E-mu Releases Their Most Affordable Sampler

E-MU / ENSONIQ has announced a new low cost professional sampler at a breakthrough price. The ESI 2000 provides 64 voices of sampling with 128MB RAM capacity (4MB comes standard) and fully professional features for only $995 retail. The new, two rack space sampler has four outputs (expandable to 10), a SCSI port, and has a striking new contrasting color scheme. The ESI 2000 is available now.

E-MU's new sampler brings professional sampling to a new price point by leveraging efficiency in manufacturing and a new cost optimized hardware design. At $995 retail, the ESI 2000 can be the heart of any studio, and requires no sacrifice of the superior sound quality, user-friendly interface, or reliability for which E-MU is famous. The new sampler is fully compatible with the massive EIII / EIIIX / ESI-32 / ESI-4000 sound library and can import EMAX II and AKAI S1000/S1100 samples. The new ESI 2000 sampler also features all of the DSP functions found in the ESI-4000 which it replaces, including time compression / expansion, pitch change, normalization, doppler pan, and several editing tools that make sampling fast and efficient.

"The ESI 2000 is a real breakthrough for customers who want all the versatility that a sampler has to offer" comments Scott Emmerman, VP of Sales and Marketing, Americas. "We believe that by making the power of the ESI 2000 available at this exciting new price point, many more musicians will now be able to take advantage of all that sampling has to offer" he concludes.

Full complement of professional features

The ESI 2000 is not a stripped down version of the ESI 4000, the company is quick to point out. The sampler includes the same easy to learn and use interface, a whole host of filters with 19 different filter types, an industry standard SCSI interface for connection to a wide variety of external storage devices including CD-ROMs, ZIP, Jaz, and external hard disk drives. The SCSI interface makes it easy to take advantage of the massive sound library available from E-MU.

"The ESI 2000 offers superior functionality at a price that was simply unheard of even a year ago" comments Don Scott, President and CEO of E-MU / ENSONIQ. "The $995 professional quality sampler is finally a reality and paired with our $995 Proteus' 2000, we believe that these two will be a perfect pair to add to any studio" he concludes.

Compatible with ESI Turbo Option Kit

The ESI 2000 is fully compatible with the ESI Turbo Option Kit. The ESI Turbo Option Kit increases the number of analog outputs to 10, adds a S/PDIF digital interface which provides stereo digital inputs and outputs to the ESI 2000, as well as adding dual, stereo 24 bit effects processors to the unit for enhanced sound capabilities.