I will make my best effort to compare these five synths, relative the dimensions of expressions in their keybeds. ( I look for any clarification and updates, to this information. )
For a place of beginning with this, i will describe the dimensions with the ROLI Rise 2. ( Again, the ROLI Rise 2 is only a controller, so is not under consideration here when comparing advanced keyboard synths. )
ROLI Rise 2 — Five Virtuosic Dimensions
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Strike — Velocity On
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Press — Polyphonic-Aftertouch, occasionally called the Z dimension movement
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Lift — Velocity Off
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Glide — X dimension movement, completely free like on a ribbon
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Slide — Y dimension movement,
Note : There are and have been other systems of dimensions on other keyboards, as for instance the Moog Eaton Multiple-Touch-Sensitive ( MTS ) Keyboard.( post )
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All five have Strike. Are there keyboards that still don’t have variable Velocity ON values. Yeah i guess so.
All five have Press. Poly-aftertouch. That’s the point, if a keyboard only has Channel-Aftertouch it’s nots part of this list. And there are still plenty of synths that don’t even have Channel-Aftertouch, like a bunch of very nice synths from Korg — the OPSIX, Modwave, and Wavestate.
Lift ( or Velocity OFF ) — I’ve been trying to confirm this. Certainly the Osmose, Hydrasynth Deluxe, Continuum have it. I’ve been told by Aodyo that the Omega will definitely have it. As best as i have been able to determine from the manual, the Iridium Keys does not. I have a recent post in the Iridium Keys thread asking anyone to contradict this, and so far no response. So i think four of the five has Lift.
By the way, Velocity Off is a very useful feature, in particular allowing variation in the sound of a note’s release.
Glide. This is a little more tricky. Of course the Continuum has this. It has total freedom of X-Dimension movement. ( Crossing your fingers. ) I include large between note glides and bends, with smaller amounts of movement that can be called “vibrato”, with micro-tuning from finger precise finger placement. The Osmose senses X position and movement of the keys, which allows for vibratos, and small bends. But it also includes something new, new enough to be patented, which Expressive E calls “pressure weighted portamento”. This allows you to use two keys, and sensing the relative amount of aftertouch pressure between those two keys allowing you to quite accurately flow your pitch between those two notes. Resembling this the Hydrasynth Deluxe, and the Omega both have a ribbon controller, with the ability to match the ribbon position to the keyboard note pitch. The ribbon on the Deluxe is one dimensional so is somewhat limited in this role. The Omega though has a ribbon that can sense two dimensions, as well as the ability to sense three simultaneous multi-touches. I am expecting Aodyo to innovate ways to do some more complex forms of Glide, and Vibrato
Note : While you can use a pitch-bend wheel for this, there is not a good way to connect the pitch bend to a single particular note in a polyphonic combination.
I am not aware of any ways to do Glide or Vibrato per note from the keyboard of the Iridium Keys.
This leaves Slide — the Y-Dimension, moving your finger front to back on a key. This is pretty much limited to the Continuum. I am not aware of any other of the keyboard synths being considered here with this capability per note.
I think another thing to be considered relative to these added dimensions, are additional forms of control that are part of these synths. The Omega is remarkable in this regard, which is a topic for another post.
ADDED : To be clearer about the Osmose. Each key can sense “Polyphonic Initial Pressure”, “Polyphonic Aftertouch”, and “Polyphonic Pitch Control”. ( Reference ) To complicate things the first two parameters are not simultaneously controllable, independently on a single key.
