In the 1990s, the acoustic piano preset on most synthesizers sounded less like a majestic Steinway and more like someone aggressively hitting a xylophone inside a tin can. But Ensoniq decided enough was enough. They weren’t just going to give you a good piano; they were going to give you the Perfect Piano.

To achieve this impossible dream, they didn’t just hire a regular sound designer. They brought in William Coakley, a master piano technician whose resume included tuning instruments for the glitter-draped, candelabra-wielding legend himself: Liberace.

Coakley locked himself in a studio, obsessively sampling a Steinway D grand and two electric pianos until he had amassed exactly 16 Megabytes of pristine audio data. In 1997, dedicating 16MB to just three instruments was a staggering display of digital gluttony.

But what happens when you hand 16MB of acoustic perfection over to Ensoniq’s notoriously quirky sound design team? You get a preset list that rapidly descends from Carnegie Hall elegance into absolute studio chaos:

You just paid good money for the “Perfect Piano,” so naturally, the first thing Ensoniq offers you is 014. Cheap Seats. Because sometimes your ballad really needs that “back row of a high school auditorium” vibe.

Coakley spent his life tuning pianos to flawless perfection, only for Ensoniq to immediately destroy his hard work with presets like 040. Busted Tine, 047. TrashdWurli, and 008. Honky-Tonky.

In the 90s, the ultimate flex of a high-end sample was leaving the mechanical mistakes in. If you wanted to prove your piano was real, you loaded up 013. Pno/HrpNoiz or 025. TineNoisePd so the audience could literally hear the digital hammers groaning.

I have no idea what acoustic anomaly Coakley captured during his sessions, but it clearly inspired 030. Quack Comp and the deeply alarming 097. Quack Atak*.

Preset 060. KeithJ Pno* is an obvious nod to jazz icon Keith Jarrett. One can only hope that hitting middle C also triggers a sample of Jarrett’s famous, aggressive vocal groaning.

Somewhere around patch 27, a sound designer simply fell asleep on their keyboard and gave us 027. Padulatiary. I cannot find this word in any known language, but I assume it translates to “a piano drowning in 1990s chorus.”

Those little asterisks (*) scattered throughout the list? That was Ensoniq’s way of saying, “Hey, we took William Coakley’s pristine, painstakingly sampled Liberace piano… and we layered it with a synthesized bass guitar from the internal memory” (061. AcBs/Piano*).

Compatible with MR-Rack, MR-61, MR-76, and ASR-X Pro. MR-Rack must have version 1.50 or higher.

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