Roli Airwave---highly accurate real-time hand and finger tracking

[Ou_Tis]

"Airwave uses infrared cameras and ROLI Vision technology to reliably track all 27 joints in each of your hands at 90 frames per second. The data is converted into MIDI in real time, giving you incredibly precise control of your musical expression."



For midi cc it currently only tracks one hand and five dimensions, but since it tracks individual finger joints, in the future they'll probably add separate midi cc or MPE voice channels for each hand and additional control gestures or dimensions. Optionally maybe even for each finger.

As is, this seems like it might be great for dance music, and also more generally for live performances and videos....

[foosnark]

It seems promising, but I'm at least going to wait for reviews/opinions from non-influencers, and also for more software updates if that happens.

[WasteLand]

i agree with @foosnark.

want to know more about it and if indeed can be fully MPE, for example....

will wait, but it is quite tempting.

[teilo]

Heavy demand already. They are out to April 2025 on orders.

I'm concerned about two things:

The most obvious is whether or not this works as advertised. In theory it's absolutely amazing. The demos look flawless, but until we see unsponsored reviews, we won't know what doesn't work well, will rings interfere with it, what's fidgety, etc. Especially with a product like this designed for performance, they have to get this right, or you can't risk using it live.

Second, Roli is often shortsighted when it comes to their MIDI implementation.

Case in point: They transmit NRPN when you change the octave of the Rise and there's no way to prevent it without somehow filtering the MIDI. They do this to communicate with ROLI Connect. However, this f*cks with external hardware that is listening on those NRPNs. It's crazy, because they transmit the NRPN not only over USB but also over DIN.

Worse, they don't transmit the parameter ID every time, but only the first time you press an octave button. Thereafter they only transmit MSB messages. Meaning that if your gear received a legitimate NRPN parameter previously, whatever parameter it received is what will change the next time you press the octave button. This is a no-no for a MIDI controller. This is supposed to be done via SysEx.

On my UB-Xa, OSC2 detune is on the same NRPN, so I can't use the Rise with it if I wish to shift octaves while playing. It drops OCS2 more than an octave as soon as I do. Or some other control if I legitimately sent NRPN to the UB-Xa from my Mac.

[Dirk Diggler]

Hard pass for me, and I own 3 different Seaboards.

My problems with the device.
1) Everything this can do, can be done with your fingers on every key
2) XY pad on Seaboards can also do all these things
3) Takes a playing hand out of the game
4) Yet another USB/midi device, not easily placed unless you have room behind your controller
5) Classic overhyped "release" of crowd sourced vaporware, via corporate stooges/influencers

That said, I'm sure there will be folks that this will work out great for.

Now one of the benefits might be to give more control to other "stupid" midi controllers.

I will give them kudos for really trying to change things up.
The Seaboards are still amazing ground breaking devices.
Dirk

[Ou_Tis]

Hard pass for me, and I own 3 different Seaboards.

My problems with the device.
1) Everything this can do, can be done with your fingers on every key
2) XY pad on Seaboards can also do all these things

You can use Lift to trigger a drone on that note and then immediately control it with the hand you just lifted, without having to either move your hand all the way over to the XY pad or have your other hand already on the XY pad (so if you want immediate XY pad modulation without cross-modulation, it frees up your other hand and adds three dimensions of simultaneous modulation vs the XY pad's two simultaneous dimensions).

It's also easier to move one hand across the other when the hand is lifted up---you could try to do something similar by sliding up or down to the ribbon but it's awkward crossing one hand over the other.

And while you could quickly get to a nearby non-sounding key on the Seaboard instead, a raised hand lets you modulate across the five dimensions without cross-modulation... while the XY pad and faders can do the same, again you'd have to move your hand over to them instead of just going straight from playing with that hand to raising it up in the air, and you can't easily adjust the XY pad and the three faders at the same time with a single hand without unintended cross-modulation.

Since the Airwave tracks both the keyboard and each individual finger joint, hopefully they'll implement additional interesting controls for recording audio/music production.

And it's a cool visual for live performances and videos... with the animated virtual representation of your hand, which you could put on a screen or projector for the audience to see that you actually are controlling the music by moving your hands through the air.

[VariKusBrainZ]

Ultraleap is more established, tracks 2 hands and cheaper.

Bonus is it isnt attached to a tiny keyboard

[zerocrossing]

Who thinks waving their hands around is a good look? Have mimes taught us nothing?

[Torchlight]

Having watched the Roli videos and the "influencer" one above, there are things I'm still not clear about:

Does this work only with Roli keyboards or, theoretically, any keyboard?

Does or can the thing actually send basic Midi note signals or only modifiers to the note? In other words, does the core note signal still have to come from the "normal" midi controller?

If the Airwave can generate the note signals itself, do you need to press the keys on the normal midi controller or could you just "play the air" above them? (I ask because I have to limit my playing because of finger pain from playing; If the Airwave offers the option of no-contact playing, this could be a solution for me.)

If the Airwave can generate note signals on its own, is an underlying midi controller actually necessary at all? Could you just play an "air piano" for example? Are the physical keyboards there just to offer a visual orientation to the performer?

[elassi]

Using all 27 joints in each of his hands:



Video: https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglev ... ?rdt=43550

[n9research]

Was doing this years ago using a Leap, tracking both hands and with 14-bit MIDI output.

[foosnark]

Having watched the Roli videos and the "influencer" one above, there are things I'm still not clear about:

It should work with any keyboard, but I think it's only sending MIDI CCs (unless you use their specific synth app/plugin), not Note On/Off messages.

I imagine you could probably use it to patch some alternate control schemes without a keyboard in a software modular environment. CC doesn't offer a lot of precision though.

[Ou_Tis]

It tracks where each finger is in relation to each key of the Roli keyboard, so Roli could add a "Note on" functionality based on position relative to the keys---but if your fingers are too far over the keyboard it might be difficult to target the key you intend to.

If your DAW or plugins allow you to have CC above a certain value trigger "Note on" and a different CC select which note/octave the other CC's "Note on" will trigger, then you could do it just using CC. The obvious mappings would be note/octave value to side-to-side and fingers tilting down to "Note on". Up/down or forwards/back or hand rotation could be velocity etc.

Incidentally, here's the first live performance with Roli Airwave (Marco Parisi):

[zerocrossing]

One thing I know about me is that if I bought this, I’d spend an hour having a lot of fun with it, and then never use it again.

[dayjob]

goofy. i think there's a handful of people who will do sound design things w/this.. the way people use the wacom tablet w/a Kyma system in post to perform sound design for film/tv etc.. but otherwise it's just kind of goofy and novel. not saying some people won't absolutely love it and do something interesting w/it but i can't see this selling enough to make back the investment.. which seems standard operating procedure for Roli.

$299.00 preorder price.. regular price is $349.00. lols. good luck. i don't know anyone who would buy this. which isn't saying that much really.. but i know a lot of people who make electronic music and pretty sure they'd all think "nah". this thing seems like this decade's midi glove.