Michael "Money Mike" Duran

Without a doubt Ensoniq’s ASR10 is one of the best and legendary samplers of all time! It was decades before it’s time and still has companies trying to keep up with it… It’s one of those machines like the MPC and SP12/1200s. It has its own sound that no other filters/samplers can match

One of the best workstation synths ever! It was definitely ahead of its time and is still considered one of the greats even 15 years later!

The second born of the Ensoniq sampler family.. The Ensoniq EPS definitely changed the game for sampler keyboards.. a step up from Ensoniqs 8bit “Mirage”. They gave us this awesome 13bit sampler that has made hundreds of classic songs. There’s no sound like the EPS/ASR sounds!

The TS series have always had their own lane. Has its own great classic sounds. It’s pretty bulky, big and weights alot compared to its little brother the TS-10, but both are pretty much identical internally other than the polyphonic aftertouch and the ts12 having channel aftertouch..

Not only did Oberheim give us a modern analog 8voice synthesizer. But they also includes all the preset/patches from the legendary OB-8, OB-X and OB-Xa!!! It’s a 4-in 1 synthesizer… And while on the topic of presets, the OB-X8 includes 400 factory programs, including all of the factory sounds originally found in the OB-X, OB-Xa, and OB-8. There are over 600 user-programmable preset locations in total.

The Yamaha S90 is an awesome synth for synth playing and pianist’s it has great sounding electric piano sounds and great sounding Yamaha synth presets (similar to the original motif sounds). This is a synthesizer though, (not a workstation), so you would need a sequencer or a computer to make complete songs.. but none the less a great keyboard!!

Like a modern ASR10, this is one of the best workstation keyboard samplers out! Highly recommended, easy to learn sequencer and easy to work with all around!

For $500 you get 4000 classic Roland presets, plus drum kits, pretty easy to use, only downfall to me was the limitation of 4 tracks but that could easily fixed by using with a DAW or an additional sequencer..

With all the MPC Plug ins 🔌 and the memory ram of this unit I can safety say it’s the best compact workstation/sampler in the world.. as far as I can recall their is no other 37 key sampler, let alone a workstation synth. When loaded with plug ins like Jura (recreation of the Roland Juno 106) and the Mini-D (recreation of the Minimoog) and effect plug ins like Flavor Pro, Air Delay, Flex-beat, Stems etc. Makes it the most versatile compact workstation.. definitely recommend!