Editing Ensoniq EPS (section)

==Use==
The EPS is a performance sampler. Besides the main processor it contains a dedicated sound engine so that playing can be done whilst loading another sample. The main processor handles the I/O while the sound engine is responsible for keeping the audio running without interruption — this made the EPS especially useful for live performance situations.

The interface, although operating through a single-line fluorescent display, offers rapid access to all functions by the intelligent way that functionality is broken into ''Modes'' and ''Pages''.

'''Modes''' are: Load, Command, and Edit.

'''Pages''' are: Instrument, Sequence, MIDI, and System.

In addition to eight soft instrument buttons, it has a number pad (0-9), four cursor buttons, a value slider, and 'Yes' - 'No' buttons.

The vast majority of functionality can be accessed with less than three clicks: Mode - Page - Number Pad.

There is also a dedicated button for Sampling, and three for the built-in sequencer. The EPS-16 Plus also has a dedicated button for configuring the effects DSP.

Easter Egg: There is a hidden menu in the Command-ENV1 page which contains Software Information, the names of the designers, a DC Offset Adjustment, and a keyboard calibration command.

===Instrument===
Instrument pages are prefixed by clicking a Mode (Load, Command, or Edit) -- yielding functions relating to loading, editing, and tweaking EPS sampled instruments. Instruments can contain a number of discrete samples which are patched into Layers - each with their own ADSR-like envelopes and keyboard ranges. A loop editor allows you to define envelopes, cross-fades, and sample start-end, and loop points in real-time. It is possible to modulate the loop start with any source to give complex evolving sounds. On the EPS-16 Plus, the Transwave loop mode allows the start point to be modulated in exact "single-cycle" steps, giving effects similar to the [[Palm Products GmbH|PPG Wave]]. The Ensoniq manuals were famous for including quality tutorials for sampling and editing new sounds.

===Sequence===
The Sequence pages allow you to define sequences and songs. Simple quantization is available, along with a crude, but effective, step-editor to tweak individual sequence elements. Sequences (with up to eight instruments playing simultaneously) can be assembled into Song Steps. In assembling songs, you can define the number of repetitions of each sequence that comprises a song step. This makes it relatively easy to score and arrange a song.

Sequences depend on having instruments loaded into one of the eight instrument banks in the right order. Banks of instruments can be saved which can be loaded in by a song sequence so that loading the song loads all the appropriate sounds into the right places so everything will play when you start the sequencer. In the EPS-16 Plus, an effect is also assigned to a bank.

===MIDI===
The EPS supports polyphonic-aftertouch on its 61 keys, and therefore allows a fair amount of expression as a MIDI controller. Sys-ex messages are supported over MIDI, and can transmit and receive on multiple MIDI channels simultaneously.

===System===
By using a dedicated sound engine in addition to the main processor, sound generation and disk I/O are handled separately. This allows so-called load-while-play, a feature quite unique at the time. The user can boot the EPS and load some sounds while playing the ones that are already loaded. Then sample in a new sound, only to find that you're out of floppies to save your new sample to — the EPS OS will allow you to go ahead, format another floppy disk, and save your new sound without the system function getting in the way of playing the audio.

True to their user-oriented approach, the EPS boot disk not only contains everything needed to run the sampler, but also a tiny operating system with the ability to create a bootable version of itself. This was an improvement on the earlier [[Ensoniq Mirage|Mirage]] sampler, which required a special boot disk with a formatting program, and could not make copies of its own boot disks.