Roli: Equator 2 is here !

[LoveEnigma18]

And I am good at following up, so will keep it alive as much as I can.

Like I said, a developer's worst nightmare. Honestly, what do you think you have to contribute after owning something for a day? Surely you'd wait until you'd spent some time with the thing to see if maybe something you thought was poorly implemented was done that way for a reason?

Regarding the Equator2 sound, IMO it can be compared to ANA2 for one, only a little on the mellower sider.

Really? I don't hear much similarity at all, to be honest. That might be down to the style of presets each of us spends our time with because I doubt I've listened to 10% of ANA's factory patches and I haven't been through any of the new Equator presets yet, either.

Does not take much time to evaluate an obvious issue with the GUI, especially when you have tons of other plugins with scalable GUI for side by side comparison. How hard is it to spot that the Equator2 font text and knob sizes are on the smaller side? It might be a subjective thing, but here it looks like an improvement opportunity to me.

Regarding ANA2, again, that's subjective thing. I indeed haven't compared all the presets, but a few lead and pad sounds made me compare them. This is not to say one can replace the other. Last couple of years there has been a crazy trend for wavetable synthesizers, which can lead to some similarities in sound character, at least for certain types of sounds. Previously the race was mainly between Massive and Serum, but now there's a lot of competition.

[dunohearno]

Anyone with some more details about the sound design of this Synth? Part 1 was not that good in Sound design, I am curious about how it sounds using your own sample. Also the only reviews i find is a walk through the presets.

The engine itself sounds great. Get the feeling they ran out of time though with whatever they’re announcing on Thursday. At the moment, only option on the sampler oscillator is sample start. There’s no stretch or formant, and you can’t loop or even reverse your samples, it’s very bare bones. But as I say, get the feeling this might be because they’d run out of time. Cant imagine how it is now is how it will be after an update or two. There’s things like on the compressor meter, there’s no needle showing GR, don’t think it’s quite finished yet. But, it honestly sounds incredible. I kind of view it as an easier to use omnisphere, just with a few teething problems to sort.

There’s a guy on YouTube who does sound design, video below of him playing around with it.

[whannel]

Can anyone who has it please make a video showing off al the oscillator features, and the filters, maybe even show off the effects after?

[Ah_Dziz]

So 80$ and they dropped compatibility for old OSs. I may pass on it for once. Not digging the single price as someone who owns all the expansion stuff all the audio modelling stuff a seaboard and equator 1. Might skip it.

How are you seeing $80?
It’s $99 here.

In my email. 99 would be even more over the top. It costs 99 to update the full arturia instrument suite. I'll be sticking with Pigments unless I see the Roli folks really do something crazy. I may check out the demo if it's even compatible. They will have needed to make some serious changes (especially with their over complicated, but not nearly as flexible routing system) to get me interested. If they added fully polyphonic FX with full modulation I might start getting excited. Aside from their hardware and their buying of a couple nice companies. I felt that equator and their other software were just nice examples of mpe implementation.
Maybe this thing will be so amazing my eyes and face will melt...... I doubt it though. Especially for the price.

Huh, strange, you seem to be the only person with the $80 offer, I wonder how that worked out?
I own a seaboard, Equator, Strobe 2 and Cypher 2 too.

That’s pissed me off a little tbh, I’ll write to support and ask why I don’t qualify.

I could be wrong about the price. I didn't go back and look at it. That's just the number I had in my head. Either way it's too much. If you wanna charge high prices, just release a new product under a new name. Which this may be. I dunno how they get down over there. I'm just not paying that much to update a free synth (which is how I see equator).

[billcarroll]

Anyone have Equator2 working on MacOS Big Sur?

ROLI Support helped with authorization issues. These are not Big Sur specific instructions, so if you're having authorization issues this could be your fix.

Once you've confirmed that you're running v1.0.13 of ROLI Connect, please try the following steps that should help to rectify the issue:

• Quit Equator2

• Sign out of ROLI Connect

• Double-check you're definitely signed out, then quit ROLI Connect

• Re-launch and sign back in to ROLI Connect

• Launch Equator2

[Ploki]

Anyone have Equator2 working on MacOS Big Sur?

Equator V1 works

still not sure if I'm willing to give them 99€... so can't test V2.

[Cepheus]

I could be wrong about the price. I didn't go back and look at it. That's just the number I had in my head. Either way it's too much. If you wanna charge high prices, just release a new product under a new name. Which this may be. I dunno how they get down over there. I'm just not paying that much to update a free synth (which is how I see equator).

As far as I know Equator updates are free. They call this an upgrade on the website which makes sense. It is a much improved synth.

[himalaya]

May I add a little perspective here. Equator2 should be looked at as a new synth. It is re-written from the ground up, and it has a totally new feature set, not to mention the new sample content, which includes gigabytes of vintage analogue samples (from VP-330, Arp Solina, to System-100, Juno-6, OBXa, Super Jupiter or quirky synths like the Korg mini700) plus lots of new acoustic samples. The only thing that keeps v1 and v2 in common is the name and a few bits and bobs, really.

Now, Equator1 was a very specific instrument. It was specific as it had to run not just as a plugin, not just as a standalone build, but also as a DSP engine on the Seaboard GRAND. Equator1 is a proper DSP engine running on an ARM chip. So the Seaboard GRAND can be used standalone with its Equator engine on-board. No computer attached. Why is this relevant? It's because to run it on the ARM chip, it had to have some limitations. Fast forward to Equator2 and it no longer needs to run on the Seaboard GRAND DSP engine and so the actual internal design could be opened up to new, advanced features. So, Equator2 introduces many, many new features that we could never have in Equator1 as it wouldn't run on the ARM chip on the Seaboard GRAND.

What it all means is that Equator2 is a totally new synth. The name 'Equator' carries on, as it brings forth the original vision of offering the best MPE synth, including the unique design of 'expression curves' built right there on the main GUI, perhaps the main feature that connects the two versions. With v2, MPE is fused with normal operation, so if you don't have an MPE controller and couldn't care less about the MPE stuff, you could use it as any normal synth plugin with your normal midi controllers. This fusion of MPE vs Standard operation is the easiest and most seamless out of all MPE synths. A simple switch changes the topology of the synth from MPE to Standard and back. In practice, it is so easy and convenient.

Feature-wise Equator2 is in a different galaxy to Equator1. I see Equator2 on the same playing level as Falcon or Omnisphere.

But all the features in the world are immaterial if the synth doesn't sound good. So, if you do get Equator2, explore it as it has an extremely deep and rich sonic signature, far removed from the sound of Equator1 . The way we can mix up to 6 sources is a recipe for some extremely deep sounds. One patch could contain: 2 vintage analog samples, 2-op FM pair, a granular sound, a wavetable sound. Or maybe 2 acoustic samples, 3-op FM combo, plus a huge analogue ensemble sample. Or maybe a 6 oscillator wavetable sound that keeps on moving through each wavetable ad infinitum. The combinations are so exciting!

Try some of the sounds in the new 'Combination' category or some of the granular textures. Conversely, there are many sounds that are simpler, more pure in tone and more practical. If you are into cinematic textures, then you will have a lot of content to discover in Equator2. But the same could be said of vintage analogue sounds, or contemporary EDM stuff, with a lot of aggressive wavetable basses, as an example.

My only tip is, when you do browse the presets, make sure that you select the Equator2 engine tag (otherwise you will also go through the old Equator1 sounds) and select MPE or Standard tags. If you don't have an MPE controller, please select the Standard tag so that you browse through presets tuned to the normal midi keyboard.

[zvenx]

Hi, any idea if there will ever be a demo?
thanks
rsp

[LoveEnigma18]

Hi, any idea if there will ever be a demo?
thanks
rsp

Seems unlikely in near future as per my conversation with ROLI support. Best option right now is the 30-day return policy.

[LoveEnigma18]

I have run into a small problem if anyone can help me out. Until yesterday, Equator2 was able to detect aftertouch from my keyboard (Arturia KeyLab MKII) in FL Studio. Today for some reasons it is not detecting it at all. I checked Massive X and aftertouch is responding fine in it. I did not change anything. FL Studio debug window shows aftertouch is detecting fine and if I record MIDI and press my keys harder, I can see that aftertouch automation is getting recorded. However, Equator2 is not responding to it. I tried various presets pre-mapped with aftertouch and even created my own aftertouch assignments, but no luck.

This is only a problem in DAW (VST3). In standalone mode aftertouch is working fine.

I just saw that there is 2.0.1 update available, so I downloaded it and the problem is still there.

I am scratching my head as to what could go wrong between yesterday and today. Any suggestions?

[zvenx]

Hi, any idea if there will ever be a demo?
thanks
rsp

Seems unlikely in near future as per my conversation with ROLI support. Best option right now is the 30-day return policy.

Ok.
thanks
rsp

[aMUSEd]

Seems a bit odd that it doesn't have a VST2 version, I can understand new developers not having a license to use the SDK but Roli obviously do as the first version does have a VST2 and so do their other plugins. Particularly annoying given Studio One v5 only supports MPE for VST2 plugins - some developers seem to be making strange decisions.

[BassMasterK]

May I add a little perspective here. Equator2 should be looked at as a new synth.

Thanks for the insight himalaya. My first thought when I saw this was "If they gave it a different name, few would balk at the $100 price tag for what it provides." I would guess that the majority of Equator users got their copy for free, so that sets an expectation. It also doesn't help that they released right as we are headed into the season of deals, which granted, the $100 is a discount, but that is only if you see that they are talking about selling this for $250 for new users which has largely been left out of the conversation. When you are comparing the functionality it has to Falcon or Omnisphere, $100 starts to sound like a pretty good deal.

Equator is one of my top 3 synths. I love it in combination with the Seaboard. I'm likely pulling the trigger on this purchase this month. They took everything I loved about the first one and added a bunch of stuff that really puts it over the top for MPE imho.

[Watchful]

Hi, any idea if there will ever be a demo?
thanks
rsp

Per the Equator 2 FAQ, there is no demo available now. Roli plans to introduce one, but they do not have a date for release. Not sure it will be available before the discount expires, so agree with the suggestion to try the 30-day trial if your resources permit.