In case you haven’t heard, a revolution is underway in synth land. A new standard called Multidimensional Polyphonic Expression, or MPE, is gaining traction with a new generation of hardware controllers. We at Stagecraft have been excited about this for some time, and are happy to announce that Addiction Synth is now MPE compatible. Below is a video of Aaron taking Addiction for a spin on Roli’s new MPE-compatible Seaboard RISE Synth. Instructions on setting up Addiction synth to work with Roli’s MPE-compatible Seaboard controller can be found here. And if you haven’t seen it yet, here’s the official Roli demo of Seaboard doing some pretty amazing things.

Under the Hood

Controllers like the Seaboard, often called PMCs (Polyphonic Multidimensional Controllers), are much more expressive because they can send multiple dimensions of finger movement to the synth. For instance, instead of a keyboard that just sends note on/off, pressure, and perhaps pitch wheel data, these controllers can register a finger moving in any direction, finger pressure, and much more. Unfortunately, this breaks the original MIDI standard. While MIDI allows you to send a signal that modulates pitch, or any other attribute, it must do so to every note. In other words, the notes are polyphonic but the modulation is not. To address this, a coalition of audio companies led by the venerable Roger Linn design (Roli, Apple, Moog, Bitwig, and others) created the MPE standard. In MPE, each note is sent in its own separate MIDI channel, allowing for polyphonic expression of every note. We’re excited to see what Addiction can do on these new devices. If you’re new to Addiction Synth, check out our free 30-day trial here.