Ensoniq Mirage

[bayswater]

Anyone have one of these laying around?

I was in an 80 band that had one, and it had a patch called Nomad, or maybe Nomad Horns that was pretty useful. I found an archive of all the Mirage factory samples converted to WAV format, but don't know which sample or samples are used in this patch. Sounds like it could be two samples called Fontain.

If you have one of these or know about them, do you know of a source that would have the info required to reconstruct the patch?

And ... I don't know if these sample are still under copyright. If you know, please let me know.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

And ... I don't know if these sample are still under copyright. If you know, please let me know.

Don't know about the Mirage (I had one as well) but I wouldn't worry about the copyright on that. Ensoniq is out of business, so who's gonna sue ya? Besides, while instrument samples may be technically copyright, if you can alter them sufficiently to obfuscate the waveform, there'd be no way to track it. And who is actually policing that?

[bayswater]

Thanks.

If anyone wants these the zip file is not that big. I can post it for download. I always thought the sounds on this synth were interesting.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Thanks.

If anyone wants these the zip file is not that big. I can post it for download. I always thought the sounds on this synth were interesting.

I'm interested! If you want to email it that's cool as well. mm@MIDILifeCrisis.com

[bayswater]

I've put it here so others can get it too if they want to.

http://www.heavyethics.com/DPAV/%5Bwav% ... ibrary.zip

[bayswater]

Note these were all originally 8 bit samples. They sound pretty good with that limitation.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I've put it here so others can get it too if they want to.

http://www.heavyethics.com/DPAV/%5Bwav% ... ibrary.zip

Thanks, man. I'm on it.

[HCMarkus]

A buddy and I created an epic instrumental built around the sample "This is a blank formatted diskette".

Loved the Mirage; the affordable sampler.

[bayswater]

A buddy and I created an epic instrumental built around the sample "This is a blank formatted diskette".

Loved the Mirage; the affordable sampler.

It's in the download I posted. I'd forgotten about it. The thing was great as long as you could speak in hexagonal.

Do you remember "Nomad"?

[Michael Canavan]

My first sampler, me and the keyboard player in our band together saved for three months to get it.
Hated programming it, loved the sounds. Thanks for the download, curious to see if any of the samples are ones we used back in the day.

[waterstrum]

Ah nostalgia...
Mirage was a poor man's Synclavier.
So great!

We've come so far.
I couldn't have imagined the power we have now.

But we still complain

[FMiguelez]

Note these were all originally 8 bit samples.

Make sure you print them in DP at 32 bitsFP 192 KHz. You don't want to miss any of that magic goodness

[bayswater]

Make sure you print them in DP at 32 bitsFP 192 KHz. You don't want to miss any of that magic goodness

To dither, or not to dither ... (am I dithering?)

[HCMarkus]

Note these were all originally 8 bit samples.

Make sure you print them in DP at 32 bitsFP 192 KHz. You don't want to miss any of that magic goodness

[dix]

Amazingly, I do still have a Mirage, but haven't booted it up in 10 years or so. Downloading this entire Mirage library took a tiny fraction of the time it took to load a single sound into that old box.

As I recall you could only load two sounds at a time. One for the Upper and one for the Lower. If you're thinking the patch you remember was two samples layered, I don't think that was possible without resampling. From listening to these in the archive I think I remember the Fontain patch. It was looped and had filters, ADSR etc, and was one of the few Mirage patches that didn't suck IMO. An airy 10CCish thing.

I do not have fond memories of this sampler, however. I think I was looking for Trevor Horn, Art of Noise glory, but what I got was a Mirage.