I’m at a place and I think the Erae 2 is at a place now where I can say that I completely love this device. So much has gone into it and I really appreciate all the updates and refinements. It truly is an all around complete controller for everything I own, software and hardware. It was so easy to criticize it in the beginning but now I’m feeling like Embodme really does care about this product. Only thing I could ever hope for would be an interesting new built in unique sequencer. From a players standpoint, for what I do, it is a dream device.
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I agree that Erae 2 is an all around versatile controller. The software updates to it made many ideas easy to realize. I can quickly design dedicated fader banks and arpeggio strips for unusual scales.
But Erae 2’s versatile design also comes with tradeoffs. For me, its pressure threshold and consistency aren’t as good as the LinnStrument’s (which has a superior electrical structure, though it’s also far less versatile). Erae 2 is also less precise at distinguishing adjacent pressure points within 15mm. Finally, the versatile plain surface has zero tactile feedback (I’m hoping Embodme releases a textured silicone pad with certain patterns).
That said, for the price, with every feature that are quite usable, I enjoy it.
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Yeah, I like the Erae as well (both 1 and 2).
I do think the Erae 2 had its teething problems initially, and the experience (lack of updates etc) many of us had with Erae 1 made us ‘concerned’ for its future support.
but I’d agree, they have ironed out these early issues, and even day 1 (for me) it worked well.
Im with @Csric ,
its very versatile, esp on the CV side, and I make more use of the looper than I had expected.
sure, its not as precise as other expressive controllers, but I think its a reasonable comprise - good enough, but with much more flexibility for other uses.
I think the fabric surface is great, and is all I used on mine, but its hard (impossible) to keep it clean, I think I might get the newer / optional black silicon surface, looked really nice at superbooth.
I think it lives up to what Id hoped Erae 1 would have delivered.
I’ll admit, I kind of miss the Erae 1 form factor (and more setups),
but the Erae 2 screen/buttons is more practical - being able to change settings like MPE on/off on the fly is so handy.
overall, Id recommend it, its not cheap… but its really flexible, and I find myself using it - just because its so immediate.
that said, if you know you want a dedicated MPE experience, Id probably still consider alternatives just for a better ‘feel’.
as for features, and the future…
I think Erae Sound is a really great demonstration of how Erae’s surface can be leveraged.
I’d love the API,
I really hope they extend this to allow 3rd parties to integrate in similar ways.
also allow the API to place components (pads etc) on the surface, rather than have just the low level api - this would open many possibilities.
I was interested to hear they are looking at microtonal / custom scales.
given its a continuous surface, I think this is really interesting.
as for sequencer.
I think the issue is unique/good sequencers are their own thing, they are quite involved, almost a different product - does Embodme have the resources to spend on this to make it special?
I guess, theres so many other things (api/microtonal/erae sound) they could do that can be quite unique to the erae, I just don’t want them adding ‘yet another sequencer’, to add to the feature list… I never used the one on the Erae 1.
but hey, it could be very popular, extra ‘features’ no doubt sell units.
perhaps it just because I have a Hapax, so really a simple sequencer on the Erae is not that interesting to me
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Erae 2 is my first ever Expressive controller, and i love it very much. As someone who prioritizes jamming live over everything, here are my 5 cents:
- Erae feels very good to play on. Surface is responsive, and overall, it invites me to play, which is always a good thing when your instrument invites you to practice it.
- I cant tell how sensetive it is objectively, since i never as much as breathed near another expressive controller. But so far, pitch and timbre are basically following my finger to the slightest movement. Pressure tracking could use some improvement, but I’m not saying that it’s bad. Just that it sometimes feels somewhat choppy. But then again, that might be me not adjusting pressure curve to my perfect liking.
- Strike velocity is inconsistent? For the lack of a better word. It’s hard to consistently output the same velocity. It’s inherent to the soft pad design itself, not having a physically moving object to continuously apply force to.
- This is my biggest problem with Erae as of now. It uses MIDI channels very awkwardly. If you have 15 channels set up, and you play a sequence of notes with a long release time, and then pitch-bend the last note(or change any per-note parameter, really) this parameter will apply to every note played before, since they will all be played on a single Midi channel. Playing a chord behaves as expected though, with every voice being assigned to one finger. I understand that this problem is inherently difficult, since controller has no idea of a lifetime of a sound, but spreading MIDI data over available channels could solve 80% of it. That’s how Linnstrument does it, AFAIK. Worth mentioning that i reached out to Embodme about this issue, and they seem to have at least created a ticket for this.
- You can’t color accidentals in the keygrid. Really weird, since the buttons and knobs for that are fully there. Embodme is working towards some new scale system(which i am super excited about), so this might solve this issue.
- I don’t really use different layouts, i play on a chromatic layout with a couple of sliders and stops there, having pads be 2x2, this gives me comfortable 6 octaves to play on. On a flip side, with this pad size it can be awkward to play two neighbouring pads together, and i have very thin fingers.
- Sometimes, retriggers happen when using sensetive modes.
Overall, I’d give current Erae an 8 out of 10. If they will fix these issues, and add this new scale system, it will be 11 out of 10.
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cool, always good to hear from someone who is not comparing it to something else, as a fresh experience.
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velocity - I mentioned this on the recent soundplane thread.
honestly, these kind of surfaces don’t do velocity don’t to velocity well/consistently, mainly its how you interact with the surface, and the nature of the surface.
(I’ve been explored this in the past trying to improve it, and realised the way velocity is done on something like a keyboard / drum is quite different to most expressive controllers) -
this sounds a bit odd… are you using MPE mode?
I ask because you say
but spreading MIDI data over available channels could solve 80% of it. That’s how Linnstrument does it,
but, this is not a linnstrument thing, its what MPE does on every expressive controller.
so yeah, with MPE you should not see this…
if you arent using MPE, then yes, PB will be shared across all notes… (often its averaged)
note: both the Erae needs to use MPE and your target synth needs to support and be in MPE mode.
MPE implmentation
note: this is unlikely your issue…
ok, to be technically correct…
usually, MPE implementations will use an LRU (least recently used) algo to determine channel,
SO… that you can have the longest release tail possible.
i.e. if your first note is played on ch 2, then it use 3-16 before it reuses 2 (simplification)
IF you have more than 15 voices active at once, then the MPE spec will reuse the channels
so if you are still playing on channels 2-16, the 16th note will play on (e.g.) channel 2 and so the pitchbend will affect both notes.
there is one other ‘oddity’ to be aware of…
the above assumes that the voice allocation (channel) of the synth is the same as the midi channel sent - this is often not the case (various good reasons), often they they will have thier own allocation - this means, you are dependent on them also following similar rules.
overall, you cannot get around the 15 active note limitation of MPE, but active is important there, it does not affect release tails, thats a synth (voice) limitation.
for ambient stuff, where you really want long releases/washes, you dont often hit this because you use reverbs - because during release, you no longer need that per note handling.
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Yes, of course, i have MPE enabled. If there is a way to send video here somehow, i can provide you with a video of the issue, where i use long release sine wave, and they all get jiggly as a reault of me playing notes in quick succession(which is shown in showMIDI midi explorer.
I am also aware that controller cannot really be aware of lifetime of a note, but there’s still 15 channels present, so i expected Erae to use the LRU strategy.
if its not using LRU, I send that in as a bug report - no reason for them not to use it really.
(that could be tested / proved easy enough with a midi monitor)
as I said, I cant say it would affect me, I tend not to use envelopes, I prefer to ‘play the envelope’ with pressure, and then (as above) use a reverb to extend beyond the touch.
thinking it about it, that goes back decades (?)
started doing this with the access virus, which has limited cpu,
so to get more ‘apparent’ polyphony with complex patches Id similarly use short release into reverb, thus freeing up the cpu playing the voice. a very effective strategy to boost polyphony.
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