I’m proud to announce we are adding support for MPE to the zynthian-UI so the engines that currently support MPE, like Surge-XT can work flawlessly without needing to tweak things or access the native GUI thru VNC.
Those using Vangelis can test with the (currently) only supported engine, Surge-XT. Indeed you don’t need to do nothing. Simply:
Create a new chain with Surge-XT engine and select ALL MIDI channels
That’s all!
The trick is selecting ALL MIDI channels. When you select ALL MIDI channels, MPE is enabled with this zone settings:
lower zone => 15 channels
upper zone => disabled
When you select a single MIDI channel, MPE will be disabled. Super-easy.
I also have changed the default values for Pitch-Bend and CC smothing to “Fast Linear”. I found the defaults very unpleasant for MPE playing with my Roli Blocks.
I don’t have too much experience with MPE, so probably this needs improvement. The important thing is we have a starting point now.
When will this be available in an update? I downloaded and installed the 2026-08-22 Vangelis image from scratch (the one we SHOULD install), but I suppose I will still have to wait for the next update.
I think the update is available now on Vangelis - I’m not certain because I’m testing with an Artiphon Chorda and I’m not sure what it should do and I’m kind of clumsy with its pads, but it appears to polyphonically work.
At one point while browsing for good MPE sounds it switched back to non-MPE state, and I couldn’t bring it back to MPE again. I guess I would have to go the the web-interface to do that. Not sure what switched it back. Just browsing to a non-MPE sound?
Also, I didn’t find any sound mapping the “glide” on the seaboard. Is there a MIDI-mapping I need to do, or do the SurgeXT sounds just lack that dimension per default?
I couldn’t reproduce this issue yet. Tell me if you can reproduce and i will try to fix it.
Anyway, for re-enabling MPE, simply change chain’s MIDI channel to single and ALL again.
What do you mean for “glide” on the seaboard? Does my “roli blocks” have this glide gesture too?
Sorry, I meant slide. Glide is horizontal movement, slide is vertical. I always mix them up. And yes, I’m quite sure that the blocks has the slide feature too.
Doesn’t work for me. “Luna Expressive Keys 1” has no vertical slide effect for me. I wonder what’s different. I matched the lower zone => 15 channels in ROLI Dashboard.
