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 Ensoniq DP4 At a Glance  
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arrowReleased: 1989? Discontinued  arrowVersion: 0.00
arrowRated: 3.8/10arrow User reviews: (5)
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Royce writes:
Comparable to the Digitech Studio Quad in design, but a much better unit, and bought used, a better value. The DP4 has many configurations, including; four mono in, four mono out; two stereo in, two stereo out; two mono in, two stereo out; two mono and one stereo in and two mono and one stereo out; vocodor with two inputs; and finally as one gigantic processor. There are even more configurations and more than enough preset locations to remember them all.

Good Points
The quality of reverbs is excellent. They have the smooth tails and good tone color, especially when compared to the Digitech Studio Quad. Most of the effects have a somewhat "dark" quality which I really like. Choruses are reasonably good, the amp similuator is decent, and the delays are very flexible. There are some odd effects like rumble eliminators, inverse expanders, duckers and gates, sine generators. Any parameter can be controlled in realtime via midi, which makes the DP4 very much ahead of its time, even now when it's more than 10 years old and discontinued. The vocodor sounds good; not extremely good in terms of articulation but the sound quality is very smooth and very listenable-- not too "digital" sounding. I don't think there's an effects processor out there that combines midi-savvyness and studio friendliness at this price. If you have a big midi setup with lots of analogue synths in need of signal processing, this is a good box to get. There are undoubtedly better processors out there, but remember you'll end up needing two or more of them to match the Ensoniq's ability to treat multiple sound sources. I found the best use of the DP$ is as a dual stereo processor-- I send a Jupiter and an SE-1 through it. The front panel input and output knobs-- one for all four channels-- these knobs are heavenly. No more wierd menus just to set levels.
Bad Points
They were pretty expensive when new. No digital out. Somewhat complicated interface, but this is by necessity.
 

 Ensoniq DP4 Specifications:

Analog IOs:
5 in (1 front panel guitar/mic) and 4 out
Midi IOs:
Yes- responds on 5 channels!
EQ:
Yes.
Dynamics:
Yes
Software supported:
Yes

 DP4 Links


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