Expressive E Touché SE

The one thing nobody argues about. Every source that touched one describes the plate as fast, finely graded and responsive to gestures far smaller than a knob would register, with a sprung return that gets you back to zero without thinking about it. The caveats are mechanical rather than critical: front and back can be pressed together, but left and right are mutually exclusive, so you get four parameters and three at a time — and because the plate always springs home, it cannot hold a static value the way a mod wheel can.

“the responsiveness of the control surface means that the Touché reacts well to subtle gestures in all directions”

Si Truss, MusicRadar

“It is immediately responsive with no perceptible lag, seems to have very high temporal resolution”

Windbag, VI-Control

“The sensors are sensitive and the range of motion feels just right.”

Lunatique, VI-Control

“One thing to be aware of is that the controller springs back to centre which can be an issue depending on how you use expression.”

DerGeist, VI-Control

Sources split, and the facts underneath are not in dispute — only whether they matter. The SE is a class-compliant USB MIDI device, so a DAW sees four CCs the moment it is plugged in and no software is required. But anything beyond that global map — per-instrument recall, curves, multiple targets — means loading Lié on a track and hosting your instrument inside it, and standalone mode has exactly one memory slot to fall back on. Owners who only ever needed four CCs describe it as effortless; owners who expected presets per patch hit the ceiling within a day.

The most polarizing part of the package. Lié is both the editor and a plug-in host, and it ships with a UVI-powered sound library plus a few hundred ready-made mappings for popular synths. Reviewers found it easy, effective and well-chosen; a German test called it expanded but still not mature, and several long-term users report scans that miss their instruments, CPU spikes and host crashes, and simply route the four CCs themselves. The preset library is also narrower than the marketing suggests — some of the most popular soft synths are not covered.

The whole reason the SE is cheaper. One USB-B socket, bus-powered, and nothing else: no 5-pin MIDI, no CV outputs, and none of the classic Touché's 24 hardware presets. Reviewers treat this as a fair trade for a software-first controller while still noting the cost — you can drive outboard gear, but only by routing through a computer, and there is no tidy way to save a template for it. Owners who want hardware control end up bolting on a third-party MIDI routing utility.

“The Touché SE is essentially the same as its predecessor albeit without the original’s CV and MIDI connections.”

Si Truss, MusicRadar

“Touché SE does not have physical MIDI In/Out or CV output ports”

Expressive E Help Center

“the only real sacrifice here is the standalone operation with hardware”

Peter Kirn, CDM

Not a travel device, and the one complaint that recurs almost verbatim across independent owners. The SE is exactly as large as the original — Expressive E saved money on ports, not on the chassis — and at roughly 246 x 100 mm it claims a strip of desk about as deep as a keyboard. Three separate owners independently wished it were smaller; the counterweight is that it is bus-powered from one cable, with no wall wart to pack.

“It's big. Too big”

Windbag, VI-Control

“I do wish it was a bit smaller though, as it takes up a bit of space on the desk.”

Lunatique, VI-Control

“The item is quite big, it could be less, it takes quite lot of space on the table”

lifemusic4lm4, Thomann customer review

The strongest agreement in the set, and it survives the switch from wood to plastic. Reviewers and owners describe a dense, seamless object that stays put on a desk, with a mechanism that feels engineered rather than assembled. The one dissenting note is a single owner reporting a plate that sometimes fails to snap back to zero, which reads as a unit fault rather than a pattern; the consumable parts are cheap and user-replaceable.

“The hardware still feels high-quality and its shapely, all-black design exudes quality”

Si Truss, MusicRadar

“The entire unit is nicely put together with enough heft to indicate metal framework, matte finished hard plastics without rubbery coating or a single unintensional-looking seam anywhere on it”

Windbag, VI-Control

Mostly positive, with a real minority arguing the same job costs less. The magazines rated it warmly at launch precisely because it undercut the original by a third, and owners who use it daily rarely regret it — often for want of an alternative, since almost nothing else does this. Against that: one test listed the price itself as a minus even at launch, and the cheapest counter-argument on the internet is that an expression pedal plus channel aftertouch covers much of the ground for a fraction of the money.

“they’ve gotten the price down to just US$/EUR229, making this potentially a no-brainer”

Peter Kirn, CDM

“Is it worth it? I'm leaning toward yes mostly for lack of any real alternative.”

Windbag, VI-Control

“I think it can be used for many interesting purposes, though so can a pair of expression pedals and a keyboard with channel pressure (at much lower cost).”

chalk_walk, r/synthesizers