When I first saw the Expressive E Osmose back in 2019, I knew it was special. In my 15+ years covering technology, it was one of the only devices I've experienced that truly had the potential to be a “game changer.” And I'm not being hyperbolic.
But that was four years ago, almost exactly today. A lot has changed in that time. MPE (MIDI Polyphonic Expression) has gone from being a futuristic curiosity to being adopted by big names like Ableton and Arturia. New players have entered and he left the scene. More importantly, the Osmose is no longer a promising prototype, but a real commercial product. The questions, then, are obvious: Is the Osmose living up to its potential? And does it seem as revolutionary today as it did all those years ago? The answers, however, are less clear.
What does the Osmosis ($1,799) apart from any other MIDI controller and synthesizer (MPE or not), it is your keyboard. At first glance, it looks like almost any other keyboard, although a In fact pretty. The body is mostly plastic, but it feels solid and the top plate is made of metal. (Shout out to Expressive E, by the way, for building the OSMOSE with 66 percent recycled materials and making everything user-repairable, with no special glue or screws.)
The keys themselves have a lovely, almost matte finish and a healthy weight. It's a nice change of pace from the shiny, springy keys of even some high-end MIDI controllers. But the moment you press a key, you'll see what sets it apart: the keys move back and forth. And this is not because it is cheaply assembled and there is a lot of movement. This is a design with a purpose. You can bend notes (or control other parameters) by bending the keys, as you would on a string instrument.
This is huge for someone like me who is primarily a guitarist. Bending strings and moving your fingers back and forth to add vibrato comes naturally. And, as I mentioned in my Roli Seaboard Rise 2 review, I do this even on keyboards where I know it won't have any effect. It is a reflection.
It's very simple to explain, but very difficult to summarize its effect on your playing. It's all the same things that make playing the Seaboard special: the slight instability of pitch due to involuntary micro-movements of the fingers, the ability to bend individual notes to change harmonies, and the polyphonic aftertouch that allows you to alter things like the cutoff. of the filter in a per note.
These small changes in tuning and expression add an almost ineffable fluidity to your playing. Particularly for sounds based on acoustic instruments like flutes and strings, it adds an organic element missing from almost all other synthesizers. There is a bit of a learning curve, but I got the hang of it after a few days.
However, what sets it apart from the Roli is its form factor. While the Seaboard is shaped like a keyboard, it's still a giant, soft slab of silicone. It may not appeal to someone who grew up taking piano lessons every week. The Osmose, on the other hand, is a traditional keyboard, with full-size keys and a very satisfying action. It is probably the most familiar and accessible MPE implementation out there.
If you're a pianist or an accomplished keyboard player, this is probably the MPE controller you've been waiting for. And it is without a doubt one of the best on the market.
Where things get a little more complicated is when considering the Osmose as a standalone synthesizer. But let's start where it goes well: the interface. The screen to the left of the keyboard is a decent size (around 4 inches) and easy to read from any angle. There are even some nice graphs for parameters like bell (a trunk), release (a yo-yo), and drive (a steering wheel).
There aren't many practical controls, but menu navigation is kept to a minimum with some clever organization. The four buttons at the top of the screen take you to different sections for presets, synth (parameters and macros), sensitivity (MPE and aftertouch controls), and playback (mostly just for the arpeggiator at the moment). Then, to the left of the screen are two encoders for navigating the submenus, and the four knobs below control any options that appear above them on the screen. So, no, you're not going to be doing a lot of live tweaking, but you're also not going to spend 30 minutes trying to dial in a patch.
Part of the reason you won't spend 30 minutes marking a patch is because there really isn't much to tick. The engine that powers the Osmose is from Haken Audio. EaganMatrix and Expressive E keeps most of it hidden behind six macro controls. In fact, you cannot design a patch from scratch, at least not directly the synthesizer. You must download the Hacken editor, which requires max. (not the streaming service), to do some serious sound design. You will then need to upload your new patch to Osmose via USB. Other than that, you're stuck modifying presets.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing because, frankly, EaganMatrix feels less like a musical instrument and more like a doctoral thesis. It's undeniably powerful, but also very confusing. The expressive E even describes it as “a synthesis laboratory,” and that seems about right; Patching in EaganMatrix is like doing science. Except it's not the fun science you see on TV with fancy machines and test tubes. Instead, it's more like the daily routine of real-life science, where you stare at a nearly inscrutable series of numbers, letters, mathematical constants, and formulas.
I couldn't get Osmose and Haken Editor to talk to each other on my studio laptop (a five-year-old Dell XPS), although I did get it to work on my work MacBook. That said, it was largely a wasted effort. I just can't understand EaganMatrix. I was able to build a very Basic patch with the help of a tutorial, but I couldn't actually make anything usable.
There are some presets available in Patch Storage, but the community is not as strong as what you would find on Organelle or ZOIA. And it's not obvious how to load those few presets into Osmose. You can drag and drop the .mid files you download into the empty slots at the top of the Haken Editor and that will add them to the Osmose user presets. But you won't actually see that reflected on the Osmose until you turn it off and on again.
Honestly, many of the presets available in Patchstorage cover the same ground as the roughly 500 factory presets that ship with Osmose. And it's by exploring those hundreds of presets that both the power and limitations of EaganMatrix become obvious. It's capable of covering everything from virtual analog to FM, physical modeling and even some pseudo-granular effects. Its modular, matrix-based patching system is so robust that it would almost certainly be impossible to physically recreate it (at least without spending thousands of dollars).
Now this is largely a matter of taste, but I often find the sounds coming out of this obviously overdriven synth disappointing. They are definitely unique and in some cases probably only possible with EaganMatrix. But the virtual analog patches aren't very “analog,” the FM patches lack the character of a DX7 or the modern sheen of a Digitone, and the bass patches could use a little extra oomph. Sometimes the Osmose patches feel like technical demos rather than something you would actually use musically.
That's not to say there aren't good presets. There are some solid analog type sounds and some decent FM pads. But it's the physical modeling patches where EaganMatrix delivers its best performance. They definitely land in a bit of an uncanny valley, though: not quite convincing enough to be mistaken for the real thing, but close enough that it doesn't seem quite right coming out of a synth.
Still, the way Osmose handles tuned drums and plucked or bowed strings is impressive. Quickly tapping a key can generate a ringing sound, while holding it down silences it. Aftertouch can be used to activate repeated pulls that increase in intensity as you press harder. And tilted heads can be smart enough to play notes within a certain range of each other like legato, while still allowing you to play more widely spaced chords with your other hand. (This last feature is called Pressure Glide and can be adjusted to suit your needs.)
The level of precision with which you can smoothly extract sound from some presets with the lightest touch is unmatched by any synthesizer or MIDI controller I've ever tried. And that becomes even more shocking when you realize that the same head can also be a percussive explosion if you hit the keys hard.
But, at the end of the day, I rarely find myself searching Osmosis – at least not as a synthesizer. I've been testing one for a few months now, and while I've used it quite a bit in my studio, it's been primarily as a controller for MPE-enabled soft synths like Arturia's Pigments and Ableton's Drift. It is without a doubt one of the most powerful MIDI controllers on the market. My only major complaint in that regard is that its amazing arpeggiator is not available in controller mode.
The Osmose is a magnificent instrument that, in the right hands, is capable of delivering nuanced performances like no other. Even if sometimes the borrowed sound engine doesn't live up to the keyboard's great potential.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/expressed-e-osmose-review-a-game-changing-mpe-keyboard-but-a-frustrating-synthesizer-170001300.html?src=rss
