The VFX-SD adds a powerful 24-track sequencer for a total music production workstation. This is a professional quality sequencer with 25,000 note capacity expandable to 75,000, and it holds up to 60 sequences and songs. There is quantization (96 ppqn), real or step time input and auto-punch in/out. One thing that’s kind of quirky, the sequencer’s operating system gets loaded into the instrument’s RAM memory from floppy disk (they replaced the bulky and proprietary cartridges of the VFX with a standard 3.5″ floppy drive). This allowed Ensoniq to provide new operating systems that you could load in real easily. This was a good thing since the VFX was plagued by bugs during its early years and there were several subsequent OS versions released by Ensoniq, the most recent of which can still be downloaded.
The VFX-SD also adds new drum and percussion sounds including 24 drum kits. A disk originally shipped with the VFX-SD full of pre-sequenced drum patterns to get you going or inspired! Despite these newer features, the VFX-SD is totally compatible with the original VFX sound library. The VFX-SD also featured four individual outputs, MIDI Automated mixing, and an on-board 3.5″ disk drive for storing your sound patches, sequences, songs, and SysEx MIDI messages. Unfortunately the VFX-SD did not do too well when it was released, so Ensoniq re-released it with a few enhancements and called it the SD-1.
