Most software synths treat MPE as a feature you switch on. Equator2 was designed the other way round: expression first, and everything else arranged to serve it. Several years after launch — and with ROLI going through significant restructuring — it is worth asking how well that bet has aged, particularly for players who own an MPE controller from another manufacturer entirely.
The six-slot architecture
The core of Equator2 is a set of six fully flexible source slots. Each can host a different synthesis type: a wavetable oscillator with a bespoke waveform library, a high-resolution multi-sampler, a granular engine, FM, and more. You are not choosing between architectures at patch level; you are stacking them.
For expressive playing this matters more than it might sound. A single oscillator responds to pressure in one way. Six sources, each with its own modulation routing, let you build a sound where pressure fades one layer in while slide morphs another and pitch bend affects only a third. That is how you get a patch that changes character under your fingers rather than just getting louder or brighter.
The modulation system evolved out of ROLI's earlier Cypher2 and Strobe2 engines, and it is comprehensive: envelopes, LFOs, key-tracking sources and macros, assignable to essentially any parameter. Crucially, the five MPE dimensions sit in that same modulation list, so routing strike velocity to one destination and pressure to another is the same operation as assigning an LFO.
1,300 presets — and why the split matters
Equator2 ships with over 1,300 presets, and ROLI publishes an unusually honest breakdown: 530 built for MPE controllers and 848 for conventional keyboards.
That split is a small piece of industry candour worth appreciating. A great many plugins advertise "MPE support" and then ship a library where a handful of patches respond meaningfully to slide and the rest ignore CC74 entirely. Labelling which presets were actually voiced for expressive controllers saves players a lot of wasted browsing — a problem we have written about before in the context of what a plugin's MPE update actually means.
Does it work outside the ROLI ecosystem?
Yes, and this is the question most people actually want answered. Equator2 was built alongside the Seaboard, but it responds to standard MPE, so an Osmose, a LinnStrument, an Erae Touch, a Continuum or an Exquis all drive it.
There are caveats. Presets voiced for the Seaboard assume a keywave surface where slide is a vertical movement with a natural rest position around the middle. On a flat grid controller, or on a keybed like the Osmose where CC74 comes from a different physical gesture, those patches can feel mismatched until you adjust the slide response curve. That is a general truth about cross-controller preset sharing rather than an Equator2 flaw, but budget some time for it.
The elephant in the room
ROLI's 2026 restructuring has understandably made some buyers cautious about investing in the company's software. It is a fair concern and not one we will hand-wave away. A few things are worth weighing: Equator2 is a mature, feature-complete product rather than one dependent on a roadmap; it is a standard VST3/AU plugin with no cloud dependency for normal operation; and its patches are stored locally.
The pragmatic view is that Equator2's value is in what it does today, not in what it might be updated to do. Judge it on that basis and it remains one of the deepest MPE-native engines available.
Pricing
Equator2 lists at $249 USD for Windows and macOS (VST3/AU), and ROLI runs frequent discounts — it has appeared at 40% off more than once, and owners of Equator, Cypher2, Strobe2 or ROLI Studio have an upgrade path at a reduced price. If you are considering it, waiting for a sale is a reasonable strategy; they come round regularly.
The verdict
Equator2 is still one of the clearest demonstrations of what a synth designed around MPE sounds like compared to one that had MPE added later. The six-slot engine rewards players who build their own patches, and the honest preset labelling makes the factory library genuinely usable with an expressive controller.
If you are assembling an MPE plugin collection, it belongs on the shortlist alongside the physical-modelling and additive options — it covers different ground from either.