The ASR-X and ASR-X Pro are both capable of accommodating a single ROM expansion board. Ensoniq currently have the following boards available:

	The EXP-1 features 24 MB of World and Ethnic Waveforms and Sounds. It contains 441 waves and over 500 sounds and Drum kits from around the world. All the data for this collection was recorded on location in Asia, Africa, Europe, South America, and North America specifically for this release.
	The EXP-3 "Urban Dance Project" adds 24 MB of new waveform data to your MR keyboard or rack. It contains over 400 new sounds and drum kits with a total of 369 waveforms. This expander is designed to give you the tools you need for phat grooves.
	16 MB of high quality sampled piano Sounds featuring a STEINWAY D Grand Piano and 2 Electric Pianos William Coakley has been a pianist all his life, as well as a piano technician. He has tuned pianos for Teisher, Watts, Ferranti, and Liberace. Also a recording engineer, Coakley pursued the perfect piano by sampling meticulously and spending long hours making sure the process was as close to perfection as possible.

Is it difficult to upgrade the X?

For memory, OS and Expansion board upgrades you need to remove the front panel of the X. The front panel is fixed on with around 30 hex nuts. Inside you'll see SIMM socket (2 on the Pro), two labeled OS chips (you don't need to bother with these on the Pro) and the EXP socket. Detailed instructions are given in the user manual, and we've not heard of anyone having any problems.

Real World EXP-1

Ensoniq's 'World Music' expansion card...

• "Buy it - the samples are really great. Great gongs & metallophones, killer voice samples -the Kabuki screams are really hip."
• "I have several "world" CD-ROMS for the K2500 and aside from a few good samples most pale in comparison to the Ensoniq World Card. I wish they would release it as AIFF files on CD-ROM."
  

Urban Dance EXP3

The EXP3 "Urban Dance" card is Ensoniq's offering for the dance market. It's a good selection of drum sounds, loops, vocals and synth sounds and the general consensus is that it's more 'hip-hop' than 'techno'.

• "The Urban Dance Card is great. It provides a ton of cool drum kits, drum loops at various BPM, and awesome synth-bass sounds as well."
• "I just got my urban dance board yesterday, and i LOVE LOVE LOVE it. I had previously bought the real world board and was very unsatisfied. It d a couple cool samples and stuff, but nothing i would really use in my music. the URBAN DANCE board, on the other hand, is soooooo dope. i never knew it was THAT good. i cant keep my hands off my ASR-X."
• "It sure ain't huge on INDUSTRIAL sounds."
• "However at this point I hafta stick up for the EXP-3. As far as drums, I like to resample the drums with effects. The EXP-3 provides 40+ drums kits (with some duplication). I also like to dial up kits and play them with two roland Octapads."
• "The EXP has some seriously useful drums, IMHO, some useful and some useless instrument sounds, some usable-once vocal samples"
• "I would consider the EXP-3 as a great source if you plan on doing any internal resampling of drums. It's got mostly "american" drum sounds. The synth sounds that come with it are pretty cool too. I could do without the dumb vocal sounds, but I guess those could be cool if you resampled them and messed em up."

The ASR-X can only take one card - Which card should I go for?

Unfortunately the X can only be fitted with one EXP card. Choosing the right EXP for your music can be a bit of a dilemma...

"I am interested in picking up one of the expansion cards (Urban Dance or Real World) -- anybody have any pros and cons for each?"

• "The choice between the two cards would depend on what kind of samples you have access to: I have both and I prefer to have the world card in the ASRX 'cause it's easier to find quality hip hop/urban/groove oriented samples. I have several "world" CD-ROMS for the K2500 and aside from a few good samples
  most pale in comparison to the Ensoniq World Card. I wish they would release it as AIFF files on CD-ROM."
• "It depends what sort of music you are into. The EXP-3 is definitely slanted towards Hip-Hop and is pretty sparse when it comes to good Techno sounds. Because it is really designed to work with the MR series synths it lacks a lot of the bread and butter pads, etc and concentrates more on things that you might use a sampler for. I do ELECTRO-INDUSTRIAL stuff and I have found the EXP-3 to be mostly a waste of money, I use the bonus sounds on the Demo Disk a lot more than I use the EXP-3 sounds. I bought it thinking that it was a cheap way to buy a new synth but it didn't work out that way."

What about Techno?

• Despite the name, the "Urban Dance" board is more hip-hop...
• Is it just me or does it seem strange that ensoniq hasn't made a techno expansion board?
• I think they qualify the "Urban Dance Project" as a techno board. Well you can get some decent techno-ish sounds out of it, but it's clearly a very hip-hop board, and a very very american sounding board. Forget to get any european-sounding techno (and I ain't talking about euro-disco crap, but good underground shit), since you can't even find a decent 303 sound, they didn't even try (not that I care I have a hardware emulator but others might). There is absolutely no question that the dance card was intended to be used for hip-hop. No doubt, but...
• I really wish ensoniq would make a techno card.
• ...I think they *think* they did. Which shows what Ensoniq knows about techno... With some massive detuning, some of the hippety-hop kits can make some pretty neat jungle-ish sounds, but most of the stuff they label "techno" sounds weak at best.
• Many of the synth-sounds are perfect for my synthpop-inspired xtravaganzas (hence I *like* my EXP-3, "EXP29:054 AnaRezz Stg" being one of my favorites, make me feel like Jean Michelle Jarre if run through a phaser) but they aren't too good for *techno*... to weak, mellow, and punchless.... plus has this obvious "someone-has-sampled-a-synth" feel...
• I would find that to be so much more useful for my music. i'd dump my "Urban Dance" card for a "Euro Dance" card in a heartbeat.

What about Hip-hop?

Which ROM board chip is best for hip-hop production? I've heard of the Urban Dance Project, is that the one?????

• I do hip hop and the drums on the exp board are pretty useful, with a lot of variety. But for the best drums, go buy a cd with a bunch of old breakbeats and sample their drums. The instruments are ok, I find myself using only like a couple of the basses the card offers. The vocal samples are useless. I paid

The EXP cards were designed originally for the MR. How compatible are they with the X?

When the EXP boards were used with an OS older than 2.62, there were a few problems with sounds popping and snapping. This was probably down to gain differences between the MR and ASR-X, and the problem has been fixed in later OS versions.

There were also a few issues with EXP sounds being designed to complement the MR ROM set, which is different to the X's

When I spoke to the dealer they said it was because the ROM sounds actually reference sounds/ settings from the MR series. Does this mean I wasted my money? Is this true? Am I screwed?

The EXP cards were designed for the MR - yes. Although there is an MR-synth in the X, there is not the MR ROM. So sounds referencing the MR-ROM sounds do indeed become screwed. Although, on the EXP-3 (dance), these are just a handful, a hi hat there, some string. I think I counted 4 or 5 sounds that didn't work right of the 350 or so on there.

The X intelligently remaps several of the waves to whatever is close in the ASR-X ROM or other EXP-3 waves. Dunno how well it works on the world ROM tho - I hear the situation is a bit worse there, but still not so significant as to define yourself as "screwed".

It's true that some of the more involved pads on the card have layers that need ROM samples from the MR series. I've only found this to be a problem on a couple of patches - like the Rainforest patch - some of the layers sound like random sine & square waves bleeping & blooping in & out - not something that I'd expect in a rainforest (unless you're eating some hallucinogenic tree bark!)"

Are they worth the money?

• At around 300 pounds here in the UK, you have to ask the above question.
• "I'm actually an ex-ASRX user that went for an ASR10. And the only thing that I'm truly missing on the 10 that my X had was the drum sounds from the urban dance card. Loved 'em. And to tell you the truth, I've had my 10 for a week now and I haven't really come up with anything because I haven't been satisfied with the drums I've sampled. Now I'm searching desperately for some decent drums sounds. Oh well, just thought I'd tell yall that."
• I would really suggest going to a shop that has an X with the dance card installed and test drive it. spin the sound type knob down until you see it read "EXP" sounds. then just spin the value knob and check out the sounds on the board.
• If you dig a whole lot of the sounds then the card may be worth picking up. if you only like a handful of them then take your $300 and buy 3 new cd sample collections."
• So basically the MR sounds suck and ain't worth paying the extra bucks for? I mean, I have an offer on an ASR-X though without the Urban Dance Card. So, I'll be better of laying the extra money on something else rather than investing the extra 300$ (as the Urban Dance Card costs over here) on the card?
• I actually do find use for the dance card. i like a bunch of the basses and i love a lot of the drums (especially after some tweaking.) its definitely not a full synth its kind of like an accessory. just some extra sounds to augment your existing equipment.
• So as far as making the ASR-X a standalone all-purpose machine.... the EXP cards are great. (since the stock ASR-X doesn't have crap for internal sounds, in my opinion). Kinda spendy, but worth it in convenience

Has anyone had any experience with the Urban Dance Upgrade Board? I'm thinking about getting it, but if it isn't great, I'd rather get something like a Pulse or a Basstation. Can I use it as my main bread and butter synth like say a Roland JV1080? Is it in the same class as the 1080? Any info is greatly appreciated. If it makes any difference in your reply, I've got an ASR-X with 32 megs, SCSI, the 8 output Xpander, and a Roland JP-8000.

• I agree that there are some better drum sounds on the EXP-3 but if you're just going to resample them then you may as well just fork out for a couple of good sample CD's or a 2nd hand SR-16, either of which will cost way less than the EXP-3. When I got mine I thought it was a great alternative to buying another synth but I'm disappointed in it's lack of really useful sounds e.g. A really good string ensemble would be far more useful to way more people than those naff vocal samples that any idiot could do for themselves (the X is a sampler, after all). The card might be great for an MR-synth but I don't think that it is a good buy for an X owner.
• That's a good assessment. Unfortunately we have to absorb the wave of marketing toward the rhythm-oriented crowd. Perhaps we'll see a "bread-and-butter" EXP. Ensoniq did make some sort of thought to putting one out every quarter or bi-annually, I forget which. As any Kurzweil person can attest, it's nice having ROM sounds to supplement what sampled sounds you use.
• Problems so far with my box..-Not as many sounds as i thought were included.
• Yeah, you NEED to buy the EXP-3 or real world card. Totally worth it for internal sounds... 450+! I love mine.
• Also, did you find the secret 70+ bonus sounds on the system floppy? Just go to "load", "sound", "BONUS". Tons of cool analog filtery sounds.

Why don't I just borrow the card and sample the bits I want?

How many MB's of rom data are on the EXP cards? I had a friend suggest to me that i should just buy the card, sample all the sounds i want and then return it...personally, i think that would be a big pain in the arse...

What you really want are the programmed sounds, and let me see here there are:

557 sounds on the Dance Expander
475 sounds on the World Expander

Plus, you probably want to multisample them for good quality playback. Plus, you wouldn't get the custom programmed Insert FX for a lot of the sounds.

They seem like a bargain to me, just so's I can skip all of that work.

Compiled by Giles Ward

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