQ-1, Ensoniq's wavetable synthesizer. Later came the MR and ZR workstations. The Ensoniq MRKontakt library contains the Urban Dance and Real World sound sets that were popular in both the keyboard and rack hardware. The mixture of world ethnic and urban street sounds is very unique. |
