Thank you. I will have a look into it but have no idea were to start.
I might be wrong, but my understanding is, that when playing, you need to setup the Roli Dashboard between the Seaboard Rise 2 and Hydrasynth oder Modal to control the CC-parameters.
By default the x-control dimension is set to cc 113 and the y-control dimension to cc 114.
Based on the ASM Hydrasynth Desktop this would be the value for the OSC 3 | OSC3 cent and Mixer | OSC3 FRate, and on Modal Argon8M Mod Slot 6 Dest and Mod Slot 7 Dest.
Unfortunatly I could not find a cc chart for Equator2 for the time being.
Linnstrument works with Hydrasynth out of the box, the configuration being a piece of cake. That was the only reason that I liked the Hydrasynth for: MPE. Wonderful combo!
I had thought about the Linnstrument and the Haken Osmose as an alternative, but than made the decision for the Seaboard Rise 2.
The Seabard Rise 2 is a great instrument und is a lot of fun with many creative possibilities. But with the knowledge about the technical background I guess I would not buy it again.
Their supportsystem and knowledgebase ist outdated and s**t from the users point of view.
Curious to hear how the Exquis works for you. I love everything about it except the way the chords and scales and triads and such are laid out. Might be too dim to understand how to play the damn thing. And I wish it was battery powered.
Me tooā¦ I could not find information if this thing is class compliant and if it is recognised on iOS as I would mainly use it to control iPad apps.
I had a go at it too, but never really got the hang of it. So I returned it eventually. But it was great fun with to play around and experiment with.
Yup, it is difficult to declare one MPE controller the ruler of them all. Every one of them serves specific needs. You should however watch out for solid build quality and decent versatility.
Edit: took out my mistaken application of āaxes lettering.ā
Hereās my current take on the status of MPE controllers (long-ish review follows). I now own three MPE controllers: Linnstrument 128, Push 3 Controller and Osmose. They all do some things really well, but also have their limitations. I will be keeping all three.
The Linnstrument is great for setting up modulations that I can use per note in three dimensions with multiple fingers without having to move any fingers across space (I can keep a finger on a note and apply pressure, slide and bend by shifting the angle and pressure of the finger without actually moving the finger anywhere). This is due to its intentionally designed small pads and pressure travel. This really appeals to me. The drawback is that there is almost no travel for any of these dimensions. In other words, its possibilities are also its limitations.
The Push gives me lots of spatial movement on big pads for slide and bend, but little movement for pressure. I am still at the beginning of learning the Push because shortly after I bought it, I moved, tore down my home studio, and have had other life issues get in the way of really getting to see how it can be used to control Live (which is also new to me, been on Logic for nearly 20 years). I am in the process of settling my life down and setting my studio up again, so am looking forward to getting to know the Push and Live (and the Osmose) better.
The Osmose gives me great travel for pressure and offers truly stunning sensitivity for this so you can just barely touch a key and create per note sound modulations with it, but you cannot manipulate both pressure and slide at the same time, slide is aftertouch onlyāit comes into play only after moving all the way through applying the pressure travel). Pitch bend on Osmose is for pitch slides only (when using it with the Haken sound engineāI havenāt yet used it with the rest of my studio to see about setting up pitch slides to control other parameters).
All three have great build quality, with Linnstrument at the top (partly due to the great support of Roger Linn) and Osmose at the bottom (but still feels really solid). Push 3 has had a lot of software bugs, but that may be due to its very high ambitions for what it is designed to do (eventually).
If I could have an āMPE controller to rule them allā (for my purposes) it might be the Roli Seaboard. I NEVER use horizontal play for pitch bend. In fact, I donāt like the way pitch bend sounds. Not meaning to criticize anyone who does, but it all seems to sound like a whammy bar on a guitar to me, and I have disliked that sound since leaving Heavy Metal behind when I discovered āAre We Not Men We are Devoā and such. So, I really just think of horizontal play as another dimension for controlling other modulated parameters. The problem with the Seaboard (as others have mentioned) is that Roli makes it. I owned a Seaboard Block to try it out, and loved what it can do (pressure and slide really shine), but it just stopped working after a few months, and despite several attempts, Roll never responded to my support requests. So, never again for that company. I do still use Equator 2 (Roliās MPE-based VST) with my Linnstrument (and plan to use it with the Push and Osmose). I think it has lots of potential and love the way its UI lets you see all five MPE dimensions working all at once.
There really is an interesting and useful range of capabilities and features.
( Among them : Rise 2, Linnstrument, Exquis, Osmose, Continuum, the now gone Sensel Morph, Push 3, KMI Keyboard, Hydrasynth Keys/Korg Keystage, to name some. )
That will be enlarged later this year with the arrival of the ERAE II, with the quick changing versatile control surface arrangement choices, the adjustable surface for either fingers or drum sticks, the looping interface, and the extensive CV interface, and other features.
Also of interest later this year from Aodyo, is the Loom, which may bring a rich variety of flexible MPE control into a smaller inexpensive package. This one is still up in the air, though it looks promising.
?? Of course, you can apply both X and Y simultaneously. You can even apply X without Y and almost without Z. Plus with poly pressure glide, you can do long sides with great control. What you canāt do on the Osmose is apply Y without Z.
Ive tried most āmpe controllersā,
and finally come to a happy combo, which covers the 3 types of main āstylesā of expressive play (solely my definition)
Erae Touch - continuous surface
Eigenharp Alpha - non-continuous, 3d keys, light touch.
Osmose - piano style keys.
if there is āoneā controller to rule them all, I think it is the continuum, at least from my experience.
I will admit, I did consider selling a few things to get a continuumā¦
but I donāt think I could ever part with my Alpha, its so enjoyable to play.
I backed the Erae Touch II, mainly for the cv, but Im also hoping it will have a better response on it.
What I love about the ET, is a a really decent sizeā¦ and itās fully continuous in both X/Y, it just so flexible. the ET mk1 was so close to being perfect, so hope its wrinkles are ironed out for mk2.
Iāll do a side by side comparison when I get it 
that saidā¦ the Osmose is the one I play the most, everydayā¦ having such a fantastic sound engine built in, means even 18 months after getting it, I walk past it, and cannot resist turning it on to have a play. just so immediate, so immersive.
btw: another callout for an instrument, probably few have heard of
Strisoā¦ https://www.striso.org
Ive played this for a while, and it was so immediately fun to play, really expressive, and having a different note layout (close to Wicki-Hayden ) meant I avoided falling into familar keyboard/isomorphic melody lines - always refreshing.
You are correctāI mixed up the lettered names for the various dimensions (I will go back and edit my previous post). What I meant to say was, on the Osmose, you canāt apply āslideā without already having applied the full extent of āpressure,ā so you cannot really control both independently, which is important if you want to moderate two different sets of parameters with both dimensions at the same time, as you can on both the Linnstrument and Push 3.
Iāve got one of the new / re-issued Seaboard block things coming in the next month and all these posts about how rubbish quality they are and how bad support is are killing my excitement. Are they usually ok?
Does the list get larger ?
Arturia has invested a lot, productively so, with the development of their own, enhanced keybed, the FullTouch.
In the traditional keybed based competitive space, it can be argued that they have pushed that market ahead, albeit at the margins. I like for instance the way they tie in envelope controls with the keybed.
I firmly believe that they would not have made such a large investment in core technologies, without intent to leverage this in other products, beyond the PolyBrute. So for instance, an advanced AstroLab, or as speculation, something like a Superfreak.
I think it is reasonable that they could also do a higher end controller, iāll call it the FullStep here.
Not sure if MPE would be enough, for something like pushing envelope control back into the keyboard controller. Perhaps that would fit better with MIDI 2.0.
I like Arturia, they definitely have capability with both āsolid build quality and versatilityā as g3o2 has described.
Weāll see what they may do.
always, we seem to get one or two new ones each yearā¦
I think the Push 3 was perhaps an important milestone, as its the first time MPE has been shipped to a (very) large userbase that really wasnāt focused on MPEā¦ its just an āextra featureā.
this will expose many players who never really had much of an interest in itā¦
also vastly increasing the MPE market size makes it more attractive to software developers.
I do wonder if some of the bigger names are getting interested now, in preparation for Midi 2.0.
simply because per note/hi res midi will be much āeasierā in midi 2.0ā¦
feels now, that mpe is really now just a āstop gapā, though could be a while for midi 2.0 to really gain traction.
I think arturia (and also expressive e in noisey2) have done some interesting work in how automation (env/lfo) might work alongside mpeā¦
up ti;l now, the prevailing thought was you dont really need automation with expressive controllers, you can āplay the envelopeā
and I think whilst thats true, when thinking of traditional automation, perhaps there are more expressive automations possible.
actually another good example of this is the pressure glide we see on continuum/osmoseā¦ basically an expressive take on portamento.
You mean that in past tense, right ? ā were.
I am not a believer that with something as complicated as new product development, that a past failure ( and were their past products even rubbish anyways ?, i donāt think so. ) condemns a company, from learning improving and changing. As an engineer and developer this is an attitude that i canāt share.
I get the customerās view on this. I also get the marketing side of it too.
I just look at every day in my life as being a new beginning.
May i also point out there is another company, that weāve been posting about in the last group of posts that has come through some difficult customer relation issues recently enough as well.
The stuff iāve seen on the Rise 2 has been very positive.
Also the controller/device negotiation in MIDI 2.0 might allow matching capabilities, like for instance envelope control, that you might only be able as a user to hard configure in under MPE.
Itās a āfuture questionā.
I am look forward to EEās response now.
I have not heard or read anything negativ about the build quality of the Seaboard Rise 2, and my unite is very well built and has no malfunctions so far. Donāt forget, it has a free 30-day return & 2-year warranty.
Also, donāt forget about the interesting intersection of MPE and the arpeggiator on the Osmose.