E-mu ESI-32

Back in 1994, this rackmount sampler brought CD-quality 16-bit sampling at 44.1kHz or 22.05kHz right to your studio setup, maintaining full 32-voice polyphony even with stereo samples—a rarity that let you layer sounds without voice stealing.

It's a 2U unit measuring 17 by 10.4 by 3.4 inches and weighing 10.2 pounds, with a built-in 3.5-inch floppy drive for quick sample loading and two 30-pin SIMM slots expanding from 2MB to 32MB. Front-panel sample playback keys trigger up to 10 sounds without a keyboard, while the modulation matrix routes a multi-wave LFO, three AHDSR envelopes (dedicated to filter, amp, and aux), velocity, pressure, and MIDI sources to its 32 digital 24dB/oct resonant lowpass filters. You'll find four individual 1/4-inch unbalanced poly outs with submix returns, stereo unbalanced inputs, full MIDI DIN I/O, SCSI for hard drives, and optional S/PDIF; onboard effects like reverb, delay, chorus, flange, distortion, compressor, parametric EQ, time compression, pitch shift, and doppler/pan add polish without external gear.

Owners love its warm, analog-like filters and creative DSP tools for mangling samples, plus compatibility with EIIIx, Emax II, and Akai libraries. The floppy and lack of modern connectivity feel dated now, but that's part of its vintage charm for collectors hunting that '90s tone.