Roli Seaboard RISE

[Ed A.]

Make sure the slide response is consistent on your RISE 49. I just sent mine back for a refund because the keywave response at middle C was inconsistent and choppy, while all others were smooth. It was also graphically noticeable on their app. Pissed me off that I spent $1,000 on this thing and their quality control sucks.

[K-Bee]

I should perhaps first try it with some of the sounds in my Fantom-X and XV-5080 which have the Complete Orchestra and Strings SRX card in them.

Let me know how that goes. I have VX5080 as well and I'd like to know how to hook that up with the Seaboard.

[ChamomileShark]

Make sure the slide response is consistent on your RISE 49. I just sent mine back for a refund because the keywave response at middle C was inconsistent and choppy, while all others were smooth. It was also graphically noticeable on their app. Pissed me off that I spent $1,000 on this thing and their quality control sucks.

so were you seeing it jump on the dashboard top bit? The bit that shows the circles?

[msflsim]

Support got back to me and said that "this is normal behavior for the Seaboard RISE 49 and is caused by a split between the two separate circuit boards inside your RISE 49. Our software and hardware teams have worked hard to make it as minimally noticeable as possible, but this is completely normal behavior for the RISE 49"

Regarding my higher velocity triggering on one keywave in one spot they said: "there are small and expected variances in the Seaboard's playing surface, so this behavior could very well be the expected response. If you think that it's extremely noticeable or there is definitely a fault, would you be able to send a short video along to document?"

I will be sending a video over to them just to make sure!

First of all, after contacting ROLI, and sending a video of my aforementioned "issues", they said these all are normal and expected behavior!! The considerably higher sensitivity of pressure and velocity in some spots of every keywave *is* normal. Even they said the misbehaving spot between the middle C and the B key before is the joint of two RISE 25s that are internally linked to form a RISE 49!!
Quite a disappointment for me, but also a reliecf that my unit is not faulty.


 

Can anyone confirm if the above two bolded bits are true? And perhaps comment to what extent this is an issue while playing?

I've been through the entire thread and I think I have seen different opinions on whether or not the Rise 25/49 exhibit note rounding even on the 'ribbon' areas above and below the key waves. Can someone confirm that at least these two areas do not exhibit any glissando effect (that cannot be turned off)?

Also, do these ribbon arreas  'intelligently' round the note when you stop sliding (like the Continuum)? If not, is at least the case the any rounding and other intelligent stuff is done on the PC/Mac in software and not by the SeaBoard firmware? I have developed my own pitch rounding software for use with a Doepfer R2M ribbon controller and it would be great if I could adapt that for use with the Seaboard but I'll need to be able to get the 'raw' position and pressure readings from the device.

Incidentally, looking at these two videos it appears as if the Grand and Rise behave differently when it comes to rounding, the Grand seems to round to 1/4 notes instantly whereas, as far as I can tell from the second video, the Rise 25/49 does not round, or at least not audibly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ5qxNc7uXk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P14JcRyJCEI

I'm seriously considering getting a Rise 49 but I still have a VAXmidi to assemble and a TouchKeys sensor set to put on a keyboard (possibly the VAXmidi) so I should really do that first, but I'm seeing stuff being done with the Rise that really makes me want one.
 

[TOYZ]

After unplugging my Rise I found that the 'glide' control would not longer function, it would reflect changes visually but the Rise was stuck in zero-pitch-rounding mode. Had to reload the firmware to get it working properly again.

Regarding the pitch-rounding and the glissando effect even with it completely disabled, it might be that it's not the pitch that is still being rounded but rather that the loudness (pressure) reading doesn't remain constant while sliding. It appears to be rising and falling cyclically while sliding.

My guess is that there is a matrix of pressure-sensitive sensors below the rubbery cover (I linked to a possible specific sensor product in a previous post) and obviously the firmware has to interpolate between the readings and actually construct both an intermediate position between sensors based on their relative pressure readings as well as the actual pressure. It might be that the algorithm that does this could be improved. Again something that makes me want to be able to read the raw internal sensor values, and in this case I'm referring to the actual readout of the entire sensor matrix (several hundred values probably).

[TOYZ]

Ok I'm now almost 100% certain that the glissando effect is due to the pressure not staying constant inbetween notes. I'm going to try and write a simple utility to compensate for that.

But first I'm going to see if I can implement continuous sustain pedal support by using the sustain pedal reading to control the aftertouch value for notes that have been released, should be quite easy too but unfortunately I only have an hour or two left today to work on this.

[TOYZ]

I'm going to see if I can implement continuous sustain pedal support

It's working with Equator and in principle it should work with any synth that responds to channel pressure (which is what MPE uses), including Omnisphere!

Only problem is that the Roli doesn't like my Korg expression pedal which came with my CX-3 and if I'm correct it's a re-badged Yamaha one. The entire range from 0 to 7F is in the bottom 5-10 degrees of tilt or so, so it's not very easy to use but it works. If only I could find my EV-5 expression pedal, hopefully that will work better.

[TOYZ]

I figured it was going to be a impedance mismatch issue or something like that, apparently there is a rewiring trick that (kinda?) works. Maybe I'll try that Monday if I cannot find my EV-5.

[Jace-BeOS]

Support got back to me and said that "this is normal behavior for the Seaboard RISE 49 and is caused by a split between the two separate circuit boards inside your RISE 49. Our software and hardware teams have worked hard to make it as minimally noticeable as possible, but this is completely normal behavior for the RISE 49"

Regarding my higher velocity triggering on one keywave in one spot they said: "there are small and expected variances in the Seaboard's playing surface, so this behavior could very well be the expected response. If you think that it's extremely noticeable or there is definitely a fault, would you be able to send a short video along to document?"

I will be sending a video over to them just to make sure!

"Normal"? Huh. More like "normalized". As in: "as consistent as we are willing to make it, so let's pretend this inconsistent behavior is not an issue".

Does anyone experience this kind of inconsistency with Haaken Continuums?

[Ed A.]

Make sure the slide response is consistent on your RISE 49. I just sent mine back for a refund because the keywave response at middle C was inconsistent and choppy, while all others were smooth. It was also graphically noticeable on their app. Pissed me off that I spent $1,000 on this thing and their quality control sucks.

so were you seeing it jump on the dashboard top bit? The bit that shows the circles?

Yes.
It amazes me that Roli tries to pass this off as "normal behavior". Calling a design flaw normal doesn't mean that it is.

[K-Bee]

Make sure the slide response is consistent on your RISE 49. I just sent mine back for a refund because the keywave response at middle C was inconsistent and choppy, while all others were smooth. It was also graphically noticeable on their app. Pissed me off that I spent $1,000 on this thing and their quality control sucks.

so were you seeing it jump on the dashboard top bit? The bit that shows the circles?

Yes.
It amazes me that Roli tries to pass this off as "normal behavior". Calling a design flaw normal doesn't mean that it is.

Maybe I'm both blind and deaf, but I really cannot hear anything wrong with the slide response on my Rise around the middle C. Uses quite a bit of time investigating into this yesterday. I Can't see any weird behaviour when consulting the dashboard while sliding either. If it's "normal behaviour" I consider myself lucky that my Rise isn't behaving normally

[TOYZ]

Maybe I'm both blind and deaf, but I really cannot hear anything wrong with the slide response on my Rise around the middle C.

I may have found something but I'm not sure if it's entirely limited to the middle C. Try pressing on the bottom slider area just between to notes (with rounding completely off) and then release. Sometimes the pitch seems to go up or down almost a (1/2 ?) semitone upon release. In the area of middle C it seems more pronounced and is definitely a semitone or more.

[ChamomileShark]

I'll try and test mine over the next few days.

[msflsim]

Put the slide slider all the way up and try it. Its definitely there on the RISE 49 in the middle. Compare it to any other semitone and it will be easy to hear the 'expected operation' glitch.

Make sure the slide response is consistent on your RISE 49. I just sent mine back for a refund because the keywave response at middle C was inconsistent and choppy, while all others were smooth. It was also graphically noticeable on their app. Pissed me off that I spent $1,000 on this thing and their quality control sucks.

so were you seeing it jump on the dashboard top bit? The bit that shows the circles?

Yes.
It amazes me that Roli tries to pass this off as "normal behavior". Calling a design flaw normal doesn't mean that it is.

Maybe I'm both blind and deaf, but I really cannot hear anything wrong with the slide response on my Rise around the middle C. Uses quite a bit of time investigating into this yesterday. I Can't see any weird behaviour when consulting the dashboard while sliding either. If it's "normal behaviour" I consider myself lucky that my Rise isn't behaving normally

[TOYZ]

AFAIK Omnisphere doesn't support continuous sustain pedal. One of my main beefs with Keyscape's C7 piano (no proper sympathetic resonance emulation either).

As it turns out you are entirely correct in saying that Omnisphere does not support continuous sustain pedals. Could it be that an expression (or continuous sustain) pedal was used to modulate the Sustain portion of an amplitude envelope within Omnisphere? I'm not familiar with Omnisphere but I can imagine that, being software, you can modulate the heck out of it.

As I have mentioned before I have created a small software utility that you put inbetween the Roli Rise and whatever synth you want to play which uses the Sustain Pedal value (CC64) to affect the Channel Pressure of keys that have been released on the Roli. To make this work it also needs to filter out Note Off messages from the Roli and send this only when the Sustain Pedal value reaches 0.

It's working quite well but I'm still experimenting with this. I have ordered a DP-10 continuous sustain pedal because I think that migh work a bit better for this application than the Korg (rebranded Yamaha FC-7) expression pedal that I'm using now. With the tip/ring reverse the FC-7 does work properly but I'm so used to using Roland sustain pedals that this just doesn't feel quite right.