Ensoniq DP/4 Parallel Effects Processor

Had it in the studio from 2003 to 2016. Reliable and user friendly technique and quality. I really miss that thing. One of the best FX all rounder for electronic music studios! Design, Quality and FXs are premium!

It does everything…four times over. I almost always use all four processors for a single source and get excellent results. A luxury I know since I have three available for use. Typically Vocals and Guitar are the two instruments that can gain from multiple effects. Vocals use a compressor, gating, eq, and reverb, leaving me some other effect to use intermittently such as chorus, echo, distortion, or flanging. Same for guitars. I’ll often use a amp simulator (3 types) and maybe a speaker simulator, leaving me with two other processors for multi-effects such as chorus-delay, or flanger-delay, or dual pitch shifting. You see, there are a lot of possibilities.

I’ve also used it live as 4 compressors – one for each vocal mic, but I found it better to just use two 1U dual compressors for the instant knobs twist and gain reduction LEDs. I have also used it as a dedicated voice processor for live use, and using all four processors in series can even make me sound good!

If you have the mixer, you can use to aux sends for two dual-processor effects, or if you have 4 sends, up to 4 individual effects. Once you understand the routing switching and the switching method of the jacks it’s easy to use 1, 2, or 4 effect in/outs. 3 effect in/out (as in two single and one dual effect) is not really supported, but easy enough to set up with a short patch cable. You just can’t switch it around from the front panel. That’s not so bad though since seldom will you need to change the number of ins and outs on the fly.

Drawback: Great MIDI implementation but sadly the volume control for delay line effects is on the output, not the input, so you will have a harder time queing the exact phrase that should be echoed. You will need a second processor before the delay effect to do that – not a problem if you wanted a second effect in series but it is a limitation.

The rooms and plates sound fine. So does the hall for some things but somehow the hall doesn’t seem so useful to me – I guess it has a bit of a quirky sound. So if you want a really freakin’ good reverb, I’d use the room & plate in parallel or series, or use some of the non-linear (i.e. reverse) reverbs. to me they sound better. The 8-voice chorus is to me a bit much – to smeary or something. I prefer the simpler eq-chorus-ddl effect since it has a cleaner chorus and includes more eq and delay effects that can be used or not.

The system has a lot of programability and that makes this very flexible. As one example, if you have one or up to four inputs, the output of the effect can still remain in stereo. It is mixed internally and output thru jacks 1 & 2, so only two returns are needed. If going mono, just use output 1 and all processors are summed to mono. This is all done with jack switching internally so there is no menu-configuration needed.

Look, I could go on and on with this unit. It has some drawbacks, but it is pretty awesome too. The fact that I have three of these, and continue to use them even now 25 or so years later, should be enough of an endorsement from me.

Best thing retro design….!

Fun to use.