ROLI Support

I'll be using a blocks songmaker kit as my first ever midi controller after Christmas. I'm not familiar with set up so want a quick steer on signal path. This will be used 99% for live playing. I'm assuming we will be using audio out from our MacBook via DI boxes into our pa? I'm assuming we will use equator initially as the sound engine. Do we need to use a daw as well to enable looping and polyphony (multitrack) or does Dashboard do this? Is our signal blocks to equator to dashboard to audio out or something else? Thanks in advance for help.

Hi Nathane,

Exciting to hear that BLOCKS will be your first MIDI controllers! 

Yes, take the signal from your MacBook's audio output and then into Di boxes. You have the choice of using Equator, Strobe2 Player and Cypher2 Player as sound engines. 

While each of them work as standalone synthesisers, you can use other software to sequence and loop recordings. A license for Ableton Live Lite is included with the Songmaker Kit and you should definitely check out Apple's MainStage (and the Loopback plug-in) as it's aimed specifically at live performance.

ROLI Dashboard is essentially a control panel. You can use it to set up your BLOCKS with various applications. Here's an article that describes its uses: https://support.roli.com/support/solutions/articles/36000024589-using-roli-dashboard

I hope this helps!

Jay