u/Antique_Client_5643

This is a wonderful instrument. Really. My heart goes out to the people who worked on it, and whose work was let down by a few bad decisions and bugs.

Before I ask gear4music to take it back again I wanted to document some of the bugs and weirdness. The fingerings around crossing the octave are not documented in the manual (perhaps to avoid putting buyers off?), so for your convenience, here they are, showing what the middle D fingering and the trill keys produce in various modes:

Brisa mode:

middle D fingering: B. yes, a B.

left trill key while playing C: D

left trill key while playing C#: D#.

right trill key while playing C: B flat

right trill key while playing C#: B.

Some seem like bugs, some seem more like bad decisions.

Flute mode, low octave:

Middle D fingering: Low D. This is just awful.

left trill key while playing C: Low D again. Ideal if you often want to trill between middle C and low D, I guess?

left trill key while playing C#: Low D again.

right trill key while playing C: Middle D

right trill key while playing C#: Low D#. Twist ending there.

The middle D fingering producing low D is just a dealbreaker really, but the extremely strange output of the trill keys makes me wonder if it's bugs rather than just bad features. The Brisa mode trill keys producing B I can sorta-kinda get, whereas these assignments just seem completely random.

Flute mode, middle octave:

Middle D fingering: Middle D. This is one of the very few notes that does what you'd expect.

left trill key while playing C: Also middle D.

left trill key while playing C#: Also middle D.

right trill key while playing C: High D.

right trill key while playing C#: Middle D#

This is the same, one octave up, which makes sense, but the trill key assignments are still extremely strange.

Other bugs/misfeatures:

It is possible to get the Brisa stuck in a state in which A and B fingerings produce the same note. You can do this by doing certain cross-fingerings but I can't work out the exact recipe. Changing instruments or turning off and on again seems to fix it. This is awful.

It is possible to get the Brisa stuck in a state in which when portamento is on, going from A to B continues to produce an A. This is hard to duplicate. Again, you need to change instruments or reboot.

Finally... get this... the concert and bass flutes are at the correct pitches but the alto flute is at concert flute pitch! It does seem to be a sample of an alto flute, but it plays the same pitch as a concert flute. It seems impossible that with all the effort that must have gone into the Brisa, that could be a bug. And yet...

I dunno. I just don't know what happened here. If they update the firmware, I'll buy it again.

I received my Brisa today (the given shipping date was in May but they seem to have shipped me one early). This seems to be an improved model that lacks some of the flaws of the original pretty awful release.

Overall I like it and I'll probably keep it. But I'm taking good care of it for the first 30 days. I can see how the non-improved original would have been *very* frustrating.

I thought I'd write some notes.

The good, biggest points first:

The patches are great. Much better to my ear than the other aerophones. They actually behave usefully in response to breath too -- you can jump up an octave by blowing harder, and if you blow very softly the note flattens a little. Great stuff, and proves it was possible all along.

The device is light and a lot like holding a flute. Lighter than my real flute, I think, although balanced oddly.

The inertia controls, which I find rather a gimmick on other windsynths, really do something useful here, and after a bit of fiddling I had a nice pitch bend from rolling the flute in.

The lip octave change is finicky and it's just as hard to learn as any other new feature like octave rollers or whatever. But it *does* work, allowing you to use real flute fingerings, and after a few hours it was feeling a lot more natural. You have a few settings to tweak.

The bad, biggest points first:

There are two flat-out errors: the left trill key produces the wrong note, which is ridiculous in a device at this point in the market, and middle D fingering produces a low D, which is insane, and is maybe what a sax player or an AE-20 player would find natural; I guess they just didn't ask a flute player. Bold decision there. It makes getting over the C/D octave boundary far far harder than it needs to be. This is the main Bad Thing, to me, but also...

There are no user defined fingerings. This in itself is stupid, but when combined with the fact that there are two wrong fingerings, it's an absolute curse. This is the other main Bad Thing.

The other objections are pretty minor. Changing octaves in flute mode is... interesting. I've been getting better at it.

Build quality is meh. In particular the keys -- however, the original problem with the G key is fixed now.

There's no wireless audio out so you have to buy one and tape it to the flute. I don't really care about this but it's kind of weird.

The matters of taste:

There's no internal synth like on the AE-20 and Diosynth. For me that's absolutely fine, I'd much rather have the light weight and excellent acoustic patches.

Configurability is not ultra-shallow like the YDS-120, but not ultra-deep like the AE-20. Personally that works for me.

You really need the mobile app to handle your favorites etc. I understand that the app used not to work, but it seems to work now.

I understand there used to be condensation problem. There is now an internal heater to address this. It seems to help, in that I haven't really had a problem.

Conclusion:

Well, *I* like it because wanted a flute-like thing rather than a synth-like thing. the patches aren't SWAM but they're very good. When I played on the built in speaker, wife came in and said 'oh, I heard you playing a new electronic thingy'. Later on I plugged into a decent mini-amp and she said 'oh, it's so much nicer when you're playing your actual flute'!

If I'd bought the original batch, I'd have been very very frustrated. As it is, I'm pretty happy and will keep it, unless I can't learn the lip octave system. Nearest thing yet by far to an electronic flute.