Most MPE controllers ask you to adapt to their layout — a keybed, a grid of pads, a ribbon. The Embodme Erae 2 asks the opposite question: what if the surface had no fixed layout at all? A recent long-term review from FutureMusic, built on testing by five separate evaluators, offers one of the most thorough looks yet at what that idea actually feels like to play.
A Blank Canvas, Not a Fixed Controller
The Erae 2 is a flat, pressure-sensitive playing surface built around 16,000 force sensors arranged in a 42-by-24 grid, reading pressure, position, direction, and speed continuously rather than as simple on/off triggers. Using the free Erae Lab software, players drag and drop whatever elements they need — a chromatic keyboard, an isomorphic note grid in the style of a LinnStrument, a drum matrix, X/Y modulation pads, faders, sequencer zones — into a fully custom layout, and the surface's RGB LED matrix redraws itself to match. Up to eight complete layouts live on the hardware's scene buttons at once, so a performer can jump from an expressive keyboard to a full mixer with a single press.
Paired with an MPE-capable sound source, every gesture becomes polyphonic and per-note: a held chord can have each finger bending pitch, adding vibrato through pressure, and opening a filter through lateral slide, all independently. Reviewers described the sensation as closer to "an acoustic instrument reacting to the player than to a button being pressed," and testing against instruments like Serum 2, the ASM Hydrasynth, and the Oberheim OB-6 showed the surface holding its own against established benchmarks like the Osmose, the Haken Continuum, and the ROLI Seaboard.
Built for the Modular World
Where the original Erae Touch was a MIDI device first, the Erae 2 opens up dramatically to Eurorack: 24 configurable analog outputs, arranged across twelve dual TRS jacks, can each be assigned as control voltage, gate, or trigger. Combined with an integrated eight-track looper — one independent MIDI loop per layout, capturing full expressive data including pressure and slide, not just note events — the Erae 2 can drive an entire modular rig with the same gestural detail originally played on the surface. The review calls this level of MIDI-to-CV integration something "very few expressive controllers" can match.
Erae Sound: A Companion Synth, Reviewed Separately
Embodme also builds its own software instrument for the surface. Erae Sound, a $89 plug-in released in June 2026, ships with presets that automatically reshape the Erae Lab layout to match each sound — choosing a patch reconfigures the hardware around it. FutureMusic's separate evaluation of the synth landed at 82%, praising the tight hardware-software integration while flagging a five-minute demo timeout as too short to properly evaluate it and suggesting the $89 price should come with a steeper discount for existing Erae 2 owners.
Where It Falls Short
The review isn't uncritical. Early firmware carried bugs around CV routing and USB device handling, and some advanced configuration areas weren't available at launch. Embodme has addressed much of this through updates — firmware 1.1.2 extended maximum loop length to 256 steps, and 1.1.3 tightened arpeggiator timing and fixed project-loading issues — but the pace of fixes more than a year after launch suggests the instrument shipped before it was fully ready. The learning curve is real, too: this is a device that rewards deep study rather than instant plug-and-play gratification, and FutureMusic's testers were split on whether the price justifies the investment for casual users.
The Verdict
FutureMusic rated the Erae 2 at 93%, calling it "highly recommended" for Eurorack users and expressive performers willing to invest the time. In an interview accompanying the review, Embodme founder Edgar Hemery — who studied gesture-sound mapping during his PhD before co-founding the company — described the design philosophy as treating the controller "like an instrument," refusing to separate performance and control functions the way most MIDI hardware does.
At $899 for the controller alone, the Erae 2 sits at the high end of the MPE controller market, competing less on price than on flexibility: a single device that can be a keyboard, a drum pad, a mixer, and a Eurorack control hub depending on what the player draws onto it. For studios or performers already committed to modular workflows, that combination — expressive per-note sensing plus 24 channels of CV and gate output — has few direct competitors.