ROLI's Seaboard 2 Adds a Third Dimension to MPE with Airwave Hand Tracking

ROLI, the company that helped popularize MIDI Polyphonic Expression with the original Seaboard, has renamed and reworked its flagship controller as Seaboard 2 — and paired it with a genuinely new idea: adding a layer of touchless, camera-based gesture control on top of MPE's per-note expression.

From Seaboard RISE 2 to Seaboard 2

Seaboard 2 is functionally the successor to the Seaboard RISE 2, ROLI's soft, pressure-sensitive keybed that popularized the "five dimensions of touch" — strike, press, glide, slide, and lift — as an alternative to rigid piano keys. The new version keeps that signature silicone surface but moves to a more durable aluminum chassis, full-size keys with precision frets for more accurate pitch bending, and dedicated expression faders alongside an X/Y touchpad for real-time modulation. It's available in a 49-key configuration built around ROLI's Equator2 MPE soft synth, continuing the brand's approach of pairing hardware with a matched software instrument.

Airwave: expression without touching the keys

The more striking addition is Airwave, a companion accessory that uses ROLI's computer-vision system, ROLI Vision, to track a player's hands as they move above the Seaboard 2's surface — without any physical contact. According to ROLI, Airwave adds five additional dimensions of expression on top of what the keybed itself already captures, letting a performer shape timbre, filter movement, or spatial effects with hand height, tilt, and gesture while still playing notes normally with their fingers.

That combination effectively turns a single controller into two simultaneous expression sources: the traditional five-dimensional MPE data coming from the keybed, and a second, independent stream of gestural data from hand tracking above it. For electronic musicians and sound designers who have run out of fingers to control every parameter they want to shape live, that's a meaningful expansion of what a single instrument can do in a performance.

Why this matters for the MPE ecosystem

MPE was designed around the idea that a single note can carry more than just pitch and volume — pressure, slide, and glide are all standard parts of the MPE specification, and most DAWs and MPE-aware plugins already know how to receive that data (see Ableton's MPE documentation for one common implementation). Airwave doesn't change the MPE spec itself, but it points at where expressive controllers might go next: layering optical or camera-based sensing on top of touch, rather than trying to cram more sensors into the keybed itself.

It also reflects a broader trend across the controller market. Competing approaches, like Expressive E's Osmose CE, have focused on refining the keybed itself and leaning on software ecosystems for expressive depth, while ROLI is betting that adding an entirely separate sensing layer — one that doesn't require touching anything — is the next differentiator.

Compatibility and setup

Seaboard 2 outputs standard MPE data over USB or 5-pin MIDI, meaning it works with any MPE-compatible DAW, including Bitwig Studio, Ableton Live, and Logic Pro, as well as MPE-aware plugins like Native Instruments' Absynth 6 or u-he's Repro. Airwave connects as a companion peripheral and requires ROLI's own software to translate hand-tracking data into usable MIDI or OSC control signals routed alongside the keybed's MPE stream.

Pricing and full regional availability for the Seaboard 2 and Airwave bundle are listed on ROLI's product page, with the bundle positioned as ROLI's flagship expressive performance setup going into the back half of 2026.

A crowded but maturing market

ROLI's move comes at a moment when the MPE controller category is more competitive than it's ever been. Haken Audio recently introduced the Slim 21, a more portable version of its flagship Continuum, while Expressive E's Osmose CE reframed its own keybed as a standalone controller rather than a synth-plus-keyboard package. Each company is making a slightly different bet about what expressive players actually want: more portability, a leaner price point, or — in ROLI's case — an entirely new sensing dimension layered on top of touch.

For working musicians, the practical takeaway is that MPE hardware is no longer a single-format category. A player choosing a controller today is choosing not just a keybed feel, but a whole approach to expression — pressure-based, camera-based, or some combination of both. Seaboard 2 and Airwave push that choice further than most, betting that the next gain in expressiveness comes from what happens above the keys, not just what happens under the fingers.