Free Ensoniq ESQ-1 Sample Library For NI Kontakt!

Free Ensoniq ESQ-1 Sample Library1

Neil Paddock of How To Program Drums has released ESQ-1 Re-Boot, a free collection of Ensoniq ESQ-1 hybrid synthesizer samples. I was lucky enough to join Neil for this great project and so I’ve created an additional set of NKI Patches (for use with Kontakt 5) which you can download for free on BPB.

ESQ-1 Re-Boot features 40 original instrument patches from the legendary Ensoniq ESQ-1 hardware synthesizer, known as one the finest hybrid synthesizers (with analog filters and digital oscillators). The library contains 497 samples in total, sampled across six octaves for each of the included instrument patches.

Neil Paddock has originally released the library as a Refill for Reason 7.1, however an additional version of the library with instrument mappings in SFZ format was released shortly after. You can download both versions of the library for free via Neil Paddock’s website How To Program Drums (linked in the downloads section below). Video instructions for installing the library and loading it in different sampler instruments are available on his website and on his YouTube channel.

For quite a while now, Neil and I have been planning to collaborate on creating free sound libraries, and as a first step in that direction I’ve created a free set of Kontakt 5 patches for the ESQ-1 Re-Boot sample collection. You will need the full version of Kontakt 5 in order to use these patches without any limitations. They will work for 15 minutes in the freeware Kontakt Player. If you don’t own Kontakt, your best bet is to download the free SFZ version of the library from Neil’s website and use it in a free sampler such as Shortcircuit 1, sforzando or Zampler.

A huge THANK YOU goes out to Neil Paddock for creating these samples and releasing them for free, as well as for giving me the opportunity to collaborate with him on such a cool project. It’s been tons of fun for me and I’m incredibly happy with the result. We have more plans for similar projects in the future, so stay tuned!