The Ensoniq

Ensoniq

Ensoniq Corp. was an American electronics manufacturer, best known throughout the mid 1980s and 1990s for its musical instruments, principally samplers and synthesizers.- Company history :...

 ESP was used in many of the company's musical instruments and on their Soundscape Elite

Ensoniq Soundscape Elite

The Soundscape ELITE was Ensoniq's high-end ISA PC sound card offering. It offers the highest MIDI quality of any PC sound card Ensoniq produced. The board is an evolution of the company's previous Soundscape S-2000. The Soundscape ELITE was launched in March 1995....

 PC ISA

Industry Standard Architecture

Industry Standard Architecture is a computer bus standard for IBM PC compatible computers introduced with the IBM Personal Computer to support its Intel 8088 microprocessor's 8-bit external data bus and extended to 16 bits for the IBM Personal Computer/AT's Intel 80286 processor...

 sound card

Sound card

A sound card is an internal computer expansion card that facilitates the input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under control of computer programs. The term sound card is also applied to external audio interfaces that use software to generate sound, as opposed to using hardware...

. It was used to enhance the synthesizer's audio samples with digital effects, enhancing the realism of the overall sound.

The ESP chip was a custom digital signal processor

Digital signal processor

A digital signal processor is a specialized microprocessor with an architecture optimized for the fast operational needs of digital signal processing.-Typical characteristics:...

 (DSP) chip with over 75,000 transistors. It had an instruction set

Instruction set

An instruction set, or instruction set architecture , is the part of the computer architecture related to programming, including the native data types, instructions, registers, addressing modes, memory architecture, interrupt and exception handling, and external I/O...

 that was optimized for manipulating audio data, which has typical sample rates of between 10 kHz and 50 kHz. The ESP was capable of creating a wide range of digital effects including reverb

Reverberation

Reverberation is the persistence of sound in a particular space after the original sound is removed. A reverberation, or reverb, is created when a sound is produced in an enclosed space causing a large number of echoes to build up and then slowly decay as the sound is absorbed by the walls and air...

, delay

Delay (audio effect)

Delay is an audio effect which records an input signal to an audio storage medium, and then plays it back after a period of time. The delayed signal may either be played back multiple times, or played back into the recording again, to create the sound of a repeating, decaying echo.-Early delay...

, echo

Echo (phenomenon)

In audio signal processing and acoustics, an echo is a reflection of sound, arriving at the listener some time after the direct sound. Typical examples are the echo produced by the bottom of a well, by a building, or by the walls of an enclosed room and an empty room. A true echo is a single...

, flanging

Flanging

Flanging is an audio effect produced by mixing two identical signals together, with one signal delayed by a small and gradually changing period, usually smaller than 20 milliseconds. This produces a swept comb filter effect: peaks and notches are produced in the resultant frequency spectrum,...

, chorusing

Chorus effect

In music, a chorus effect occurs when individual sounds with roughly the same timbre and nearly the same pitch converge and are perceived as one...

, harmonizing

Harmonic

A harmonic of a wave is a component frequency of the signal that is an integer multiple of the fundamental frequency, i.e. if the fundamental frequency is f, the harmonics have frequencies 2f, 3f, 4f, . . . etc. The harmonics have the property that they are all periodic at the fundamental...

, equalization

Equalization

Equalization, is the process of adjusting the balance between frequency components within an electronic signal. The most well known use of equalization is in sound recording and reproduction but there are many other applications in electronics and telecommunications. The circuit or equipment used...

, and distortion

Distortion

A distortion is the alteration of the original shape of an object, image, sound, waveform or other form of information or representation. Distortion is usually unwanted, and often many methods are employed to minimize it in practice...

, and was capable of generating multiple effects simultaneously.

The ESP was a VLSI device designed in a 1.0 micrometre

Micrometre

A micrometer , is by definition 1×10-6 of a meter .In plain English, it means one-millionth of a meter . Its unit symbol in the International System of Units is μm...

 double-metal CMOS

CMOS

Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor is a technology for constructing integrated circuits. CMOS technology is used in microprocessors, microcontrollers, static RAM, and other digital logic circuits...

 process. The multiplicity and flexibility of the data paths in the ESP allowed many DSP operations to be accomplished in a minimum number of microinstructions

Microcode

Microcode is a layer of hardware-level instructions and/or data structures involved in the implementation of higher level machine code instructions in many computers and other processors; it resides in special high-speed memory and translates machine instructions into sequences of detailed...

 steps. Its nominal instruction cycle was 250 ns

Nanosecond

A nanosecond is one billionth of a second . One nanosecond is to one second as one second is to 31.7 years.The word nanosecond is formed by the prefix nano and the unit second. Its symbol is ns....

, yielding program lengths from about 64 to 160 microinstructions at typical sample rates. Because the ESP chip was fully programmable

Computer program

A computer program is a sequence of instructions written to perform a specified task with a computer. A computer requires programs to function, typically executing the program's instructions in a central processor. The program has an executable form that the computer can use directly to execute...

, the range of effects was unlimited.

The major features of the ESP chip were:

• 48 Pin DIP
  Dual in-line package
  In microelectronics, a dual in-line package is an electronic device package with a rectangular housing and two parallel rows of electrical connecting pins. The package may be through-hole mounted to a printed circuit board or inserted in a socket.A DIP is usually referred to as a DIPn, where n is...
  
   or 52 Pin PLCC
  PLCC
  PLCC may refer to:* Plastic leaded chip carrier* Power line carrier communication...
  
  
• Separate Address Generator ALU
  Arithmetic logic unit
  In computing, an arithmetic logic unit is a digital circuit that performs arithmetic and logical operations.The ALU is a fundamental building block of the central processing unit of a computer, and even the simplest microprocessors contain one for purposes such as maintaining timers...
  
  
• 4 Programmable Serial I/O Channels (I²S
  I²S
  I2S, also known as Inter-IC Sound, Integrated Interchip Sound, or IIS, is an electrical serial bus interface standard used for connecting digital audio devices together. It is most commonly used to carry PCM information between the CD transport and the DAC in a CD player...
  
   or Sony Format)
• On-Chip Data and Microprogram Memory
• 8-Bit Address/Data Multiplexed Host CPU Interface
• External Sample Rate Synchronization
• Multiplexed Addressing for Simple DRAM
  Dram
  Dram or DRAM may refer to:As a unit of measure:* Dram , an imperial unit of mass and volume* Armenian dram, a monetary unit* Dirham, a unit of currency in several Arab nationsOther uses:...
  
   Interface
• Host Access to ESP DRAM

The architecture of the ESP chip was implemented by the following major components:

• ALU - 24-bit wide, capable of 16 different instructions
• Multiplier - 24x24 bit with dedicated 48 bit accumulator
  Accumulator (computing)
  In a computer's central processing unit , an accumulator is a register in which intermediate arithmetic and logic results are stored. Without a register like an accumulator, it would be necessary to write the result of each calculation to main memory, perhaps only to be read right back again for...
  
  
• Separate Address Generator ALU
• Microinstruction Memory Array (160 x 45 bits)
• General Purpose Register Array (192 x 24 bits)
• 23 Special Purpose Registers
• Three 24-bit wide data paths
• Serial Digital I/O (4 stereo channels, I2S or Sony)
• Host interface