In MPE mode, I can't get PED/CV and/or BEND to respond polyphonically

I’m using my Expressive E Osmose to control my Super 6 Desktop (v0.53) in MPE mode, and I experience some problems when it comes to getting the synth to respond polyphonically, more specifically for PED/CV and BEND.

PED/CV

On page 111 of the manual (v4.0), it says that polyphonic expression is mapped to the PED/CV channel in the modulation matrix.

The way I read this is that CC11 is polyphonically mapped to the PED/CV channel. However, when I send CC11 on individual midi channels, I only get a global response, not a response on a note by note basis as I would expect when something is polyphonic.

I’ve tried all possible CC numbers, and it’s only CC11 that gives me some kind of response via the PED/CV parameter. However, if I for example send CC74 messages instead (VCF Cutoff Frequency), it works polyphonically.

BEND

I experience a similar problem for pitch bend. If mapping the BEND parameter to some parameter, this only take effect when I send global pitch bend on channel 1 via my pitch bend wheel. Pitch bend on other channels aren’t affected by the mod matrix at all. Granted, on page 111 of the manual, it isn’t explicitly stated that pitch bend should map polyphonically to BEND, so maybe this is the expected behavior.

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In regards PED/CV, the manual isnt accurate, it reflects how they envisaged supporting MPE long before the initial version of MPE support was made available, rather than how it actually behaves at the moment.

At the moment my understanding is that in the current firmware MPE Y Slide (CC74) is hard-wired to filter cutoff.

I think their original intention, and what they are trying to describe in the manual, is that MPE CC74 would be wired to PED/CV mod source, so that you could then use PED/CV in the mod matrix to assign this MPE gesture to other parameters. They dont mean that CC11 will work polyphonically in MPE mode, they were just planning to use PED/CV as the mod source for MPE Y CC74 because it already exists in the user interface as a mod source, whereas there is no dedicated MPE Y mod source button/label.

I was hoping that this more flexible version of CC74 MPE Y support would be available by now, or that we would at least have heard some news about it.

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This seems kinda strange. I’m all for having visions and roadmaps, but I’ve never heard of someone writing a manual according to what they would like to be the case rather than what actually is the case. Are you sure this is what has happened, or did I misunderstand your answer somehow? It seems much more plausible to me that errors have crept into the manual.

To summarize, CC74 works fine for polyphonically controlling the filer cutoff, but it can’t be routed or modified via the PED/CV parameter in the mod matrix. So I still don’t understand what the polyphonic expression mapped to the PED/CV source in the mod matrix refers to.

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The manual always mentioned MPE since the first version of the manual, but MPE support didnt actually exist and only arrived in initial form in the last firmware release. Regardless of whether you find that weird, I am just describing what happened, having owned this synth since September 2020 and being an enthusiastic MPE user, I had to wait a long time for things to even get this far. In the old days they also had a roadmap document that made it clear they hadnt done MPE yet, which initially featured an ETA that they wisely removed later, since its notoriously hard to predict development timescales.

The polyphonic expression they refer to in that particular section of the manual is actually MPE Y (CC74), as I already described. But again, its not been implemented as described yet.

What in the world…

I have to admit, I almost didn’t believe you at first. I mean, thousands of people on the internet claim that they’ve seen Bigfoot as well. But when I got home today, I read the 3.0 version of the manual (which was released in July 2021, long before the MPE update), which is the printed manual that I got with the synth (weird, but I guess the retailer had this unit in storage a long time before selling it to me), and there’s a section about MPE there that reads more or less exactly as the section in version 4.0 of the manual.

I agree that it might be unwise to include a roadmap in the box, but if you’re going to state things that are not implemented yet in the manual (I guess this was done in order to make the manual more future proof, but I don’t know), according to me, you at least have to make it super clear that that is the case (or maybe there’s some document that was supposed to be included that I didn’t got). How else are you even supposed to be able to read the manual when anything could just be a wish rather than a fact?

I’m sorry for ranting here, and I really don’t mean to come of as a complaining douche bag. I think this synth both sounds and looks fabulous (it’s one of the best I’ve ever tried), but unless the documentation in my specific case was incomplete, this has to be the biggest facepalm moment that I ever experienced when it comes to music gear :upside_down_face:

You, or someone else, wouldn’t happen to have a copy of the original roadmap document or know where I can find it? It would be interesting to know how it was written (this has nothing to do with my original problem; I’m just curious).

Well,. At least there is some semblance of MPE support in the firmware. Not that it makes it any better, but the Super6 originally shipped with a bright shiny MPE button but zero MPE support at all.

Yes, something is definitely better than nothing. I would just like to have been told before that MPE didn’t work the way it was specified in the manual so that I didn’t have to spend half an evening trying to get it to work the way I was led to believe it should work :weary:

I would advise you to contact UDO support and by that you will get a response from George explaining what the current implementation is and, if not fully set, how it will evolve.