Expert Sleepers ES-4 black aluminium

The ES-4 is another Expert Sleepers module for converting digital control data from your computer into control voltages. As usual the module is to be connected to your audio interface but in this case you use the S/PDIF socket integrated in almost each laptop computer (and every Mac).

Due to technical restrictions the ES-4 will work only with the Silent Way software (see below).

Two of the five channels are calibrated to provide over 5 octaves of 1V/octave pitch CV. The remaining three channels are general purpose outputs (for use as e.g. gates, envelopes, LFOs).

Output voltage:

• Channels 1-2: 0-5.3V (when trimmed for 1V/octave response)
• Channels 3-5: 0-10V or ±5V (jumper selectable per channel)

- D/A conversion: 8 bit, using high precision Analog Devices DACs.

- Indicators: LED for S/PDIF sync lock; 2 LEDs per channel on channels 3-5 indicate output voltage ( ve/-ve)

- Expansion:

• 5 headers for connecting ES-4 Gate Expander modules (see below)
• Digital audio I/O header (I2S format) for future expansion

The ES-4 works with coaxial digital S/PDIF connectors, with a standard rate of 192kHz. While the ES-4 is specified to run at 192kHz, at the time of writing this has not been tested. Operation up to 96kHz however has been tested and verified.

Since S/PDIF is a stereo-only format, the encoding of the five channels on to two is handled by software to be provided as part of Expert Sleepers Silent Way.