When the Osmose 61 appeared in ANR’s Holiday Gift Guide last December, the editors tagged it “the revolutionary keyboard just got bigger.” Deserved — and yet the most common reaction from players reading that recommendation was something else entirely: What if I don’t need that synth engine?
Today, Expressive E answers that. The Expressive E Osmose CE strips the onboard synthesis, keeps the keybed, and pairs it with Ctrl-e — a dedicated software ecosystem built around 900+ expressive presets from six partner developers alongside Expressive E’s own sound engines. Two sizes, two prices: the 49-key at €999, the 61-key at €1,199.
Every preset ships pre-mapped to respond to the keybed’s gesture vocabulary. No routing templates. No plugin-by-plugin MPE setup…
TL;DR: The Osmose CE at a Glance
- The Concept: A dedicated MPE controller version of the Osmose, featuring the same groundbreaking Augmented Keyboard Action (AKA) but without the internal EaganMatrix sound engine.
- Software Bundle: Comes with Ctrl-e, a massive library of 900+ MPE-optimized presets for various third-party plugins – and you can control these software presets directly from the Osmose CE.
- The “Who It’s For”: Producers who want th e most expressive keybed on the market with a dedicated top-notch and easy-to-use software ecosystem, without the standalone price tag.
Same Keybed, Not a Lite Version
Let me be specific about what “same keybed” actually means here, because Expressive E makes that claim and it deserves unpacking. The Osmose CE is not a cost-reduced approximation of the original playing surface. Per-note control covers the full gesture vocabulary: Tap, Press, Pitch Bend, Vibrato, Shake, Strum, and Expressive Note-Off — all simultaneously, per key. That last one is easy to miss in a spec sheet: the keybed reads how a note is released, not just when. Most MPE controllers skip that entirely.
You can bend a single note inside a chord. Apply vibrato mid-phrase with finger pressure, without a mod wheel anywhere in sight. I recall playing an early Osmose at a demo and hitting a chord with deliberate per-note lateral movement — it stopped feeling like controlling a synthesizer and started feeling like playing one. The Osmose CE brings that same sensation, physically unchanged.
Ctrl-e: The Software Side of the Bargain
The original Osmose houses Haken Audio’s EaganMatrix synthesis engine internally — a formidable piece of DSP capable of sounds virtually nothing else can produce, but steep to program and not particularly session-friendly. Our Osmose 2.1 review last year put it plainly: the EaganMatrix is the instrument’s greatest strength and its most persistent friction point. Osmose CE trades that engine for Ctrl-e, a free companion software developed with Synapse Audio, AAS, Kilohearts, GForce, Dawesome, and Vital — spanning physical modelling, wavetable, analogue-modelling, and hybrid synthesis. Every preset ships pre-mapped to respond to the keybed’s gesture vocabulary. No routing templates. No plugin-by-plugin MPE setup.
Eight macros per preset are already assigned to the hardware’s seven knobs and encoders. In supported DAWs — Ableton Live 12+, Cubase 15+, Bitwig 5+, Logic Pro 12+ — the entire Ctrl-e environment can be browsed and controlled from the 4.3-inch colour LCD without touching a screen.
Two built-in performance tools stand out. The MPE Arpeggiator keeps every note in the pattern independently expressive in real time — pressure and pitch variation work inside the arp, not as a global layer on top of it. Press Glide transitions between notes through finger pressure rather than a fixed portamento setting, which means the glide speed becomes part of how you play the phrase rather than a parameter you dialled in beforehand.
The Ecosystem Battle
Considering that Ctrl-e bundles together serious synthesis technology from multiple developers, the package is genuinely compelling — and sits at a meaningfully lower entry point than the original Osmose. That said, the bundle is precisely what complicates the pitch for certain buyers.
The controller-plus-sounds market now has credible, far cheaper options. Arturia’s KeyLab 49 MK3 enters at €499 with Analog Lab Pro included — a library broad enough to carry most producers through a full session without further investment. Novation’s Launchkey MK4 line costs considerably less again and now ships with Play, a free plugin that integrates tightly with the hardware and draws on presets sampled from Sequential and Oberheim synths. Neither instrument plays anything like the Osmose CE. But if someone is weighing a controller+sounds bundle with a €500 ceiling, the expressive depth on offer here may not close the price gap — at least not before they’ve tried the keybed in person.
Then there’s the buyer Expressive E hasn’t yet addressed: players who already own MPE-capable instruments. Arturia Pigments, Surge XT, Pianoteq — the roster of seriously MPE-ready plugins is longer now than it was when the original Osmose launched in 2023. These players don’t need 900 presets. They need the keybed. A hardware-only Osmose CE, priced accordingly, would reach a segment currently left choosing between buying a bundle they don’t need or looking elsewhere for a controller. Perhaps Expressive E will get there. But I can’t help thinking it’s the most obvious gap in this otherwise considered lineup.
What This Launch Says About Where Expressive E Is Going
Noisy 2 in 2024 telegraphed the same move: reduce the setup overhead for expressive playing, pull in players who couldn’t or wouldn’t commit to programming EaganMatrix from scratch. Ctrl-e is that direction at scale — multiple third-party developers co-signing the same preset ecosystem, under one piece of hardware-integrated software.
Read in that context, Osmose CE isn’t a stripped-back version of the original instrument. It’s Expressive E positioning the keybed as a platform: the hardware layer connecting expressive playing to an increasingly mature software world. Given how substantially MPE support has grown across all four major DAWs since 2023, the timing makes sense. Whether €999 is the number that finally brings serious expressive playing to a wider audience — or whether a hardware-only tier would do that more effectively — is the question worth watching as this product finds its market.
How about you: does the bundle justify the price for your setup, or would you rather pay less for the keybed alone?
Pricing and Availability
The Expressive E Osmose CE is available from today, April 29th, 2026, via the Expressive E online store and authorised dealers worldwide. Ctrl-e is included at no extra cost — no subscription required.
- Osmose CE 49 (49 keys): €999 / $999
- Osmose CE 61 (61 keys): €1,199 / $1,199
