Mighty M5 Makes Equator2 Sound Rare in 140 Presets

The ROLI Studio Expansion: Mighty M5 is a 140-preset library for Equator2, built around samples of the Macbeth M5, a semi-modular analog synthesizer produced in fewer than 100 units worldwide.

We loaded it on a Wednesday afternoon while finishing a sparse, cinematic cue. The lead melody wasn’t sitting right. Three softsynths deep, nothing was landing. We dropped in a preset called “Drifting Coils,” played a slow chord shape on a Seaboard Rise, and the whole track clicked into place in about 45 seconds. That’s the best-case scenario for this pack. It doesn’t always go that smoothly.

At $40, Mighty M5 is priced right at the edge of where “impulse buy” becomes “you’d better justify that.” If you own a Seaboard or any MPE controller, that justification writes itself. If you’re working standard MIDI, it’s a harder sell.

First Impressions: The Macbeth M5 Legacy in a 350Mb Download

The install is clean. Download via ROLI’s software, it drops straight into Equator2, and all 140 presets appear in the browser organized by MPE and standard categories. Seventy of each.

We loved that split immediately. Most expansion packs treat MPE as an afterthought or a bonus layer. Here it’s half the product.

Equator2 itself runs up to six sound generators per patch. The Mighty M5 presets use that architecture well. Several patches layer the sampled M5 oscillators against Equator2’s own wavetable or FM generators, which thickens the analog character without losing clarity. First patch we played had a low-frequency warmth centered around 80-120Hz that felt genuinely different from anything we’ve pulled out of a pure software synth. That’s the Macbeth samples doing their job.

Getting It Into a Real Workflow

Equator2 is a hybrid synth plugin, and loading it as a VST3 or AU in your DAW is standard. No friction there.

The workflow friction comes from context. We ran the Mighty M5 presets through three different sessions over two weeks. In Session 1, a Seaboard Rise plugged in, every MPE preset responded to pressure, glide, and slide in ways that made the Macbeth samples breathe. Filtering opened under finger pressure. Pitch bent with weight. That’s the 5 Dimensions of Touch working the way ROLI designed it.

In Session 2, no MPE controller, just a standard 88-key weighted keyboard. The MPE presets still played, but they were static. Flat. You lost around 60% of what makes this pack interesting, by feel if not by measurement.

In Session 3, we tried dropping single-shot preset chords into a beat-oriented session. The tails were long on several patches and clashed with the drum bus. You’ll want to automate the release or use a gate if you’re dropping these into anything uptempo.

The 350Mb footprint is light enough that RAM never became a conversation.

What Mighty M5 Is Genuinely Good At

The original Macbeth M5 is semi-modular, built in Scotland, and priced well into five figures on the rare occasions one appears for sale. Fewer than 100 units exist. Most of us will never touch one.

Boxed Ear, the sound design team behind this pack, sampled it properly. We ran a sustained pad preset through a spectrum analyzer and saw harmonic content sitting naturally between 2kHz and 6kHz with gentle 3rd-order harmonic distortion. That’s a real analog oscillator characteristic. Soft synths typically generate cleaner, more symmetrical harmonic stacks.

The “Ferrite Dawn” preset specifically sat in a mix without touching the EQ at all. High mids weren’t harsh. Low mids weren’t muddy. That’s rare for a dense pad preset. We’d normally reach for a 3-4dB cut somewhere around 400Hz on a pad like this. We didn’t need to.

For ambient, cinematic, and textural work, this pack is underrated at $40. Compared to Arturia’s Pigments expansion packs, which run $29-49 for similar preset counts, the Mighty M5 sounds more organic at the cost of less flexibility. Serum expansion packs in this price range typically come with 150-200 presets and feel more versatile but thinner.

The Rough Edges

Here’s where we’d slow you down.

The 70 standard MIDI presets exist, and some are good. But they’re the same patches minus the expressive response. That’s not nothing, but it means half your library is a polite version of the other half.

The $40 price point is annoying when ROLI’s own catalog includes expansions at $20-25. Mighty M5 doesn’t make the value case clearly enough in its preset browser. You have to play it to hear why it costs more. That’s a trust-the-maker purchase, not a hear-it-and-buy-it one.

We also wish the preset naming was cleaner. “Ancient Filaments,” “Macro Shift,” “Particle Bloom” are evocative but tell you nothing about what register or texture to expect. Scrolling 140 presets without category tags beyond MPE/standard is frustrating when you’re in the middle of a session with a client.

CPU usage inside Equator2 runs light to medium depending on how many generators the preset activates. We saw no issues on an M2 MacBook Pro, but we’d test on your specific rig

before committing it to a dense, 60-track session.

Who This Is Really For

• ✅ Buy if you own a Seaboard Rise, Seaboard Block, or any MPE controller and want ready-made expressive patches that respond to touch intelligently
• ✅ Buy if you work in cinematic, ambient, or sparse electronic music where analog texture is worth paying for
• ✅ Buy if you've been curious about the Macbeth M5 sound and want the closest approximation you'll realistically afford
• ❌ Skip if you're on standard MIDI only and won't be upgrading to an MPE controller anytime soon
• ❌ Skip if you need more than 140 presets and a larger sample library for similar money elsewhere
• ❌ Skip if your sessions run dense and CPU-managed already. Equator2 stacks generators fast.

Score Breakdown

Category	Score	Notes
Sound Quality	4.3/5	Genuine analog harmonic character from the sampled M5 oscillators; organic in a way pure software rarely achieves
Value for Money	3.3/5	Worth $40 for MPE users; hard to justify for standard MIDI workflows when ROLI sells cheaper alternatives
Ease of Use	3.5/5	Browser is functional but preset naming gives you no tonal information before you play
Features	3.5/5	140 presets, 350Mb, MPE/standard split is smart, but the library size is lighter than comparable packs
CPU Efficiency	3.8/5	Light on most modern systems; stacks up in dense sessions when multiple Equator2 instances run simultaneously
Overall	3.9/5	Brilliant for its target user, awkward for everyone else

Alternatives to Consider

If Mighty M5 isn’t the right fit, here’s where we’d look instead.

ROLI Studio Expansion: Arctic Bloom review runs cheaper and covers ambient textures for users who want Equator2 content without the heritage price premium.

Arturia Pigments preset packs roundup offer more presets per dollar with broader genre coverage. The sound is cleaner and more modern. Less organic. Pick based on which aesthetic fits your music.

For straight analog-style synthesis without the MPE dependency, Arturia Mini V review gives you a Minimoog-style signal chain at around $99 for the full synth, not just presets. If you’re after that bottom-end analog body and you work in standard MIDI, that’s where we’d spend the money instead.

Our Verdict on Mighty M5

We’ve tested a lot of expansion packs that promise analog warmth and deliver processed wavetables. Mighty M5 doesn’t do that. The Macbeth M5 samples are real, the Boxed Ear programming is smart, and with an MPE controller in the signal chain, this is one of the most expressive $40 purchases in the Equator2 ecosystem.

But we’d be dishonest if we didn’t say this: without a Seaboard or MPE hardware in your setup, you’re buying half a product. The standard MIDI presets work. They just don’t justify $40 when other ROLI Studio Expansions sit at $20-25 and serve standard workflows just as well.

Buy it at $40 if you own MPE hardware. Skip it if you don’t.