At the start of September 2016 ROLI announced the acquisition of FXpansion that will undoubtedly add another creative string to ROLI's bow. ROLI is best known for the touch responsive keyboards they produce - The Seaboard RISE & Seaboard GRAND instruments. This news follows on from ROLI's other recent acquisitions of:
- Blend in 2015 - A social network that enables musicians to collaborate online. Such features include project sharing, music distribution & sample selling.
- Juice in 2014 - The acclaimed C++ framework used by many top pro audio developers for creating plug-ins and music production applications.
What Does This Mean For FXpansion?
From what we understand ROLI will continue the development of current FXpansion products such as Geist2 with later updates & releases of BFD 3.2 and Cypher2 will be sold through FXpansion's current platform.
The FXpansion team will take on new roles at ROLI whilst continuing development of FXpansion's products. Angus Hewlett will become Head of Sound Synthesis and Lead Software Engineer.
What Does This Mean For ROLI?
The team at ROLI clearly have a passion for innovation in Music Technology with the vision of producing "instruments of the future" evident in the Seaboard range. ROLI now will have a larger in-house team bringing 15 years of expertise in audio software innovation from FXpansion..
ROLI describe their direction as a "Connected Music Ecosystem" which we feel is a perfect way of describing the direction that ROLI appear to be taking in shaping the future of the ROLI brand and the music production industry.