Well if you want more MPE hardware controllers to compare against, you know what resource to use.
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honestly, thereâs a couple of issues with this⌠on both erae and ROLI Piano.
a) subjectivity and usage
different users have played with different controllers, and will also have different use-cases - this will always taint people opinions. esp with âfeelâ which is pretty subjective.
also, some peoples expectations are also altered by price point.
e.g. I donât expect these controllers to be as good as a Continuum/Osmose as the price point is completely different.
generally, it comes down to your expectations, and can you enjoy it.
that is unfortunately, best judged by first hand experience - trying in a shop/trade show etc.
b) track record / early adoption
honestly, Roli and Embodme previous products have a bit of a chequered past, not living up to many peoples expectations.
they are also new products, so theres some expectations that issues we see will be âfixedâ in later firmware etc - but thats a âpromiseâ
also, with these things, often there is a honeymoon period, user are happy with it, but 6 months later, things start to surface that are an issue - sometimes in quality control in product or firmware updates not being forthcoming.
so there is a risk with getting new products.
so unfortunately, overall, I dont really have much confidences in âreviewsâ, not because I think people âshillâ products (I dont think they do) , but because its all quite subjective and down to expectations.
(like it or not, some people will have much higher/lower expectations of a $500 product, depending on the personal circumstances)
its a real shame that many of these products cannot be bought online with some kind of return guarantee⌠as this would give people some confidence in buying, and seeing if the product is for them.
so yeah, im not sureâŚ
Id definitely wait on the ROLI Piano, as the Lumi was pretty poor.
(and frankly, Roli have always been very good at âmarketingâ ;))
Erae 2, I think its great but yeah, theres does appear to be some quality variance, and its not âperfectâ for sensitivity, but good enough depends on you.
honestly, If you really dont want to take a risk, Id say Osmose. Its been around long enough, that we all know its the âreal dealâ - yes, its pricey, but you are paying for quality (imho)
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I was getting away from conventional style piano, but Iâve gravitated back and was looking for an MPE keyboard with regular sized keys with full vertical travel. I was too unclear about what functionality it included versus Airwave and subscription and the Osmose is out of my price range.
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Iâm curious if you checked out the scale capabilities? Like being able to customize and display any scale on the keys? I assume it has no microtuning capability built in?
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Great input! I basically agree with everything youâre saying. That said, I do think a video that thoroughly showcases specific aspects of a device â especially ones Iâm particularly interested in â can absolutely help me get a better sense of a product. For example, if Iâm unsure about a deviceâs sensitivity and thereâs a video using weights or force gauges to measure it, maybe even side-by-side with devices Iâm already familiar with, then of course, that gives me a much clearer idea of what to expect.
Absolutely, I would love to always have an Osmose with me â it is however kinda heavy and hard to fit in the suitcase, thatâs why, as I mentioned, Iâm looking to get a Roli Piano as well.
Iâve never found another full-size 49-key keyboard that fits in a normal suitcase â most have pitch/mod wheels or extra space around the keybed, making them too wide. And hey, this one even has poly-aftertouch and per-key pitch bend! But that might also be its weak spot. Iâm guessing it relies on the same pressure-sensitive ink for velocity, pressure, and pitch bend, and in my experience, this tech works decently for pressure and slides but not so much for velocity. And for me, a keyboard without solid velocity control just isnât something I will be using.
So maybe the Roli Piano just is what it kinda looks like to me (and seems to mainly be marketed as): a keyboard with lights to help learners find notes, that also just happens to have some poly-aftertouch and per-key pitch bend capabilities!
That said, at the early-bird price of $350, Iâm willing to give it a shot!
(It does come with a 30-day free return 
)
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oh, in that case , Id order one⌠and make use of it, see how it feels, see how well it works in practice - nothing to lose !
given youâve had a Linnstrument, I think thatâll have set certain expectations (about feel/responsiveness etc) , so itâd be more important to get your hands on it - and 30 days is a good chunk of time to assess it.
also with the Roli, youâll get a feeling of what its ânative functionalityâ is, compared to what the software (Roli Studio?) they provide will give you.
though, thats only important if you want to use standalone.
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It has no internal sounds, so not sure what you mean by standalone?
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Ah, to control hardware synths (without a PC involved), you mean?
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yup⌠direct midi out. as in that case, you are solely relying upon the capabilities of the firmware of the controller.
Iâve not really looked too deeply at the Roli piano, so Im not sure exactly the specs are of it⌠esp. as the marketing is trying to push the ecosystem as a whole (incl airwave), rather than what the âpianoâ itself is capable of.
but hey, if you always attach to a laptop, none of this may matter 
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Letâs not forget about their subscription service for learning to play â a big part of the companyâs focus since the restructuring with the new investors. Because especially at the time, and still in most cases, investors do love them some sweet SaaS-money â letâs make everything SaaS!
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Yeah, no. Give up on that.
Until explicitly shown otherwise, there is nothing of the sort. I canât emphasize strongly enough, you should never trust Roli in this regard.
(Roli keeps the LEDs pretty well locked down, because they consider their lighted controllers, more than anything else, as DRM for the subscription service. If they made their products open and modular, that would open the door for competing services to make use of those. Which is verboten.)
So⌠youâre only going to select scales in Roli Studio Player. Theyâre listed here - there are 19 of them. And thatâs after several years of user requests begging for specific others.
(I have 28 that Iâd like to see supported, for my own use. But also, I built a tool which synchronizes the keyboard to whatever you have selected in Ableton, and I can never release it because Roli doesnât support half of those scales, either.)
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I dont agree with that analysis really.
Because back in the lightpad block days, they did publish some API stuff, and also the littlefoot scripting stuff. And I believe this extended to the Lumi too. (to give the Piano M its original name).
I know the idea that firmware sourcecode was published was mentioned earlier, and I never saw any evidence of that, I never personally saw ROLI ever going that far.
Rather, I believe the reality was somewhere in between the two stated extremes as far as I know. What I dont know is whether ROLI these days will still put the same effort into that side of things. And its been too many years since I mucked around with any of this myself, so I cannot get right into the full details of either the littlefoot or API stuff with the Lumi, I cannot say whether you can use either to achieve custom scales, but I suspect you probably can.
My evidence for the above comes mostly from the following repository, and the fact that later commits show that some files were updated to support a particular LUMI firmware version:
updated file examples that are LUMI-relevant in places:
But like I said I dont have time to probe that stuff more deeply right now, and these files are from quite some years ago now. There may be even simpler ways to affect the illumination of the keys for all I know, I have a vague memory of that but it was too long ago for me to remember properly.
Whether the same stuff will work on the new hardware remains to be seen.
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Roli supports 19 scales.
And that littlefoot example code was quietly published (without an announcement, let alone a reply to countless emails about it) after three years of begging.
I mean, sure. A more empowering user firmware is technically possible now. But this does not in any way affect my answer, which was that Roli will never release a scale editor.
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In an extremely limited manner, yes.
You can change the color palette, and you can mark individual keys as being active. But touching a key overrides itâs LED state.
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Q:
Does the Roli Piano offer any improvements in pitch bend and aftertouch performance/expressiveness compared to the Piano M? Or is it essentially an upscaled, 49-full-size-key version of the Piano M, with a deeper plunge depth?
Is all the sensing (velocity, pressure, and pitch) done by pressure-sensitive ink, or does the Roli Piano use a combination of different sensors for pressure, pitch, and velocity?
It would be greatly appreciated if Roli could share more in-depth information and/or a more in-depth video showcasing these aspects of the new Roli Piano.
ROLI:
Yes, there are improvements to pitch bend and aftertouch with the ROLI Piano
Sorry, we are not able to provide the technical details, as thatâs our secret sauce!
Q:
I get that some details might be proprietary, but itâs a bit surprising that basic sensor information isnât available. After all, once people get their hands on the Roli Piano, theyâll be able to figure it out anyway.
Wouldnât it be frustrating if you were buying a car but the seller refused to tell you how many cylinders it had, or a computer without disclosing its memory capacity? Transparency about what weâre purchasing is important.
Would you be able to share at least some general insight into how the sensing works without giving away the âsecret sauceâ? That would really help potential buyers make an informed decision.
ROLI:
âŚ
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This makes it sound like there has been no upgrade in the sensors used, because if there were, theyâd make sure to conjure up some marketing-speak to turn it into a selling point?
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I decided to get one in the end. I am positively surprised. The keys are night and day better than the ones from the Lumis (at least the Kickstarter ones, never tried more recent ones). The keys are full size now and pressure depth is now also like one is used it on other keyboards. Plays nicely and allows (in comparison to the Lumis) much finer control over expression!
Aftertouch is more like aftertouch with usual keyboards (so the last few mm), not like Osmose which reacts already when slightly pressing down the key. X-wiggle for pitch bend is perhaps not as precise as on Osmose but works well enough to be usable!
A good aspect is that it can be USB-powered, so a Macbook and the keyboard are all that is needed to get some sound! (Edit: Just tried it: Can also be powered from a phone. Also has an internal battery, so it doesnât deplete the phone/notebook battery as fast).
It is also quite compact and fits my computer keyboard stand, so I can place it directly in front of the main monitor to experiment with synths or as ânote typing deviceâ. Can also be just played on the lap.
Havenât played with the âlearnâ app yet. Wasnât overly convinced by this in Lumi times. But will give it another try, perhaps it is better now.
So, a performance-wise solid keyboard with poly aftertouch and per key x-wiggle for pitch bend and MPE compatibility that can be powered via USB and glows in the dark for < 500âŹ.
I have much less anxiety to let my little nephew play on that than e.g. the Osmose that appreciates not being played full force with the fists 
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The prototypes at NAMM seemed very solid, but too heavy for Keytar adoption, and while I wasnât able to try it in lap at the show, I was skeptical that the weight would be comfortable there. Glad to be wrong!
Weight is 3.5 kg. So heavy for a laptop, ok for a four octave keyboard.
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Played some Osmose sounds via the ROLI Piano. While technically possible this isnât a good fit, because these sounds (at least in MPE mode) almost exclusively use channel pressure to trigger and shape the sound. So while the real Osmose keys send continuous events over the entire travel range the really relevant section of the key for the ROLI Piano are the last few aftertouch enabled millimeters of the key travel when using the Osmose sounds.
But this is somewhat to be expected, the Osmose sounds are optimized for the Osmose hardware and the ROLI Piano is no Osmose substitute. (From that perspective the Lumi keys were slightly closer to that as they send channel pressure right from the start of the key press. The key travel is quite small though, the Osmose keys allow much more control over expression than the Lumi keys).
EaganMatrix could of course be used to create sounds that work well with ROLI Piano, just the Osmose sounds are not made for it.
The new ROLI Piano is more a traditional aftertouch keyboard. So e.g. CS80 sounds work nice out of the box.
Edit: âLegacy modeâ works actually quite well for some Osmose presets. For that one has to ensure that notes are sent on channel 1, so velocity is used instead of channel pressure. And in the ROLI Dashboard Pressure Tracking should be set to Poly Aftertouch. Then more percussive presets where initial velocity is sufficient (close enough) and further timbre shaping is done via the âyâ axis (the last few mm of the Osmose key travel) sound as expected. Presets that rely on continuous timbre changes over the full key travel of course still wonât. And one sacrifices polyphonic per key pitch bend (one can set pitch bend tracking to âlast playedâ or âhighestâ or âlowestâ though - like on some keyboards with pitch wheels)
Would be interesting whether the ROLI Piano is physically able to send a continuous control value for the first section of the key travel (and it is just not unlocked in software atm.) My guess would be that the upper part is using the usual 2 or 3 sensor velocity sensing design of usual keyboards which cannot sense arbitrary key positions. No clue really. But the current behavior is ok when one doesnât have other expectations. Poly aftertouch is still rare and horizontal per key pitch bend wiggle even rarer.
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