Hardware controllers supporting MPE (wiki)

[FranklyFlawless]

The similar terminology I know for that in the open-source community is “long-term support”:

• Long-term support - Wikipedia (on my Wikiless instance)

[thetechnobear]

yeah, I quite like legacy

the issue I have is, there are many variations on what what not being current can mean.
the company may or may not be official trading still, the product might be not current, but still supported, or not supported ,but you have community support. the list is kind of endless.

however, its kind of irrelevant, no-one is going to come to a list, and buying based on that, or consider it authoritative / up to date - that be pretty dumb (imo). they need to research themselves - so in someways, a certain ‘vagueness’ is useful, to encourages to ‘dig deeper’.
(or, they can ask here for what the current situation is… many knowledgeable folk here.)

also, I don’t want to imply that ‘non-current’ is bad, lots of hardware remains perfectly usable for many years without updates etc. dont want to imply … “go buy the latest shiny thing”

so yeah, quite like legacy, just implies its not ‘current’, buyer beware .

[FranklyFlawless]

I reformatted the entire list into a Markdown table, and took careful consideration of everyone’s posts in this topic:

@thetechnobear

I think its important that this topic does not overlap with Hardware synths support MPE, we need to strictly have this for ‘controllers’ only i.e that do NOT contain a sound engine.

Done.

@thetechnobear

e.g. only the first edition (?) continuum would be listed here, since all subsequent have EM.

Something like that:

DSP Upgrade — Haken Audio

Firewire Continuum (manufactured before 2005, these have no internal DSP)

I would have to dig through the Wayback Machine for that specific product page, and potentially rename the entry in order to avoid conflicting with the other (existing) Haken Audio Continuum Fingerboard product lines in the hardware synths supporting MPE topic.

@thetechnobear

note: im using 3-axis liberally here, meaning you have control on these dimensions. so something like the Osmose would still be ‘complete’, despite Y being attached to Z.
its not strictly true, but for most users they’d likely think of it this way.

Done.

@Ksoloti

I personally wouldn’t mind duplicates in lists… if a device does both, or if it is hard to place… why not both.

See my lists of MPE Hardware on KVR Audio:

• List of MPE Hardware Synthesizers - Roger Linn Design Forum - KVR Audio
• List of MPE Hardware Controllers (and More) - Roger Linn Design Forum - KVR Audio

An issue that will likely occur in the future are different Markdown table columns for each hardware supporting MPE topic, but I will handle that when the time comes.

@thetechnobear

you could argue controllers that need a computer (eigenharp/soundplane) should be separate from those that are truly standalone.

Sure, but standalone is not exactly a well-defined industry term either. For example, my perspective is that standalone hardware requires:

• Battery
• Synthesizer engine(s)
• Speakers

My definition overlaps more closely with “portable” and “turnkey”.

@thetechnobear

yeah, I was going to mark those not currently available etc,
but couldn’t decide on a word that encompasses the various reason.
…

need something ‘snappy’ so it can go on one line, to keep the list tidy

Discontinued was chosen largely due to my existing lists of MPE hardware, but also because it is exactly one word and it is often used in the industry:

Sensel Morph

The Morph is Discontinued. Read the Announcement

@thetechnobear

unsupported?

I would not be comfortable using that status on the Eigenharp product line due to community support on Poly Expression, so I believe it is ultimately up to you to decide if assigning such a status is appropriate.

@greaterthanzero

“deprecated”

Same issue as above, with the addition that discouragement of products will only harm the MPE ecosystem.

@Ksoloti

“legacy”

A potential alternative, at least better than “obsolete”, which is one of many terms I originally considered when creating my lists of MPE hardware on KVR Audio.