Ensoniq TS-12

The synth was purchased in 1993 with the original software version. There has never been a problem other than failing to back up data and the unit is still mint and functioning like brand new. This was my first synth and everything was simple to figure out with the manual used very sparingly. Compared to my other 30 plus synths, this one clearly is the easiest to use. The sequencer is clearly laid out and changing midi channels takes a couple seconds to complete. Here it is 2007 and I have yet to replace the battery! When it is time, I will have an electrician change the soldered battery for a battery holder to make it simpler in the future.

Most of the time the polyphony is not an issue with the individual programs but Ensoniq has allowed users to double click on any combination of three programs to combine them all easily into one sound. No other synth has this ability. Large chords can occasionally become short on notes in this case. Ensoniq programs are so huge sounding with very little memory used. It is even possible to load sampled sounds and combine with ROM or other RAM programs provided they can be loaded via scuzzy or Ensoniq formatted floppy discs. The keys on the TS-12 are very good with their weighted action. I have heard of keys breaking when played excessively hard but I have never experienced this. The volume is easy to manipulate with contact pressure and after touch is very expressive.

One of the best things about the TS series are the effects. There is a DP4 unit in every board. These effects are easy to change and not just to adjust--Ensoniq has given the user a multitude of effects programs already designed to be incorporated in any sound at the push of a button. If you are not happy with a sound, just move to the effect section and change it until you find one that moves your sound to just the right place. I love the sounds overall and have found them to be unique to Ensoniq. They combine well with other instruments and the Pad and Bell sounds are phenomenal. I get goose bumps just writing about it! I will p[lay other synths for awhile and then go back to the TS boards and fall in love all over again. If you are missing any of the additional 10 Ensoniq sound discs, it would be worth your while to locate them.

This synthesizer is built like a tank using metal construction. After nearly 15 years of use the display is still as bright as the day it was purchased. For those of you who like American made, this unit was manufactured in the USA and programed by some of the Countries most brilliant sound designers.

Customer support is no longer available but when it existed, it was slightly better than today's support among the competition with the exception of KAWAI. With KAWAI being a '10', Ensoniq was a '5'. Having said that, there was never a need for contact with the TS synths. Ensoniq was contacted for other product assistance.

The Ensoniq TS was worth every penny paid and I have since purchased several others as back ups and to add to my polyphony. I would go into a deep depression if I lost access to one. As I mentioned previously, I own over thirty different synths and the Ensoniq TS-12 is my favorite. It can sound comparable to the Korg Wavestation with its Transwaves. The lack of resonant filters is of no issue to me and besides, it does not hurt to own several synths to add to your pallet of sounds. My most recent purchases have been a Korg OASYS and a Roland V-Synth GT and I have to say, the Ensoniq was a better value.

OS, I don't know. Haven't checked it. I was not used to Ensoniqs before, so I find it fairly difficult to find my way to the right menus. I find that there is too much to remember, such as having to double-click sometimes to get to a parallel page on the button etc. But other Ensoniq users don't seem to be disturbed by this. The present sounds are OK for general purpose. There's a few good atmospheric sounds there too.
The manual is sometimes ambiguous on certain issues, but very extensive.

Technical specs have been reported below. I bought it first and foremost to have a good weighted MIDI capable master keyboard, and the TS-12 fulfills the task completely. It has great piano-style action, and I like it very much. The 2Mb memory I have in mine is fairly limited by 2003 standards, but I suppose it was OK ten years ago. The on-board sequencer is great and intuitive, and I have used it for some live-sequencing too. You can route the signal internally or externally to other modules through MIDI. Start and stop can be done with a foot switch. You can set up songs with looping sequences so certain sections of a song (for instance a free form section) will keep play until you decide to move on. This is great for live use.
I hate the proprietary disk format. It's a nuisance to have to work with funky DOS-programs to prepare and dump a patch on a disk. I wish there were better ways to manage patches and samples. Another thing I hate about it is the physical weight. It's way too heavy!
Then the thing that has been an extra upside for me has been the nice synthesis features found on this synth, but more about this below.

The standard sounds are OK. Very modern, very clean and with a lot of air. Maybe it is a bit too digitally clean for my tastes, but at least I have a synth in this category too, and that's good. But the great thing about it is the assorted synthesis techniques you can use. Hyperwaves lets you walk through a sequence of different waveforms morphing one sound into another. This can generate som very lively ambient sounds. It is also possible to use transwaves. This is a feature that I really appreciate. This technology is common to all the Ensoniqs from ESQs, VFX, TS-10/12 and Fizmo. By moving through a table of single wave cycles you change the timbre of your sound. The TS-12 only has some 15 or so different transwaves to choose from natively, but you can load many more if you combine it with the sample load option. I have successfully generated my own transwaves and built complex sounds with these. The sample load is the third great thing. I don't see 2Mb (or 8Mb with extension) as enough for me. I work a lot with mellotron sound which is very memory consuming. But to load custom oscillator input it is a fantastic option. Finally it has reasonably flexible modulation routings. The filters are too digital for my tastes (and not resonant in any 24db/oct mode). For me the synth (as a real synthesizer) has it's best capabilities in the atmospheric, textural department. The effects unit is complex and of a high quality. I think it's the DP/4 unit they built into the synth. It has double stereo output, normal L+R and AUX L+R, and I am sure it would be possible to program quadrophonic effects. I have used the AUX for a click track to the drummer on some sequenced tracks.

I think I can. It broke down when I got it because the power supply was fried, but apparently that was a late result of some dude who had spilled Coca-Cola on the keys once. Since then I have had no problems.
It seems like a reliable keyboard to me. The OS does have some quirks, but overall it works fine.

Which customer support??? This synth has entered the darkness of DIY.

Yes, it's a great synth. I needed a synth in this category, and I have grown fond of Ensoniqs transwaves etc., so I would look for another if it were stolen.

SW Version: dunno. I don't use many patch edit facilities. The manual is fine.

Very easy to use. I use the sequencer most.

Many features - TOO MANY parameters on effects. Haven't EVER touched the LFO/Filter/Env part. Polyphony can be a bit weak when using the sequencer.

WHY DOES THE FLOPPY HAVE A STRANGE FORMAT???? SHAME!!!

Some old-fashioned sounds. Rock: Mooah. Classical: great. Pop: great.
It's best to add a popular modern sound box/synth/kbd.

Floppy: OK. RAM: due to bugs, always save your work. I now know what it is: DONT use quantizing when you have many sequences in RAM. First save the others, delete them & Go. Otherwise: it will reset after the "blue screen" initialising.

And - don't record a layered sound (2 sound tgether by double-clicking). IT DOES NOT RECORD ANYTHING. I was so angry...

Never tried. No, once I asked for software updates. Nobody replied.

I would miss it. But I would need a box with this kind of sequencer again. very versatile, good MIDI implementatiion. Good master keyboard. Bad keys - they will break internally.

Version 3.10 upgrade. This is an update of the review I posted a little over a couple of years ago. Back when I bought it, it had version 3.05 software in it.
Early last year, I had to have the main board replaced, so now I have the 3.10 upgrade in it.
I've now pretty well learned my way around it, and it's without a doubt one of the easiest synths to program.
However, I still haven't yet purchased a manual for it, mostly due to procrastination!

The 32 note polyphony generally does the trick, although if you're layering sounds and presets, you lose notes pretty quickly.
The 73 effects algorithms are superb, with lots of variations to choose from.
I believe my TS-12 has the full 8MB sample memory expansion in it.
It can load up to about 16,000 blocks of samples (a little over 8,000 blocks per bank).
Great Midi controller features with channel aftertouch, and and plenty of flexibility for splits and layers.
The 24 track sequencer is superb for setting up sounds, and getting around on. I haven't used the quantizing or other extensive editing options on it much though, because I'm not that experienced in that area.

Most sounds are great. I still like the pianos, even though some may not care for them. Great organs. Superb pads. Very good to excellent strings in my opinion. I said in my last review I wouldn't be replacing my ESQ-1 for analog sounds. However, after downloading some free patches off the internet, and some sound programming of my own, I would have to say it really does have some good analog sounds after all.
Acoustic guitars are superb, however, the distortion guitars do leave something to be desired, in my opinion.
I would say this keyboard does most kinds of music well; in particular, Rock, Pop, Jazz, Gospel, and some Dance as well.
The weighted keys feel great for playing, although some of them are losing their weighted action.
It reacts well to velocity, and aftertouch.

Now comes the bummer. Early last year, after some false "low battery" messages, and some "System 129" errors, the mainboard gave up the ghost.
Since then, after the 3.10 version mainboard was replaced, I have had some "Disk Not Formatted" errors, and some freezing on "Editing Data", after loading some of my files.
The keyboard technician who repaired keyboards for the closest Ensoniq dealer I took it to didn't want to work on it again, since it was difficult to work on, and possibly get parts for, and so I took it back home.
This time, I re-did some of the files, saved them to other floppy disks, and ran a disk drive cleaner through the drive, and so far, no more of those problems. So I suspect it may have possibly been bad disks, dirty disk drive heads, or both.
Since it's been working fine now, I think it would be okay to gig with out a backup, although I can't really be sure for certain about that.

I called EMU/ENSONIQ about other places that might work on it. I got some information about where to possibly take it, but not really any support.

If it were lost or stolen, I would love to have another, as long as its in perfect working condition. The lack of availability of parts would concern me some though.
I am an amateur hobbyist, whose played some form of keyboard for a good portion of my life.
I also own a Korg N264 workstation which has those great Korg sounds, and General Midi capability, a Roland XP-10 which also has some good sounds; an Ensoniq ESQ-1 which has some great analog and digital synth sounds.
Over all though, I really use the TS-12 as my main workstation, and think it's one of the best and most powerful and flexible workstations Ensoniq has ever made.
It helps me make music very well.

The manual is very good about explaining most of the functions of this board. However I wish there was a little more in the way of sound programming description. I still haven't figured out how to program patch variations that don't suck.

32 note polyphony was good for it's day, now not so good, but OK if you have other modules to run different sounds thrue. You can upgrade the sequencer from 30000 events to 90000, and the sampler memory from 2 to 8 mb. It plays ASR and EPS ssamples which is very cool. An extremely heavy weighted keyboard, great for piano stuff, although sometimes the weights of the keys can come off... Velosity and aftertouch is very good. It has a built in 12 track linear sequencer with an additional 12 non-linear tracks in songs mode. Has general midi mode optional but a lot of the gm sounds aren't as good as the programs and for obvious reasons...

A lot of the sounds are great, but there are a few thta aren't so good. It is a good all perpous music board, works especially well with 70's classic rock, 80's pop, some jazz... The built in effects are good but not as flexible as I'd like. While they are very realistic, with reverbs, compressors, gates, flangers, delay, chorus, and the like, it's a little hard to rout effects, especially when you can't see the screen... It reacts well to my playing because I don't play any one style at a given time.

Most of the time it's great. Physically the only prob I've had with it is the weights on two of the black keys jumped off... As for the software, sometimes it does some weird things when I turn it on, trying to access disks and leaving you locked in accessing it... sometimes in this mode you can't get it to initialise. Playing with it for a while usually works. So if I were gigging I would normally probably not need/want a backup. But if something freaky like this happens, of course always good to have one.

Even though emu bought out ensoniq I have still been able to get what little tech support I needed from them. I haven't needed to get it repaired or tried to upgrade it, as the memory modules are getting hard to find, and this board only came with the stock memory. But back to tech support, when asked where I could find accessories and samples for the board, the guy at EMU gave me a lot of resources.

If you have this keyboard, grab yourself a copy of EPSDISK, and AWAVE. These progs will let you convert .wav and other formats to the EPS sampler format, especially cool if you are a cheep highschool student without a s sampler like I am. Also good for making sample disks and/or indevidual instrument files and sending them to your friends that have TS, ASR, or EPS samplers.It has helped me a lot with creativity, and I'm glad I have it. I've compaired it with some of the newer boards... Korg Karma and triton, and a few rolland machines. While some of these boards have more features and more modern sounds, there's nothing like that good ol' Ensoniq, I love it! Also, i think if you can find one for what I payed for it, or cheeper, even if you have newer boards/modules, it's worth it!

Version 3.05
If you've used an Ensoniq of some brand (not including the original cryptic Mirage) you can figure this one out. I've had an ESQ-1 and SQ-80 and this one was a breeze.

Can't complain - does what I need. Use it mostly as a controller, where it shines. The sequencer is great for doing some basic songwriting before dumping to a DAW. Typical Ensoniq product of the day - lots of features. The only thing that sucks is that very few SCSI boards were made and they're almost impossible to find now!

Decent sounds, especially if you program them. Being able to play EPS / ASR samples is the biggest plus. Aftertouch and velocity is good for what I use it for.

This thing is a tank (both literally and figuratively). Very reliable, trucked it around, moved it from the US to Australia and back, swapped the P/S from 120 to 240 and back, etc., added RAM...

...never a problem. Would use it without a backup, although I always gig with 2 keyboards (one non-weighted) anyway.

In the good old days of Ensoniq, no problems. Good luck finding anything through them now.

You either love or hate Ensoniq products, and I love them - the guys who programmed the OS were geniuses, because from model to model you could apply what you knew before to the new synth. I've been playing this puppy for 7 years and it's still going strong. Now if only I could pick up that SCSI module...

The presets sound very good, editing patches is simply, the manual is very good

the polyphony is 32 voices, the build in multi-effect-processer is good, very easy to handle.
It's expandeble up tu 8 MB smpling ram (but I didn't use it) and the sequenzer is expandebla up tu 90 000 events.
The sequencer expansion is not longer avaliable, without expansion the sequenzer has 30 000 events.
The sequenzer has a pattern-song structure, 12 tracks per pattern, 12 tracks per song. Very easy to use.

The natural sounds are very realistic. I use this machine for any kinds of music.
It has keys with hammers, very good to play, quiet as heavy as an easy weighted piano.
reacts good aon velocity and aftertouch. the velocity and aftertouch response is adjustable.

The floppy drive doesn't always read the floppies, I have three backup-floppies when I 'm having a gig

Since ensoniq is skint, there's sparse support, spare parts are getting less.
I have four TS 12, one for the gig, one at home, one in the practise room and one
as reserve, I repair them on my own.

Its a great synth, the polyphony is enough, I would buy it again, its worth every single german mark.
I'm playing it since seven years.
The only thing I'm missing are filters with resonace.
I compared it with the Korg T-series and the Kurzweil K2500.
I choosed it, becouse its much better than the Korg and not as expensive
as the K 2500.
I would like a hard drive.
Its a very good allround synth, and for special things it can be used as
master-keyboard,

Use 3.05. This synthesizer is very easy to use. I have studied
synthesis for almost 20 years at several universities across the
country and played and programmed many a synthesizer.

The addition of three manuals is great. One full and complete manual
and then two short ones like a tutorial and sound manual are great.

Best feature is the weighted keyboard. Although many seem to give it
a bad break, it is very good for someone who is a true pianist and is
classical and jazzed trained. The weighted keys do add most of the
heavy weight, but when feel is important for expression just like
playing a real piano it is great.

I found the sequencer for well laid out and easy to use. Have used it
for short documentary films for local PBS and independent satations.

Great sounds. Does very well for world music and "ethnic" instumentation.

Reacts to my style of piano playing very well because you can set
your individual style of playing.

Effects are good and easy to manipulate.

I am one of the people that had a small problem with one key action.

Actually the action was still good but I had some very strange tiny like
click.

But no problem the local. It was taken care of immediateley by the
dealer.

Had to badger with them on some disk and other things.

But they came through and even paid for the shipping on everything.

I got this brand new right when it was being first produced.
I payed $3000 for it which included extra pedals, 30 sound disk, one
soft travel case, one heavy duty FFA flight approved case, two sound cables,
extra power cord, and an Ultimate support keybord stand with two tiers,
one heavy duty triple surge protection master, and a gig case.

Combining sounds and setting key ranges was set up very nicely. The sequencer, however, did not seem logical. I have vast experience with the Korg M1 and O1 -- their sequencers were much more logical and, therefore, easier to use.

For it's day, the features were great! It would not be fair to compare it to newer keyboards -- the M1 sucks next to a Trinity, for example.

Some sounds were great, others not so great. The pianos were okay, but not spectacular -- the Roland D70, from an earlier era, actually has a better piano. The pianos on the TS-12 are far better than the Korg M1 and 61 key O1. Also, better than the Alesis QS6. The electric pianos were very poor -- the M1, O1, and Alesis (actually the best E.P. sound of the three) were all better in this regard. The organs were okay, but none of them really fit my taste. Pads were really weak. As for the keyboard's feel, to me the keys do not feel realistic -- they feel spongy and sluggish, especially next to my A90.

I have read about others having problems, but I have not experienced any. The construction of the keyboards casing seems weak.

If you find one of these for the price that I paid, it is in your interest to acquire it. I was able to sell mine on eBay for $1100. However, I wouldn't pay the $1500 and up that some used gear dealers are asking. The rating I am giving the unit here corresponds to the price that I paid, and for $700, it was a great deal.