…talked with thomann again…
they still sound confident, that, apart from the fact they can’t nail any dates for now, that their ordered batches will come for sure…
they gonna call the minute it’s back in stock and in the meantime i pulled the trigger on a sensel morph…
and @evpat…since u mentioned west coast…u might wanna check those…u can design ur own touchsurfaces with it and they even offer a prefab layout called buchla thunder…
with west coast synth control vibe full on…
…still no seaboard block in my hands…
sensel morph is a great all in one and overall universal controler…
but it’s not that super expressive music instrument u really can go crazy with…
…so, still hot to finally get a seaboard block…especially since i gonna have a brand new mbp 14" soonish…meanwhile bitwig jumps to version 4…full on ready optimized for apples m chip generation now…so, i really really want my mpeeeeeee…finaleeeeeee…
@hausland…u still need both of urs???
…as mentioned…i would pay actual new price…350 euros…anytime…
feel free to pm me, if u made ur mind up…
Hey man, just seeing this. I’m amazed that you remember I have two lol 
I need to think about this a bit. In the meantime let me know where you’re based (feel free to drop me a DM).
So six months later, is there an answer to the question ? I’ve not seen anything on-line recently.
The only hardware product, that shows any sign of life, is the Lumi. Their website has that available for pre-order, available in September (?)
The Seaboard/Rise products seem dead. It’s now off the Thomann on-line store too.
In the USA there are new restrictions on selling products that can not be repaired.
I don’t know about the Lumi but they’d need to make some large changes to the Seaboard/Rise product to meet those regulations. That’s the way it should have been from the start.
The software products though could still have life.
I wonder if ROLI would be willing to sell their Seaboard patents ?
this is sad 
they announced in july that they were moving to a direct sales model, so that likely accounts for no stock in retailers.
but the Roli website also shows no stock, of the Rise etc.
I guess like others, they could be suffering from supply shortages, but its not looking promising.
I don’t have any Roli hardware products ( * ), but there is no denying that Roli really did help push MPE - so, I really hope they can weather the storm!
( * ) I did back the LUMI , but they messed me about so much, I ended up cancelling… and was pretty thankful when I heard of the quality issues the early units had.
…actually, they’re in some kind of zombie status…
and i would be really surprised, if they can get on their feet again…
no one needs a lumi…but NOW, finally the world would be ready for their mindboggeling seaboard concept…especially the blox studio edition…
these days, it would be even ok now without such big software backend ownership, they had to buy in such a head over heels big rush, once realizing, their gadgets had no companions out there to talk to and to play with…
but now…things really have changed…pretty much all big daws talk mpe now fluent…
fact is…all their software know how assets saw the hammer and got new owners these days…
sad 'n truu…
still looking for a seaboard block, by the way…anybody…?..pay price as if it would be fresh out of the box…and hausland does not respond for now…
i need one…i want one…i buy one…so hit me, please…
I had a full sized Seaboard for a year. I liked it, but ultimately sold it because a) It didn’t get enough use, but more importantly b) the one I had developed an issue with responsiveness.
Despite the impressive build quality and the video that always gets mentioned where the Seaboard seemed indestructable, given the nature of the device if something goes wrong it almost certainly needs a manufacturer repair. Roli sent me a new unit, but if they go bust then that option isn’t really available, so I wouldn’t be rushing to buy one again any time soon incase you get stuck with a defunct unit.
They used to own JUCE which is a vst development platform, and the VST company FXpansion; but they seem to have sold them both in 2020. Hmm.
Juce (C++ Code Library) got sold to Pace (Makers of iLok)
FXpansion was sold to InMusic (Akai, Numark, Denon etc); so we might see some of their VST instrument / effects filter through into the MPC / Force (Just like Air to a degree)
Edit: Slightly incorrect information. Please refer to @ignatius post #52
they didn’t sell all of Fspansion. just BFD. roli still owns cypher and strobe and Geist… though geist is only on the fxpansion site. strobe/cypher are on both sites.
they abandoned the other fxpansion products (tremor, etch, maul, bloom) and we’ll see if they do anything w/geist2.
Ah, my apologies. Thank you for the clarification.
no big deal. good to know what’s available from who these days. seems like some things just get abandoned. ROLI promotes cypher and strobe quite often w/their seaboard line. they go on sale all the time. future of it all seems up in the air. Geist 2 gets little attention.
And now I get two irrelevant popup notifications for each instance of BFD that gets loaded. Looking at what people have to say about it, I’m afraid to jump through the convert-to-InMusic hoops before this project is finished, which will be months. Angry emoji.
Looking at the e-mail spamming of Roli lately, they don’t seem to be dead.
I dislike e-mail spamming very dearly so they can disappear from the face of the earth for all I care
…with fxpansion sold to inmusic, it’s all even weirder…
cause that asset saw a full blown split up…bfd2 licensing is not part of the same deal…
but bfd3 is…!!!.. while cypher and strobe stay in house…
fxpansion has vanished…
strange world…this sofware licensing circus…difference seems to be bfd2 still uses the old streaming sample content, while bfd3 got slimmed down to some compressed format for it’s backend sample content while keeping the old soundquality anyways…
which leads to two different licensing variations for the same fuking product…
congrats to everybody who drowned money on that formerly best drumplayer software…
meanwhile roli is spamming…?..well…as said…they’re in a kind of zombie status…not really knowing if they’re dead or alive yet…acting desperate and aggressive…
Tell that to the people who keep the internet running based on open source software. They aren’t doing it because of capitalism. Something makes me think that most people making musical instruments aren’t motivated by the money, there are a lot easier ways to make money.
I do not see a contradiction here. One does not have to be greedy or to be motivated 100% by financial profit to function within a capitalist system. The people who keep the internet running based on open source a volunteering their time and talent, but most of them probably make their living working for private sector employers. They may not be doing it because of capitalism but they probably wouldn’t be doing it at all under Socialism as the internet as we know it would not exist.
In the case of people developing musical instruments, they would be leveraging an immense global network of component suppliers and service providers as well as banks and private investors that make this development possible. That their initial motivation is love of music and not financial gain does not contradict the free-market system they need to realize their vision.
I am far from being a libertarian, and strongly believe the government should build schools, hospitals, prisons and roads; but if the music business didn’t operate under a free market system all we would have is marching bands and opera houses. Most of the music we love, the instrument we play and this forum just would not exist.
“We had our eyes set on hypergrowth”
Gosh do i loathe the need to endlessly push the bounds of growth at the expense of product and stability.
I don’t think this is the case here. Roli never reached anywhere near an initial profit, so while it did aim to grow quickly from zero, it’s hard to blame them for endlessly pushing the bounds of growth. Also, the product and technology will survive in the reformed company and at least for now all the employees keep their jobs. It’s only the entrepreneurs and the speculators that really took a hit here.