Back in 1988, this rackmount beast brought 16-bit, 44.1kHz stereo sampling to pros for the first time, letting you capture CD-quality sounds right off balanced XLR or jack inputs on the front panel.
It's a 3U digital sampler with 16-voice polyphony, 2MB memory standard—expandable to 8MB for up to 95 seconds of mono at full rate—and a programmable low-pass filter plus dedicated ADSR envelopes for pitch and amp shaping. The front panel shines with a big backlit 320-character LCD, two infinite rotary knobs for smooth parameter tweaks, eight mode buttons, and softkeys for quick navigation, all in a sturdy 483 x 425 x 133mm frame weighing 9.5kg. Rear connectivity rocks with stereo outs plus eight individual ones for per-voice mixing, a stereo effects send/return loop, MIDI In/Out/Thru, headphone jack, footswitch input, and slots for SCSI hard disk or AES/EBU digital cards via optional interfaces. Sampling edits like crossfade loops (up to eight points), time-stretch, reverse, and truncate make it a workflow powerhouse, handling 200 waveforms across 100 programs.
Players still hunt these down for that raw, hands-on feel—its gritty time-stretch effect defined tracks like "Higher State of Consciousness," and artists from Moby to The Chemical Brothers swear by its reliability in the studio, even if the interface takes a session to master.
