#243

I feel like Sensel Morph with Buchla Thunder Overlay is a pretty decent compromise between these two modalities (continuous vs non-continuous): there are the clear demarcations of different notes which you can see as well as feel while playing. The scales for those notes can be whatever you choose with simple configuration, and you can also switch between different custom scales you configure with a quick button press. But you can also slide off of the demarcated notes if you feel like it. They’re more of a suggestion than locking you into particular non-continuous or quantized playing. You can see this demonstrated in this example of a polyphonic arpeggio patch being played.

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#244

Don’t be surprised if Roly Seaboard takes that from you for their next 3 million dollars marketting campain.

“Seaboard next : can you feel it? The Need to Slide. Redefining sound.” (it’s important to add that it’s redefining a broad physical and philosophical concept at the end otherwise it’s not really a new hardware)

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#245

Sadly, every part of that would surprise me, very much.

#246

Nice und skveeshy. :slight_smile: :upside_down_face:

This is another one of those instances where the actual tactile response of the keys will make or break the entire instrument. I worry a little bit about the rubber dome with XYZ movement; the Joué has those in its Bubbles module and others, and they can be a bit fiddly to get used to. If the tracking is reliable and reproducible and the keys are relatively sturdy and the tactile cues they mention work for telling you where X and Y are, then it looks quite appealing.

I like skveeshy, and right now the only real option out there for skveeshy is ROLI, which is a hard pass for me personally.

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#247

I’ve preordered an osmosis quite early. I had a continuumini and I still own a small seaboard although probably not for long. So far the continuum has felt as the best of the bunch and very expressive and fun. The mini was too small for my fingers but my biggest issue was with the Eagan matrix. I just didn’t click with that interface and especially in a high resolution screen it was brutal on my eyesight, getting older probably has something to do with it :slight_smile: I like the seaboard, very well made but again I don’t like the software engine that comes with it (meaning the sound engine) and in all honestly I only found it useful with kyma, where I have the flexibility to route, smooth values, without opening something like max and spending hours to configure the dsp side of it as well. Generally I find that using simpler sound sources or minimal processing chains with these controllers works best. It is not perfect though, and I wonder if I a more “in love” with the idea of the roli than the actual keyboard. Because of the edges of the black keys, it is not always easy to slide from the top of the keyboard…Anyway, I was searching for an fh-2 review, after watching synth diy guy’s excellent video using it the fh2 with the linnstrument, but i am perhaps leaning more to mdoudoroff’s point of view about mpe. I also have a small modular system to actually benefit from the polyphony along mpe’s exressiveness.

#248

When will the Osmose (it’s funny how every English speaking personne I know just never say the actual name which is in French ahah) be shipped? I must admit it made le very envious which I didn’t expect.

#249

Well for us Greeks it is more complicated than that being a Greek word :slight_smile: But more importantly being a universal term in physics/chemistry one might end up “quantizing” it in his dialect! Summer was I believe the initial plan, but with covid19, it is not clear.

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#250

Hi
I got a sensel morph last year but with so much other stuff going on i gave it to my nephew who loved the thing. Well they released an external that makes it really easy to use with Pure Data and i am going to see how it plays with NRNs next

Anyone else got one?
here’s a super alpha demo of a spectral morphing drum thing

and ye olde code shoppe

DEKEN REQUIREMENTS
SOUNDHACK
SENSEL
FREEVERB

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Friends of norns: gear, accessories, etc
#251

The Matrix interface is a brutal problem. Haken is clearly aware of it, and is working on a replacement, but things move slowly and deliberately at Haken. I gather they have to rebuild the entire UI system from scratch, so it’s a non-trivial project. I wonder whether they plan to mostly recreate what they had with rescalable GUI elements, or if they’re rethinking everything.

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#252

No lie. I don’t care how good it sounds, at my age I simply can’t deal with a UI like that any more. I am going to sell my Osmose before I ever play a note on it, simply because I can’t work with EaganMatrix in its current form… I found that out in my brief fling with the Mini…

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#253

Interesting that people don’t get along with the Eaganmatrix interface - it’s actually the feature of my Continuum I am enjoying the most at the moment. I think the only thing I constantly wish it featured was an “Undo/Redo” function when messing around in the formulae.

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#254

The functional design of the interface isn’t the problem for me, it’s that it renders too small on high PPI screens. Has to do with how it was originally implemented.

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#255

has anyone here played both the seaboard rise and grand models?

toying with upgrading to one or the other from my current block—was wondering if there’s a tangible difference to the action, responsiveness, build quality, and so on?

would very much appreciate a review

#256

I bought a grand when they were fairly new. They were partially handmade, not quite as mass produced as the rise. This was reflected in the cost, and if my experience was any indication, also in the build quality, but in a negative way. I had to carefully package up and ship my multi-thousand dollar instrument from California to London to get a stuck note issue fixed, and when I received it back, the problem resurfaced after just a couple of weeks. I packaged and shipped it for a second time and then requested a refund. Roli was kind enough to refund the entire purchase price. I’ve never looked twice at Roli hardware since.

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#257

exactly the answer i needed—i’ll try for a new rise and see about extending the warranty

thanks!

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#258

It’s a good call. I also have the subjective opinion that 88 or even 73 is a bit overkill with a seaboard. You’re not likely to playing Liszt with both hands across seven octaves. You’d use a piano for that.

#259

There’s a review/comparison of that here. It’s old but it may help

https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/roli-seaboard-rise

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#260

The ROLI Seaboard surface undergoes constant revision, and there are several “generations” that have different construction, playing feel, and response. The Grand is the oldest, the RISE is the second, and the Block is the third. I have been on stage with an ensemble where all three were present, owned by three different musicians, and because the setup procedure for the concert was so relaxed (it was a Skies event, so we were writing music for the concert onstage for several days before we actually performed), we had a chance to set them up side by side and play them.

The consensus was that there was a definite improvement over time, with quality inverse to cost, and that sticking four Blocks together and attaching them to a laptop running Equator would provide nearly everything a Grand could do at a small fraction of the cost – even if the laptop was bought bespoke to run Equator and nothing else. The one sacrifice was bends of over two octaves.

Glass half full: ROLI is constantly improving its tech over time and passing on both quality improvements and cost streamlining to its customers, which would be expected of pretty much any tech company. You don’t become an early adopter in expectation of the builder never improving on what you bought.

Glass half empty: ROLI turned its early users into beta testers, and that policy really hasn’t changed much over the years. I got a refund on my LUMI halfway into the Kickstarter, after about the third time they moved the goalposts, and I have never looked at a ROLI product since. My lone Lightpad M has been in the hands of a coder friend for a while so he can help me roll my own littlefoot configurations… he hates the dev platform so much he can’t bring himself to program it, and I don’t miss it at all. I’ll probably just sell it.

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#261

interesting—so is that to say you found the key action of the block outright preferable to the rise or the grand?

i would certainly consider a second block if the overall playing experience is that much better

#262

Oh, by far! If there is any way to test it yourself, you should. The Block has a better build and a firmer, more controllable action, in my opinion. While someone might find a reason to have one of the bigger Grand keyboards (which might have updated action vs. the one I tried), the RISE now makes no sense; it’s fabulously expensive for what you get.

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