Expressive E + AAS Imagine

I guess the sound engine is related to Chromaphone?

This isn’t an MPE synth, evidently. They don’t demo it with any polyexpressive controllers, and the manual doesn’t mention MPE (or even poly pressure) anywhere. The potential is there – it’s very responsive to the Touché controller (which the manual does mention) – but then that potential is there in a lot of non-MPE synths.

It does seem related to Chromaphone. The two instrument layers look like simplified Chromaphone voices. What’s novel (at least compared to Chromaphone 2, which doesn’t provide much in the way of modulation) is the 4 macro controls, which can be mapped to MIDI controllers or MSEGs.

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Huh. The manual has no details about MIDI support.

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I asked support.

We are sorry to say that Imagine does not support MPE.

We hope that it can eventually happen but there are no current plans to add MPE support to Imagine. Contrarily to Noisy, where we are already testing the MPE implementation for a future update, in the case of Imagine we also depend on AAS to adapt their technology so we can build the needed functionality around that.

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The lack of MPE support is disappointing, and very surprising in light of Osmose.

But I will say, my favorite synths for use with expressive controllers have all ended up being monophonic, for one reason or another. And this is, at least, paraphonic.

I’d love to see someone approach this from a wind controller perspective. It could be a godsend in that market.

That’s promising, though!

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Imagine Version 1.0.7

sound design

  • Added: new layer presets
  • Added: new global presets

compatibility

  • macOS: added version with native support for Apple Silicon processors
  • macOS: added Apple notarization to avoid warning when installing

bugfixes and improvements

  • Fixed: minor problems with factory presets
  • Improved: changed counterintuitive behavior of horizontal modulation slider
  • Improved: error handling during installation
  • Improved: minor GUI flaws like font size and display of preset list box
  • Fixed: Arpeggiator playhead not moving
  • Fixed: MIDI Learn ‘layer release’ assigned ‘layer gain’ instead
  • Fixed: Invalid values output by MSEG
  • Fixed: Eco mode not saved when closing and reopening the GUI

This has been bugging me lately.

All of the synths licensed from AAS in Ableton Live (Analog, Electric, Tension, Collision) support MPE now. But the products they’re derived from do not.

I figure that’s coming in their next set of paid upgrades. And that they’re stalling on those until after Black Friday.

…but, like, the technology is adapted. It’s just marketing now.