I think of the Osmose the same way.
One of the reasons I’m fine with the sounds of the Osmose demo vids is I tried a Half Continuum, which of course also has the EaganMatrix engine, in person and really liked how the sounds responded more like acoustic instruments respond to one’s various gestures than how a synth typically responds to a MIDI keyboard. I can’t really help anyone understand what that’s like through typed words - just have to experience it in person and evaluate for yourself.
Right, I forgot: the Osmose was only on my radar in the first place because of the Continuum. I never went for a Continuum, not just because of the price, but I just don’t see getting along with that kind of playing surface. I’ve never had my hands on any Continuum model, but I’ve tried the Roli Seaboard, and the spongy neoprene is just too limiting for me because it lacks the speed and nimble quality of a piano (unless you’re Rudess or one of those virtuosos in the demo videos). As soon as I saw the Osmose’s marriage of the traditional piano’s physicality with the Haken’s expressive potential at 1/4 the price of the original Continuum, I pre-purchased. I’m still bracing myself for disappointment and selling off on eBay after a 6-month trial, but I’m already ecstatic there will be this opportunity to give the whole EaganMatrix thing a real shot. That’s because my fallbacks for expressive, complexly modulated, real-time solos (which, as a rhythm player, I suck at anyway) are either monophonic breath controllers that drip breath condensation all over everything, or bowed strings that get rosin all over your hands when plucked, and I have no bow technique without tons of woodshedding.
I do like my Soma Pipe for the kind of voice-controlled modulating its super-sensitive mike system provides, but it’s monophonic and anything good I get out of it is only ever on the exotic side, sonically speaking. I’m hoping the Osmose can also work well as a daily player and rhythmic comper.
So that sounds like CV outs!
Welcome back!
I guess that does sound like the Continuum Voltage Converter… on the hardware side:
Plugin side I guess is a VST/AU for easy routing of Osmose high-res MIDI controller data
Support for the Continuum Voltage Converter i guess ?
would be amazing if it was part of the Osmose but i doubt it.
I hope they are working on 3D printable clones of Edmund Egan to patch the Egan Matrix for you. That’d be great.
And if you follow that link to the Voltage Converter, the page already states “The CVC is built around i2c chips which communicate directly with the Continuum, ContinuuMini, or Osmose at 400kHz data rate.”
Nice attention to detail! I didn’t notice they added Osmose to the description.
Ok… how long until I have mine? seriously can‘t wait anymore! Bought the Touché now…
So it looks like we’ll get the September Update in October. No worries, they’re busy, and probably waited to squeeze more into a stunning big update. (HOPE!)
So don’t go forgetting about your Osmose if you ordered.
ADDED: In just under the wire, i just got the September Update.
Not a lot new, but this sounds promising: “That gives us time to add a few new nice surprises :)” They are still working to improve keyboard feel, and adding improvements to the internal software.
They are now also offering the opportunity, for those with orders to make an appointment to visit Expressive E in Paris and test drive the Osmose.
I’ll leave it to you to decide what they are saying about schedule.
To be honest, I always thought 2020 was too much of an expectation with how the world is right now. No rush though!
Received in today’s email:
Below the above image is a button you click to apply for the test session. Presumably only customers who already preordered can apply.
Rest of the email is the obligatory “sorry we can’t promise we’ll be done by winter because COVID-19” statement.
Do you think it would be useful with a Hydrasynth?
At what time? I couldn‘t find it on the timetable
Have been checking out the EaganMatrix manual.
I didn’t realise it had an (albeit limited) granular engine:
“HarMan uses precision granular techniques to traverse and manipulate a very short (150ms) sample. A pre-loaded set of samples is provided within the “Spectral Sets” menu. Currently, it is not possible to load your own 150ms samples.”
The word “currently” is exciting.
Also:
“In addition to the tiny samples in the Spectral Sets menu, HarMan can granulate live input (recorded into the Delay buffer), but so far this possibility has been explored only by Continuum player and sound designer Benedict Slotte.”
???
This is the only further info I could find on that:
I was making myself ready … now I am a bit disappointed
2pm Eastern Time (ET) == 8pm in Europe - seems to be on the other side of the globe
But since Covid I have low expectations anyways for such events. Most of them end with bad audio/video quality that gets async after 10 minutes and too many people just talking and less well prepared talks. Remind me of early days of the internet with private google hangouts. I hope they prove me wrong!
Anyone know how capable the Eaganmatrix is at FM?
I’ve seen the basic 2 op FM tutorial in the manual, but I would imagine it can go fairly deep beyond that?
Here’s a huge list of videos. I couldn’t find anything about fm, but maybe there is something somewhere:
By the way… is it Winter 2020 yet??!
Winter ends next March 20.