E-mu SP-1200

The E-mu SP-1200 is a sampling drum machine designed by Dave Rossum and released in August 1987 by E-mu Systems. Like its predecessor, the SP-12, it was designed as a drum machine featuring user sampling. The distinctive character of its sound, often described as "warm," "dirty," and "gritty," and attributed to SP-1200's low 26.04 kHz sampling rate, 12-bit sampling resolution, drop-sample pitch-shifting, and analog SSM2044 filter chips (ICs), has sustained demand for the SP-1200 more than thirty-five years after its debut, despite the availability of digital audio workstations and samplers/sequencers with superior technical specifications. The SP-1200 is associated with the golden age of hip hop. It enabled musicians to construct the bulk of a song within one piece of portable gear, a first for the industry, reducing production costs and increasing creative control for hip-hop artists. According to the Village Voice, "The machine rose to such prominence that its strengths and weaknesses sculpted an entire era of music: the crunchy digitized drums, choppy segmented samples, and murky filtered basslines that characterize the vintage New York sound are all mechanisms of the machine."

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