I’ve been interested in getting a rise 49 board to control my digitone with. Anyone here has experience using one with hardware, especially the digitone? if so how well does it play with hardware? Can you map MIDI out to specific parameters? is it worth it? $1100 is a lot for a MIDI controller, and I’m wondering if the investment would be worth it compared to a regular MIDI controller with some knobs and a pitch/mod wheels.
Thanks for any insight 
You’ll need a computer as well because you can’t hook up the Seaboard directly.
If you want an MPE controller, then a LinnStrument might make more sense. It has DIN MIDI out, is more flexible with non-MPE hardware, and easy to configure without a computer.
I had a seaboard for a while and ended up selling it since almost nothing is compatible with MPE. There’s only a handful of hardware synths out there that’ll work with it, Deckards Dream and the Parva were the two i looked into. Digitone won’t work with the Roli the way you’re imagining, and you’ll probably be disappointed.
Loopop always comes through!
BTW: Seaboard + Digitone sounds like a great combination.
Thanks everyone, I guess I’ll look elsewhere for a controller. and yeah it would be if it spoke to it the way i had thought in my head, but i guess not. no matter. glad i came here instead of just jumping in and buying one, and then being very disappointed.
You can use the Seaboard as a normal midi device. I find it nice to play, the feeling on the keys are very excellent… (Even if you lose the features) ROLI bought FXpansion, one of my favorite plugin company, they updates Strobe 2 for MPE support so now there’s Equator and Strobe2 compatible. And I’m sure they will updates their top notch VST to be compatible with MPE sooner or later.
The Roli is not affordable… BUT people need to have in mind it’s a device + equator (the Seaboard Grand is embed with Equator…) so it’s not really a midi controller to me, it’s more than that. And the sound and feeling you get from the Seaboard and Equator are really something you can’t find elsewhere. (for now, because these technologies growing … and will evolved)
I’m confident in MPE as I read somewhere it will be part of the next MIDI protocol evolution or something like that. I think it’s a great news.
The experience to me with the Analog Four was very pleasant. Just hook up with something handle USB midi to Midi.
The Seaboard Block is a nice budget option if the RISE is a bit expensive. Same key feel, just slightly smaller keys.
Yeah, MPE has been accepted into the MIDI standard, so support should become much more widespread, but as you say, it works fine as a standard MIDI controller and you could still map the various axes of movement to MIDI CCs without MPE support, just not on a per-note basis.
Ah! that’s great to hear. That was my main concern, i would love to have those control axes set so I could send them to control the filter/harmonics/drift/etc. of the digitone. That would be massive, and so much fun.
I lack a full size keyboard in my studio, so if I was to get a Roli I would probably go for the Rise 49. otherwise i just have the PUSH2. Great controller, but a little wonky to play chromatically.
I bought a Linnstrument recently and it’s awesome. It would be to amazing if the Digitone did MPE or at least polyphonic after touch but even now you can get a lot of expression because you can map velocity/Y axis/after touch etc to four parameters each.
Can you address each synth voice/track on separate MIDI channels in the Digitone? If so, you could easily set it up as a pseudo-MPE synth. You’d just have to load the same sound onto each track, with modulations mapped for the X,Y, and Z axes on the LinnStrument accordingly, like you would with any other multitimbral synth. The LinnStrument can be configured to send whatever CC messages are needed, as well as all the usual targets: i.e. velocity, mod-wheel, aftertouch, etc. And it can do it all on a channel-per-note basis of course.
At any rate, if the Digitone can be set up this way, from there it’s really just a question of whether or not its DIN port can handle the large volume of incoming MIDI CC data; which can be a lot, what with 4 to 8 channels of CC messages streaming in simultaneously or what-have-you.
I’m actually curious if this can be done myself, because I’ve been considering using a Digitone with my LinnStrument in this way. So if you do try it, or have tried it, let me know if it works or not, eh!
Cheers!
I have a LinnStrument and Digitone and can confirm that this works exactly how you are imagining it. (@raindro take note as well!) Digitone has channels 1-4 assigned to the matching track, and LI is in channel-per-note mode spread across channels 1-4. A neat trick is to put tiny variations in the sound on different tracks, which will give a bit of extra richness as the LI cycles through “voices”.
Perfect, thanks!
I’m looking for a new MPE solution, and since Hell is likely to freeze over before the ideal one comes along in the hardware domain, I’ve been looking at various mulittimbral synths that might suffice in the meantime. Digitone is on my shortlist.
I’ve been using an iPad thus far, but my live rig requires some fairly complicated audio and MIDI routing, so I’ve been dependent on an iConnectAudio4+, which has proven to be too buggy and unreliable for live use, so I’ve had to drop it. I’m prepping for an upcoming tour in the fall, and as such I’m in a bit of a flap, trying to find a solution in a hurry, now that all my carefully crafted MPE sounds are trapped inside the iPad with no way out (smirk).
The Digitone is about the same size as the iPad, so it should fit nicely where the iPad has been living in my rig; and since it has its own audio and MIDI interface built in, that’s also makes things easy. Anyway, thanks again for the info, eh!
Cheers!
I would follow the link to the video above to the IG profile. in the comment section in there the user defines how he set up the digitone to be used in such a way that it sounds like your interested in. definitely helped me in setting up my seaboard as a midi-controller for hardware.
Thanks, ya, I’ll have a quick look to be thorough for sure. I’m not too worried about though. I’ve been working with MPE since its inception, and have been dealing with complicated MIDI setups my entire career: 28 years and counting… Yeesh (smirk)!
I was really only concerned with whether or not the Digitone’s DIN port could handle the dataflow. A lot of non-MPE synths bottleneck and bog-down under the load. Anyway…
If anyone is interested, I feel it should be noted that the LinnStrument is a thousand times more configurable than the Seaboard, and can do it all standalone with no need for a computer or software. It’s truly a pleasure to set it up. Roger Linn did a really great job on the LinnStrument’s interface. Every aspect of its functionality is accessible and customizable on the device itself, no parameter is ever more than two button presses away, and it’s all visible at a glance without needing a screen.
Cheers!
I did this today and it was great fun! It gets pretty wild when you set up the digitone’s modulations. One question: does the main channel matter? I’m not sure it does.
Damn the linnstrument sounds awesome. Shame its well out of my price range at the moment! Just got a seaboard block that im using with a4. There are plenty of configurable options on the a4. The 5d response and paramater assignments are going to take some tweaking but all seems to work really well. Theres not a lot of mpe info on the forum - good to hear + experiences!
Yes, it really is awesome - well worth the investment if you’re a serious player!
I’m a career musician - a guitar player and vocalist primarily - but I also get hired to do a lot of synth work for artists, both in the studio and on the road. In this context, the LinnStrument has been an absolute godsend; because although I often get hired to play keys, in truth I’m a bit of a hack on them (wink). The LinnStrument being laid-out like a fretboard means that, for all practical purposes anyway, I can now play “keys” (and other synth sounds) as proficiently as I can play the guitar. I’m always trying to spread the word about that, because I think that string players in general are the LinnStrument’s target audience; but too few people realize what the LinnStrument is all about, because it’s not necessarily obvious at a glance. Keyboard players, for instance, are more likely to gravitate to a Seaboard or a Continuun because of their resemblance to the piano. But for anyone adept at playing a stringed instrument, who otherwise aspires to play keys, the LinnStrument is a no brainer. Anyway…
The only heartache of it all is that there are so few MPE hardware synths on the market, and computer setups are just too flimsy (and often too buggy) for the rigors of the road. Hence why I’m here asking questions about the Digitone as a possible solution to my iPad woes. The latest firmware for the LinnStrument now allows “common” messages to also be sent on a per-channel basis if need be, so that effectively means that any multitimbral synth, despite its MIDI implementation, can now be used as a true MPE sound source. Don’t get me wrong, editting sounds separately for each voice sucks; but once the patches are finished, it’s all about playing expressively rather than tweaking the knobs.
Cheers!
Cool, I’ve played bass an guitar for a long time but happy hacking the shit out of a keyboard. The roli gives me that same style of expressive feedback as strings, sort of.
On the a4 I was just working on one patch and copying across the other 4 tracks. I did experience some hanging notes but that could be caused by a few variables an not had long enough to determine the cause. In theory the DN should be able to handle midi on all voices with incoming cc as they are designed to be sequenced but as you say it is heavy traffic.
Maybe someone who sequences a DN from a DAW, using all 4 voices and some CC’s could pitch in. If it can handle that without choking, then it should be good? Also, micromonsta is what I have my eye on! Digital poly with 8 voices, MPE support and fits in your pocket : D