idealised goal
of course this is the company’s goal, but all process can fail…
given these are manufactured in China it is likely that there is automated testing at the factory… and frankly, this is much more effective that a human pressing a few keys… but it can fail.
e.g. some faults might be intermittent, or a component ‘loose’ that might move during shipping…
we don’t live in an ‘ideal world’, things happen, mistakes happen.
also bare in mind, Expressive E, actually slowed down/delayed all US shipments, to allow their distributor to perform additional checks on units before shipping, due to issues they had seen whilst shipping the first EU batch.
(so they have not been ‘inactive’ in this area in terms of prevention)
I did have issues with my Osmose, but Expressive E , dealt with the issues expediently and professionally - for me, this is the most important thing.
of course, Im sure, Expressive E are learning, and will improve their QA as time progresses to hopefully reduce number of defective units shipped.
but remember, this would take time to implement new policies… and the units shipping today (in the US) were shipping from China months ago, so before they had the initial user experiences/feedback…
Thanks for stating this, I couldn’t find the source anymore.
@michaeljk1963 from Expressive E’s communication to the end result getting in my end during Christmas holidays after 4 years of waiting, I got only good reasons to trust Expressive E words.
And since the day I got the Osmose, I haven’t spotted a real flaw so far, so it only reinforced my trust.
Granted, keys can touch each other if you want to. It frightens me when I do this.
But so far so good: Osmose is to me the kind of game changing synth I thought it would be, and with a quality well above what I thought it would be. The actual price is IMO rather well placed, and you shouldn’t have trouble to return or resell your unit if you are not satisfied with it.
But it takes time to explore, I still consider myself in exploration mode.
Well all the talk of different MPE controllers on this thread made me end up getting a linnstrument. After using it for a week it looks like my comment above was right, the isomorphic grid layout makes the most sense for composing electronic music. I have been going through a music theory workbook I had to get a little practice playing different chords on it and OMG it is so much easier to remember everything without having to learn fingerings for every different key. A cord has the same shape everywhere and doing inversions and extensions etc. is way easier. It also is built like a tank, takes up way less space than a midi keyboard, and the MPE implementation is great, I didn’t know what I had been missing. It is a lot different than playing a keyboard, and it is going to take a lot of practice to get as proficient with it as I am with a keyboard, but I bet maybe 6 months of practice and I will be there and it will be totally worth the effort.
So in the end I ended up cancelling my osmose preorder. I might end up getting it later just to have access to the haken engine sounds, but I think I finally found a midi controller I am happy with.
In your own job, can you truly deliver all the time and consistently satisfy the idealised goal? IMO there is always a risk of failure which you can’t suppress.
My Osmose preorder from Sweetwater (ordered the morning the pre-orders listed) shipped today. Looks like more are making their way into the world as we speak, keep a eye on your emails!
My rep at Sweetwater said they got 100 units in and every single one was spoken for.
I preordered with Detroit Modular. They still don’t know exact date but supposedly it’s very soon (I’m in the first batch of preorders).
The wait is killing me!!!
Good to know. Like I said, I have every intention of buying an osmose but plan to wait another 6-9 months to give them time to smooth things out a bit.
cool, the linnstrument is excellent and really well executed… and indeed, isomorphic layout is a lot easier to remember scales and chord shapes - I also find grids take you different places, and the difference between keys and ‘pads’ also lends to this.
we are lucky to have so many choices really, so we can find something that suits what we want/need.
also makes sense to not be trying to learn both the Osmose and Linnstrument at the same time, the Linnstrument will keep you busy and happy for quite a while
After some reflection I‘ve just cancelled my preorder for the Osmose…figured what I actually really want is an Iridium lol, so I won’t get either for now
I’m starting to lean towards the thought of parting with my Osmose. Don’t exactly see many of these going second hand right now - any thoughts on what a fair price would be for an as new second hand unit in the UK?
It’s fantastic tech and sounds brilliant when just fannying around on it but I’m doing a lot less music these days and feel like I’m lacking the inspiration/patience to put the effort in with this thing. Might change my mind and I’m going to keep plugging away on it this week to see if anything clicks but thought I’d ask the question anyway before making a final decision. Kind of knew this would happen with it sooner or later!
How much do you want to pay for it to be a goal? Like, there is no company that ships products without knowing that some of them will fail. They do a lot to get the number lower, but if you want the company to plan and engineer their systems to try to get that number to zero, you’re going to pay much, much more, especially for small run products like this. To get from a failure rate of one in a thousand to one in ten thousand at this scale might double the price. To get to one in a million might mean 10-20x the price. How much is never having to RMA a machine worth?
This is academic, of course, because they can’t sell the hardware at that price. Even if you’ll buy it, mo one else will. So they design to a target price that people will pay, and do the best they can with quality, making sure they get stuff down to a defect level that’s acceptable, and fix it with customer service if it doesn’t work. This is true on literally every object you touch, including your car and every aircraft you’ve flown in.
A fair price would be very slightly below new price. It is highly in demand and should sell easily.
You may want to reconsider. You don’t need to put any effort into the Osmose. Tweak the sensitivity settings to your taste to less sensitive. With time, you can loosen them up again. That will remove a lot of learning pressure. This instrument is meant to be fun.
Some people also seem to be underwhelmed with its sound. EaganMatrix is an acquired taste. What I have learned since Continuumini and Osmose is that EM loves to sit in a mix to add its unique signature. Drown it slightly in more conventional sounds, you will still be able to hear and appreciate its expressive side. EaganMatrix is like pepper and salt, much less like bread and butter à la Prophet or Roland JV/XV/etcV
I ordered direct the day of the announcement, still no shipping info. Wasn’t expecting retailers to ship before direct…the wait has been killing me. I can’t imagine how it must have felt for KS backers
I was almost a KS backer but I backed away as I got a bad taste from another KS I joined that kept getting delayed with virtually no communication. I eventually was able to do a charge back but the whole process made me realize that KS is simply not for me.
Let’s hope we both get that magical shipping email very soon
Don’t get me wrong - I think the sound engine is great. Presets maybe a little too Reverb heavy but that’s easily tweaked.
The problem isn’tsob much the Osmose. The problem is more me not having time for the Osmose (or much of any music making these days). I’m in no rush though. It’d be a crying shame to sell and realise it was a mistake later on!
Are there Osmose owners reading this who are mediocre keyboard players? I’d be interested to hear about your experiences with this instrument. I am barely competent at sight reading and terrible at improvisation. Plus I have small hands (cannot play a tenth, was gutted when I realized this ruled out Gershwin’s Prelude no. 2).
My keyboard playing skills are well below professional level.
One of the first things I tried after installing a stable firmware version was the opening chord sequence to this song, which is minor 9ths in a few different keys.
These particular minor 9th voicings have 2 notes in the middle that are a half step apart. I was unable to play these chords for some presets because Osmose refused to play both middle notes - I would only hear one pitch instead of two and it tended to move.
Important note when intending to play chords with pressure glide activated:
Two notes pressed simultaneously within the interval that you have set will always be joined into one pitch. For instance, with a pressure glide interval of 2 semitones, you can play chords with stacked thirds or wider voicings, but as soon as you play seconds, you will end up with one note with an averaged pitch instead of two discrete notes.
I do not play live shows regularly as a keyboard player, but if I did, I wouldn’t play with Osmose as my only keyboard. I’d have a regular keyboard for regular keyboard use, and the Osmose for leads, bass, faking steel guitar parts - anything that the Osmose is particularly good at. Apparently it’s possible to program a split-keyboard preset so, say, chords could be played on the left side side without pressure glide and the right side could have pressure glide… but the EaganMatrix editor is required for that level of programmign.
My keyboard skills are fucking embarrassingly bad. I sold the Seaboard Rise because I couldn’t play the thing without sounding like I was scoring a horror b movie. So hard to get a note spot on on that thing, let alone several.
I tried the Osmose at Perfect Circuit after pre-ordering, and was stunned how rewarding it was. Pitch generally doesn’t drift unless you intend to, and the expressiveness was spot on.
I’ll report back when it arrives next week and I’ve spent some decent time with it, but if it pleased me when demoing it, anyone with a modicum of skill will have a blast with it.
Important note when intending to play chords with pressure glide activated: