E-MU ESI-4000

I'm used to EMU Samplers and this is just like all the others - pretty straightforward and easy to use with a logical menu structure. The manual is relaxed and easy to understand. Working with the small screen can be a bit finicky though, but I use D-Sound Pro (on the Mac) to upload samples so that makes things a bit easier

There's 64 note polyphony and and if you have the Turbo option lots of funky filters to play with. I put more RAM in mine and it was easy to do. Overall, I'd say excellent value for money.

Samples are only as good as the sounds you put into them of course, but the ESI does a nice job of reproducing stuff, and with the filters (especially with the Turbo Option) you can really mangle sounds. Also, on the CDs that come with it, there's plenty of useful stuff to get you going. There's the standard pianos/strings etc, and also some off the wall ethnic stuff etc.

I have gigged with it and brought it on the road. It's rock solid. The only issue is with SCSI - you need to have the drives up and running before the sampler or else it won't recognise them

I've never had to call E-MU. I installed the Turbo Option and the RAM myself without a hitch. Hooking up CD-ROM drives, Zip drives and computers can be a little tricky - you need to boot stuff up in the right order.

to be honest, I'm moving very much towards software sampling and using a laptop live, so no, I wouldn't buy another one. But I'd buy an Emu before an Akai any day!

I bought this and NEVER got a sound out of it. Trying to get hold of the Scsi bits and pieces to load sounds fom CD was just to much effort. Buy something that can load Wav files and that has disks a computer can recognise.

Don't know or care

No Idea

Sold it for a good profit which went towards buying a Triton which makes sampling incredibly easy and mangling samples is a breeze using sounforge on the laptop. Don't waste your money buying this. Get with modern technology, spend a bit more and create music.

the menus are rather confusing and if you're not careful you can easily overwrite a sample through scsi dump or by accidentally recording over it via analog in. Not user friendly. Once you get used to it, it's not so bad but there's no logical display layed out like in an akai.

the features are alright, it's got plenty of room for memory and a shitload of filters. a good amount of polyphony. As far as mangling sounds goes, this one is loaded with options, but I found myself not using many of them. The timestretching/rendering is very speedy and sounds decent. Aural exciter is cool as well. The LFO is easily assigned to many things, although I don't think you can assign it to the loop length (for shame!)

My gripes about it are as follows:

no waveform display. what were they thinking?!? it makes it a bitch to edit sounds tightly.

only 2 standard analog outs. I never figured out that subout thing.

It has so many filters, but I hardly ever used them. If you like lots of features at your disposal, it's cool. I personally prefer something to work intuitively and sound good at what it does. To me, the esi-4000 is spreading itself too thin.

it's never crashed on me, I'd gig with it if I had it in a rack. The top is made of plastic and the entire thing is fairly light, but I think it would take quite a beating before giving in.

never dealt with them

This thing sat on my desk for three months before I sold it. They go for dirt cheap now, and it's for a reason. This seems like a sub standard product which tried to cram many features into an affordable sampler but simply failed because it is *difficult* to use. it's not intuitive. It's almost as if you're fighting with it when you're trying to use it for music. After using this, I was turned off from E-mu gear.

Its a good sounding sampler. Differnt in character compared with Akai, but not better or worse.

With 64 voices it beats Akai and is enough for the most operations.

But a big lack is that it don't communicate with Sys ex and can't be used together with edit programs and so.

I have mounted an internal harddisk and it works good. But when I should connect it I first burned the first SCSI-harddisk - the connectors was not as on a standard PC!!!!

The display has started to fade (not on the harddisk side)

It works good for all kind of music

I have traveled around the world with it an I can depend on it. But I use to have a bckup with sounds.

Ok

Its a good sampler. But I prefere software samplers for recording

Please visit my ESI4000 page at www.soundofmusic.se

Software Version rated: 3.2 (or whatever most current is)
Pros: Organized menu structure is fairly easy to get around (esp. using number keys). Some menus provide simple fuzzy logic to speed up editing - especially when it comes to note entry.
Cons: Editing must be done via the LCD. No SysEx implementation, so you can't use a software editor. Edit zone assignment can be a bit confusing at first.

Pros: Several types of filters to choose from. Each key can have its own filter/LFO/Envelope setting. 2-layer velocity crossfades/switches are pretty straightforward to set up. seperate assignability of each key to FX sends and outputs. S/PDIF output (on Turbo card) a huge plus!

Cons: Modulation sources don't necessarily effect the full range of a modulation destination (i.e. the your Pitch Bend lever can't sweep the full range of the cutoff frequency of the filter). FX have only two editable parameters which are not displayed in real values (Hz, milliseconds), and do not sync to MIDI clock. Envelope attack/release times are not short enough, and often cause annoying clicks and pops. File management is not as nice as that found in the Emulator series of samplers (as would be expected for the price).

Let me just say that if you're looking for filters with an analog sound, this is not the box. These filters are very CLEAN sounding- very precise. They are great for creating very fluid sounds. A generous number of modulation sources/destinations are available. A notable exception is the lack of realtime manipulation of filter Q. This sampler is great for playing back sounds from E-mu/Akai sample libraries. The DSP is reasonable and some neat special effects are available, but parameters are not well-documented, and processing takes a LONG time for samples longer than 3 sec. Even the manual suggests using an outboard compressor/EQ to determine values to enter for DSP processes (note to E-mu: this is pretty sketchy...).

I experienced what is apparently a common problem with these units: one of the surface-mount inductors on the motherboard located next to the LCD data connector decided to break (and not visibly, either). This is caused by flexing of the motherboard (so be careful when you install those OS ROMs and turbo kit!!). The symptom of this problem was an intermittent, building, ear-bleeding squeal on the main outputs which could be cured only by re-booting the unit. Replacing this inductor (after 6 months of the problem and a trip into E-mu service who couldn't duplicate it) fixed the problem.

Also, connecting this sampler to a computer via SCSI gets really interesting. Lockups in the ESI are fairly commonplace during large data transfers, or if equipment is booted in the wrong order.

Technical support: E-mu tech support seemed to know the basics about this thing, but when it comes to the dirty details, you're on your own.

Service: To their credit, E-mu service was actually very receptive and communicative with me during their attempts to help fix the squeal mentioned above. Unfortunately, they were never able to duplicate the problem, and I ended up fixing it myself. Service is a rough job in this industry anyway...

I think for the price this is a pretty decent sampler. In retrospect, however, I have found comparable samplers made by Akai to be a bit slicker(especially with the MESA editor software!) and have a nicer sound. This is all strictly my opinion, of course, and very subjective. I would encourage a prospective buyer to listen first and make your own decision. It has served me well for the past 3 years, but now I'm moving to a soft-sampler (ESX24/Halion) base if for no other reason than for a much-improved FILE MANAGEMENT!! No more SCSI drives and proprietary drive formats to deal with...

V. 3.02
I think the ESI 4000 is very userfriendly, also the Data-Entry-Control is somewhat uncomfortable, it makes very big jumps from one parameter value to another if you spin it to fast... but the rest of the ESI4000 is very comfortable to use...
The Manual is quite good, a ready to start one, you can learn how to use the ESI and there are some Samplebasics so you can use the Sampler while reading the manual...

The ESI's plophony is 64 voices which is more than needed in most cases...
I have the Turbo-Option-Kit installed which gives you two FX-Processors an additional three analogue and 2 Digital OUTS/INS, the FX are nice but not worth the Price of nearly 400 $...
The Memory can be easily updatet with standart SIMS, I have 32 MB which gives me a Sampletime of over 6 Minutes in 22 KHz, the memory can be upgraded to 128 MB !!!
The MIDI Capabilities are the standart pressure sensitive Keys, modulatewheel, footpedal etc. My MIDI Keyboard doesn't have any of such things, so I couldn't test it though...

The Sounds of the ESI 4000 sound very good in 44.1 KHz but with the Digital I/O's you can sample in 8 KHz which gives a real Lo-Fi Sound...
I mainly use the ESI for HipHop and Ragga, and it works very good for those musics, because of the good bass-sounds... But electrical music also works fine...
The effects of the Turbo Option Kit are nice, but not real good, it is better to buy an external FX-Processor because it sounds better and costs less...

It's a real awsome Instrument I would use it on Stage w/o backup you can really count on this baby !!!

I never needed Help from EMU... I upgraded the ESI myself...

The ESI is my first Sampler, I wanted to buy an AKAI MPC but then a friend asked if I want to buy his ESI, so I bought it and i think it was the right decission ! I dfinately would buy it again !

V 3.02
The manual is quite good, even for a beginner. Along with explaining the functionality of the sampler, it also goes into some basics of sampling technique.
I found the data entry control (big wheel at the front) somewhat inconvenient for editing some parameters (the speed above which it produces very large jumps in the parameter value seem to be to low).
Many parameters do not have units so there is alot of guessing involved...

I am quite happy about the polyphony. I use only 32MB but find that sufficient.
The effects are non-real time and some take a very long time to be applied.
If you are planning to use sampling CDs keep in mind that the 'compatibility' claimed is only minimal (the sounds may get in, programming may not)

The filters are relatively good.
I have noticed something strange in the A/D-D/A of this unit. There seem to be artifacts produced in the process (more so than one would usually expect of a 16bit discretization)

While I don't think that this is a bad purchase per se, I would not buy it a seconds time. I think it would be wiser to shell out more money for something more decent.

I'm using OS 3.01 because I bought it when it first hit the market. It's very expensive to upgrade. It sounds great and is a breeze to operate. Forget about computer control because it has no SYSEX implementation. That brings it down a couple of points on 'ease of use'. The manual answered all my questions. Well, almost.

I'm sure you know already what this baby can do. The editing capability is pretty good but I'd rather send it over to Sound Forge to edit the samples. The expansion capability is great. I have 128MB and would not dream of having less. MIDI sucks though. No SYSEX. The volume controller (#7) is very non-linear. Goes from zero volume to almost full volume from about cc30-cc50. Blaaah.

The onboard effects are pretty good but the standard effects are non real time so that's a pain. Send it over to the computer via SCSI to edit then send it back.

Has rarely crashed on me but sometimes the Zip disk gets too fragmented from undo saves and you have to reformat it or you will loose your data.

Have not replied to my questions via email. The website is empty of info therefore very unhelpful. Before they merged with Ensoniq and Creative Labs the site was pretty cool.

I've been doing music for about 15 years and have found it to be the most used piece of gear of all time. I've got tons of rack gear and it definitely is kept out front. I'd say my biggest problem with this piece of gear is that my Windows PC is always trying to find a driver for it when I power up my SCSI chain. It take's about one minute to get around this every time I boot up. Mine also won't work with Recycle 1.7 because I would need OS 3.02 and that's 100 bucks. Fuck that man it's just a few extra fixes. Should be free if I paid 1.5 G's to buy it. That's a major hit in the face so I gotta mark it down on the Overall Rating. Still my favorite box though.

This is my first sampler AND the first sampler I`ve ever laid my hands on. So if you`re about to get your first sampler this review might be of special interest to you. I`ve given the ESI 4000 almost top ratings in this department because it really IS a breeze to use. Within minutes of plugging it in I was sampling away and messing with the filters (more on them later). It took me a couple of days to get familiar with the structure of samples, presets and banks and this can be confusing at first. This is the only reaons it`s not a 10. As far as the actual sampling goes it`s very straghtforward and can be set up and ready to go at the touch of a few buttons (thanks to the numeric keys) Mapping the samples out to the keyboard is easy and can , if desired , be done automatic ("for rapid-fire sampling!" as the exelent manuals describes it.)

The features are quite impressive for a sampler in this pricerange. Most importantly it can be filled with 128 megs of RAM and has 64 note polyphony. This is quite amazing when you consider that all the Akai samplers maxed out at 32 megs up to the S5000/6000 came.
In adition to Stereo outs and ins it has two sub-outputs(1 stereo/2 mono) which lets you route any sample through external effects and back into the sampler. The effected signal then appears at the main outputs along with the other samples. I use this feature as "extra outputs" and send it to my mixer without sending it back. I simply assign a sample to the sub-outs , pan it hard right/left and I suddenly have two mono outputs.
This is one area the ESI is lacking in: outputs. 2 extra outputs is not enough when you`ve got a machine so powerful. With more outputs I this machine could be enogh for most of the things I need in my music. Basically ,it should have 8 outputs which is not uncommon on Akai samplers (again with the akais!)
This brings us to the expansion boards; there`s an expansio card for the ESI that gives you extra outputs(including S/PDIF) and another card that gives you effects. As I have tried neither of these I won`t comment on them. (And I`m not shure how many extra outs you get ,what effects etc.)
The internal "effects" you get without the expansion are the regular stuff , like timestretching , pitch change , normalize , and basic sample editing like cutting out chunks of the sample , converting stereo/mono etc. Not terribly eciting but very useful. One problem here is that the display only shows numbers and letter , no graphic waveforms. I reccomend you edit samples on you computer and SCSI them out to the ESI. Another thing to beware of is with that you get no undo-function unless you a hard-drive connected to the ESI. And if you buy this sampler make shure you get a Zip drive with it. Having to load 1.44 Mb floppies on a 128 meg sampler is ridiculous. It would take 3 hours to fill the memory!
Overall , these are minor details to me. For the price the features are amazing and almost too good to be true.

This is the part that counts and my EMU gets top score here. Things sound better when they come out than when they go in. By "better" I mean fatter , warmer , punchier and louder. This is no joke ,between when I monitor the sound before pressing "rec" and when I play it back after the sampling is done there is a difference. Fatter , warmer , punchier and louder.
The filters have become my dear friends. They sound musical and "real" in a way I can`t quite explain. You can assing a different filter to EVERY key on the keyboard (as long as your keyboard has 64 keys , that is.) And you`ve got 19 different types to choose from , all exellent although some more usable than others. The loPass filters are especially fat. Just assign filter-cutoff to the pitchwheel on your synth and NoteOnQ (kinda lie resonanceto the mod wheel and off you go. It`s with the filters that you can make the samples into something unique. And the LFO can be set to control many parameters to make some weird/cool/spooky sounds.
All in all , it inspires me to be creative , and what more could I ask for?

I`d definately use it on a gig if it weren`t for the fact that it`s not a "live sampler" in the true sense of the word. You`d need a CPU or a hardware sequencer to use it live. The MPC`s seem better for this. But it never let me down and it has never crashed.

I sent Emu an email once and got a reply within 2 days. Very nice! (and what they said helped too.) Got a a zip installed at a dealer here in Norway. They were kind and quick , although pricey.

If it was stolen I`d buy it again. If I had the money I`d buy another one. :-) I got a very nice price on it (used) so I`m VERY happy with the whole situation. As I mentioned earlier , this is my first sampler ever so I didn`t have anything to compare with. But I spent a long time comparing the specs of this and similar priced Akai samplers. I chose the Emu and haven`t regretted it for a second. This is one of the first big investments in my studio so naturally I use it for almost everything on every track I make. And it inspires me and makes me sound better. `Nuff said.

Right off the bat it was pretty self explanatory. This is my first sampler to purchase but I was sampling my favorite records in no time. The presets are pretty nice also, very musical with some good analogue sounds thrown in. The pre-programmed loops blow but hey, you can't have everything.

Highly recomend the expansion effects card. Features out the wazoo. Like I said it's my first sampler so I don't have anything to compare it to but it does just about everything you would expect and more for a sampler in this price range. One thing, if you are not adept at truncating samples by ear, defintely look into a SCSI interface to edit samples on the computer.

Very expressive and musical. Nice filters too.

I've had it for about six months and already had to send it back because the screen would go blank and lock up completely. Might possibly be due to faulty installation of extra memory but I'm defintely hurting while it's away.

Were very prompt and courteous when I first spoke to them but it's still to be seen whether or not everything will be fine in the long run.

It's a very nice sampler. Very straight foward and easy to use with lots of nice features. Get the expansion card and look into SCSI peripherals for visual editing and you have a monster of a machine. Also with 128 megabytes and an onboard ZIP drive, I have yet too run out of sample time.

some of the menus are KIND OF hard to access, but its easy to remember once you get there and do it more.

If you only knew its capabilities, you would definately agree this machine is a 10. this Boosts any keyboard into a dream machine.

EXCELLENT. Since the XP-50 Has (to my knowledge) actually Patented the AFTERTOUCH FEATURE, they at emu know that it would be crucial to use that compatability as a feature of the system. AND IT DID SO!

Reliable in Home Studio conditions. the best

Im not sure of this yet.... NO PROBLEMS!!

I have a Roland XP-5O, hooked up to my E-MU ESI-4000 DIGITAL SAMPLER, and not only does it make my XP-50 better than it already is, Im asuming that since it has its own sounds, one could use any synth such as the XP-50 to make this one of the most effective (if not the most effective) and useful pieces of musical equipment out there (to a certain extent). I have all of this going into a Roland VS-1680 as the main board. an EXCELLENT Combination for home studio rewcording. and a MK series DAT Machine, by Tascam.

Software version: 3.01
The included 150 MB 'ESI-32 Production Soundset' has lots of useful sounds from all areas, but it doesn't use the ESI-4000 new filters, only the ESI32 compatible one.
I think editing arranging samples into presets is quite complex and I didn't explore the possibilities to their full extent. Most of the time I load premanufactured presets and tweak the filters and envelopes, which is easy.
A patch editor on a PC an not be used, because the ESI-4000's presets can't be controlled via sysex.
Though I'm used to PC based sound editors like Creative Lab's Vienna, I'm happy with the internal editing capabilities and dont't miss a PC. The ten trigger buttons which can be used as shortcuts in the menu structure make navigation fast, and I doubt that one would be faster with the mouse.
The sample editing is without graphical wave form display, but I almost never do sample editing. I tried out the basic functions like auto-truncate and loop and I must say this works better than on an MPC2000, which has a graphical display, but no auto-truncate.
Looping can also be done efficiently without a graphical display, because it goes almost automatically and yields better results than one can achieve (in reasonable time) on the MPC2000 manually.
The manual is ok, its about 250 pages, with a guided tour and a reference section. Several tips are included as well as general explaination about filters etc.

I'll keep the features short, check them out at www.emu.com.
The ESI-4000 has 2 analogue in, 4 analogue out, 64 voices, 16 programs at once in multi-mode, the best readable LC display ever, a useless floppy drive, 2 megs standard, up to 128 megs using 72pin SIMMs. The value entry 'thumb wheel' of the ESI is the entry device I wished to have instead of the fingertip moulded data wheels on other gear.
I will not buy the optional effects board, because the routing capabilities are not state of the art.
The realtime MIDI modulation possibilities are limited to the major sources and targets, such as filter cutoff, lfo rate/depth, crossfade, attack rate and some more. This is what I expected and there is nothing I'd really miss.
The midi out is only useful for MIDI sample dump.
Sample dump via SCSI works fine with Soundforge. I had no problems hooking the ESI on to the SCSI chain I already had, a Jaz, an OPTICS CD-Rom and an MPC2000. Sometimes the MPC2000 locks the SCSI bus and when the ESI then tries to access a SCSI device, it locks up and needs to be turned off and on.

The pure sound quality without filters etc. of the ESI-4000 is state of the art, like a DAT or so, there is just a very slight variation in the color of the original and sampled sound.
The ESI 18 or so different filter algorithms, some of which are useful. The 2-pole lowpass is somewhat like that of the Akai 12db filter, but hm, I think the Akai 12db filter's warmth is not reached by the ESI or the Akai filter is just easier to control, I'm not sure. The 'swept-eq' filters are those I like best, then the 2-pole lowpass and the highpass filters.
The filter can have it's own envelope.
The rest of 'synthesizer' section is limited: one VCA envelope, one auxiliary envelope, one LFO. For me, this is ok.

I bought the ESI-4000 after realizing that the sampler section of the MPC2000 was not usable for playing full-scale sounds or for importing programs from sampling CDs and had no multi-mode.
The ESI-4000 has this all and complements the MPC2000 well, as I expected it to do.
Currently (Nov '97), I would buy it again, because it serves my needs best for the money. The S2000 has an ugly display, less memory, fewer voices, only one filter type, doesn't work with Soundforge. The A3000 is more expensive and has no multimode, the ESI32 has only one (not so good) filter algorithm and everything else is too expensive.
What I especially like about the ESI-4000 is + easy output assignment in multi-mode + very readable LC display + the handy 'thumb wheel' data entry + the excellent time stretching algorithm + the ability to import sounds *and* programs from other models and Akai
I don't like - that the useless floppy can't at least be used to import *.wav or *.aif - that the digital tools are quite slow
After all, I can make music with the ESI-4000, just put in some good sampling CD and go, stacking more and more instruments in multi mode without having to worry about lack of voices.