It was a Soundscape-like board, using the Ensoniq 5530/5535 OPUS multimedia sound chip, a chip that was only used on these OEM boards and essentially comprises an OTTO with back-then usual additional interfacing (Joystick, CD-ROM).
It offered the highest MIDI quality of any PC sound card they ever made, including the newer AudioPCI.
The SSDB would use the host sound card for final output.
It was based upon the S-2000 chipset but was without the digital sound effects section or any DAC.
Ensoniq SoundscapeDB The SSDB was a 'wavetable' daughterboard (sample-based synthesis daughterboard) upgrade for PCs with a sound card bearing a Wave Blaster-compatible connector.
It was a full-length ISA digital audio and 'wavetable' sample-based synthesis audio card, equipped with a 2 MB Ensoniq-built ROM-based patch set.
In addition, Ensoniq devised an ISA software audio emulation solution for their new PCI sound cards that was compatible with most IBM PC games. Almost every newer MS-DOS-era game supported the Ensoniq Soundscape either directly or through General MIDI. Timeline of major products Įnsoniq's sound cards were popular and shipped with many IBM PC compatibles. During this time, much of the engineering effort and company resources were focused on computer sound cards, which offered more profit for the company. Finally, while the competition's products were continually evolving and newer technologies such as physical modeling were introduced, Ensoniq failed to follow the late '90s market orientation, often recycling old concepts on their new products. Excellent synthesizers like the VFX or TS models lacked cheaper rack-mount counterparts. The company didn't manage to reinvent its workstation concept in order to survive the mid and late '90s, and no lower-budget versions of their keyboards were offered to replace the aging SQ line. Through the early and mid-1990s, much effort was focused on improving the reliability of the products. In 1988, the company enlisted the Dixie Dregs in a limited edition promotional CD Off the Record which featured the band using the EPS sampler and SQ-80 cross wave synthesizer.ĭespite these strengths, early (1980s) Ensoniq instruments suffered from reliability and quality problems such as bad keyboards (Mirage DSK-8), under-developed power-supply units (early ESQ-1), or mechanical issues (EPS polypressure keyboard).
The manuals and tutorial documents were clearly written and highly musician-oriented, allowing the users to quickly get satisfactory results from their machines. Starting with the VFX synthesizer, high-quality effects units were included, in addition most synthesizer and all sampler models featured disk drives and/or RAM cards for storage. These were often called 'Music Workstations'. After the Mirage, all Ensoniq instruments featured integrated sequencers (even their late '80s and early '90s samplers) providing an all-in-one 'digital studio production concept' instrument. Strong selling points were ease-of-use and their characteristic 'fat', rich sound (generally thought of as being an 'American' quality, as opposed to the 'Japanese' sound which was more 'digital' and somewhat 'cold'). Ensoniq products were highly professional.