Interesting.
(All I have is the editor, which to my mind should display such parameters.)
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Yeah, it’s a little hidden (perhaps because you cannot reliably play two adjacent notes on a 2x2 grid at the same time with Erae I anyways). Just tested it, it’s Shift on Windows.
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yes, you an go down to 2x2 on the Erae 1 (always were able to), but you dont have the accuracy to play.
I tried this early on with the ‘piano’ layout, with 2, 3, 4 width keys, quantised to semis.
4 is perfectly reliable.
3 is mostly reliable, with a conditions that will cause issues.
2 was not really reliable enough to play… it’d kind of work, but to many fails.
I think part of the issue is the surface, it obviously has a kind of bounce/rebound. around your finger… this is why the change of surface may aid melodic playing.
also the variation in precision across the surface, means some areas were ok at 2, but others areas reliably failed at 2…
note: its likely later firmware improved this, but given my experience on 3x3, Id be surprised if 2x2 was feasible.
(but all credit to embodme, the firmware changes did help alot )
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given there is only 5 days to on no the KS…
thought id dig up some more info on Erae 2 from comment replies on KS
I do find the tone, generally now more practical than the mk2,
I think they are have a learnt a lot from the mk1 , that theory and practice can vary tremendously…
so, they are not giving as many tech specs as the mk1. e.g. ET 1 claimed 10uM x/y at 2khz. probably a lesson learnt, quoting theoretical limits (of sensors etc), will bite you, as you won’t get this in practical use.
also good to hear they’ve got someone on board, so they can study the theory vs practice… and have a better understanding of real world constraints.
all good stuff here…
good to hear the refresh rate of the CV is high… and 13bit is fine
again, I like the comparison with the Continuum, recognising its differences at lighter forces - again, that ‘practical’ experience shining thru.
overall, good stuff… I think this’ll help set expectations much better!
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from what i’ve read they have increased the amount of sensors from about 1000 on mk1 to about 16000 on mk2, which sounds pretty remarkable.
despite the fact that i’ve been living my whole life in berlin, this is actually the first time that I’m going to superbooth… pretty excited 
Anyways I’ve decided to join the kickstarter. I’ll do my best to give a description of the difference in feel between linnstrument and erae mk2, as well as how close it comes to what I’d consider to be an “ideal” mpe controller after I’ve tried it.
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I was a little surprised by the 60 g as minimal weight to trigger a note. A usual grand piano is in the 47 to 55 gram range and the Sensel Morph is said to have a 5g trigger force (I never measured it but it reacts to the slightest touch). Linnstrument is afaik at around 50 g (and putting your finger on the Linnstrument without triggering a note is pretty easy).
So, no “light touch” apparently, but as long as it is predictable one can probably get used to it, like one can get used to different piano actions.
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Yes, as you say, 60 g is not so great by itself, compared to the other ones you mentionned.
I did some raw comparisons with my MPE controllers :
Des sons dans l'air - les controleurs gestuels (in French)
What will be the most important with Erae2 is how it is distributed over the whole surface.
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Very interesting, thanks for writing this up
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cool resources @PrS , nicely formatted and comprehensive 
(are the details all from your personal experience?)
I think your assessment of the ET mk1 is a little harsh… and you’ve seen my vocal criticism, so no fan boy 
later versions of the hardware have improved it a lot.
I also think there was (initially?) quite a variation in units.
so hard, I guess to give a ‘balanced’ view, as everyones mileage will vary.
overall, as Ive said, Its certainly playable, but id find it hard to recommend (for melodic play… other uses, I think its very good)
but back to mk2, and in relation to the above…
yeah, 60g is not a light touch…and that has its ‘issues’
but the 10% variation over the surface is definitely acceptable.
I do believe they’ll hit this, as they have automated the assembly process, and worked on the materials… all things that I think likely caused the variations we saw.
( I’ll also say, everything ive tried has some variation… its fine within certain tolerances)
one word of caution, these demos of the surface sensitivity for the mk2… we did see similar videos for the mk1… though, iirc, they were more stylised/marketing.
note: Im also a bit concerned, as I noticed, I kind of misread… it actually says ±10% variation, that actually means potentially ~20% variation from worst to best points, thats not so great.
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erae 2 demo ( paid promotion)
Teatro shows the Erae Lab with the Erae 2, which highlighted a limitation we kind of knew… 8 presets, down from 32!
presets can now be change by the 8 buttons on the top panel, this is a nice QoL change - but it now means there are only 8 presets available, as can be seen in Erae Lab.
now whilst, I don’t use 32, or frankly even 16…
I definitely can see 8 being a bit of a limitation.
… perhaps you can load banks of 8 from the sdcard, in which case, it’d not be an issue (for me)
(i.e. perhaps screen/encoder + sdcard means ability to load ‘projects’)
edit: ok, looks like you can load from sdcard, I found a reply on the KS project
all good, not sure you how you get to the ALT , no button - perhaps something like long press = alt.
this’ll work fine for my needs…
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Sorry if the values and the comments in my page seems a little harsh, but they must be placed in the context of gestural control of 3D space, where it is important to be able to maintain the pressure within a small margin of variations during the movement of the fingers.
With the Erae 1, taking into account that the minimum can be in certain areas 200 g and the maximum in others 250 g, we arrive at possible variations of 100%, which makes this aspect of the MPE practically unusable for me.
This was with my second unit, which was a little better than the first one since the more important variations are located rather near the edges.
The +/- 10% announced, therefore 20%, seems very good to me if it is real and shared with every unit. That’s pretty much what I get with the Morph.
So I am also crossing my fingers (while trying to sell my mk1 !)
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I don’t think thats anything to do with contextual use… that’d not be playable for any musician using it for melodic purposes… and frankly, i doubt its even any use for percussion
but as I mentioned, thats not everyones experience…
I’ve never seem it to a point where one area of the surface min was anywhere near close to the max in another area.
however, its fair enough you can only base on what you have experienced, withunits you have received.
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Hello again,
As I mentioned, I‘ll be at superbooth next week and will get to try the controller.
If anybody has specific questions, feel free to collect them here and I’ll do my best to get them answered.
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See if you can try the MPE note grid at denser resolutions, and report back on how playable that is?
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Sure. I can’t reference mk1, but I can compare it to my linnstrument. What would be the grid size you’re after?
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Collecting some subjective impressions about touch response when playing melody lines and chords would be a good first test - how is the play feeling, touch consistency, minimal needed pressure, latency etc
.
If you get more time with it: A good test would be to have a grid with all notes being the same (or more easily just one very large “key” over the entire surface) and pitch bend being mapped to pressure. Then tap on different locations very lightly and check whether you can reproduce the same pitch. Try this for different pressure levels, to get a feeling for consistency. The ear is usually much better at hearing pitch differences than e.g. timbre differences.
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Good idea. I’ll try to do that.
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yeah, Id echo the above…
can it play reliably on a 3x3 (dots) grid? and is pressure consistent over the entire surface?
also how light a touch are they allowing?
(admittedly this is hard to quantify without having played a mk1)
you might not have an opportunity to extensively test…
but previously, Ive found that velocity can sometimes a pretty good /quick test…, and its easy to tap a few notes around the whole surface, to hear if they sound wildly different.
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4x4 dots is default. This gives you a maximum of six rows, ten columns.
To change this… If you hold down shift while you resize that element in the editor, you can make bigger or smaller cells, which don’t necessarily have to be square. (if you resize the grid to one square, then shift-resize, the whole surface can be one pad. I don’t think it’s a priority to test anything that silly.)
As stated above, 3x3 dot squares are what folks are most concerned with. That maxes out at eight rows, and up to 14 columns – roughly in line with a Linnstrument 128 (whose grid is 16x8)
Beyond that, it’s whatever you have time for.
2x2 dot squares max out at 21x12. It’s a curiosity, but I don’t think anyone has faith that it will be reliably playable that small.
If you went 2x3, everything’s a bit squished, but you get 21 columns – closer to the Linnstrument 200 (at 25x8)
Eyeballing it, I think 4x3 dots is probably a close analog to Push 3 (yielding an 8x10 grid)
You could potentially go “one pad grid”, though I’m not sure why you’d want to.
Likewise, 2x24 dots gives you an octave and a half of Continuum layout. Seems unlikely anyone will spend a lot of time with that, but whatever.
Anyway, you may want to make something vaguely comparable to Linnstrument, to better leverage your internal reference.
Important note within that:
“Vertical Gliss” is enabled by default. Which is great; neither Push nor Linnstrument support bending across rows, and you’ll absolutely want to evaluate whether it’s worth trading CC74 for that. But I think you’ll also want to disable it to test CC74 from the Y axis, for more of a direct Linnstrument comparison.
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