Regarding the size, you are comparing 3 arrangers to a light version of a synthesizer (Fantom-0 compared to Fantom).
From my experience, I find arrangers are usually bulkier than synthesizers, especially those with built-in speakers.

You are posting in the MODX Category without mentioning the MODX. To get a fair comparison, compare Fantom-06 to MODX6.

Cheers

Sorry. But I be disappointed every time.
I started working with scenes and immediately noticed that there are not many of them.
Now I've seen how many scenes others have. MODX hasn't loop in pattern sequenser.
I once had a Juno-DS 61, now I miss this keyboard.
My fingers don't fit between the black keys. However, I don't need a piano 88 next to my computer. MODX good but wanna progress.

I very accept with this thread "Low Hanging Fruit Fixes & Improvements"
https://www.yamahasynth.com/forum/low-hanging-fruit-fixes-improvements?page=last#reply-117327

I'm not sure you're comparing the right features here. Roland's "scene" is NOT equivalent to MODX's "scene". Same word but completely different definition. Roland's "scene" is a container for their parameters (zones)+song+patterns. MODX's "scene" (for Performances) is a set of offsets for parameters allowing for quick changes/"automation" of a number of parameters. These are not the same. MODX's closest relative to Roland "scenes" is the Live Set since Live Set can contain either a Performance or Song or ... similar to Roland's Scene selection system.

128x4 = 512 scenes in the Fantom
8x16x16 = 2048 Live Set slots in MODX.

For the functional equivalent - comparing the right features - MODX has more.

Now maybe you mean scenes with respect to the pattern feature. For this, you need to compare Fantom's pattern GROUP to MODX's Pattern Scenes. And yes, Roland is more flexible. Each Roland equivalent to MODX's Part (Zone) can have 8 variations and a group is allowed to contain mix-and-match among these 8 variations. So Zone 1 can have variation A while Zone B has variation D (variations are lettered A-H). In MODX, if you look at variations as Scenes then MODX forces using only variation "A" together and variation "B" together without mix-and-match. Roland has 16 Groups. Groups are fundamentally the "scene" equivalent. So Roland gives you twice as many - 16 vs. 8.

That you can mix-and-match patterns for groups doesn't give you more MODX equivalent scenes - it just gives a different kind of flexibility as you are staging your patterns for saving within a song via the Roland group feature.

128x4 is way off the mark if you're talking about MODX pattern scenes. It's 16 for Roland and 8 for MODX. A difference in Roland's favor, but not to the degree expressed.

I can't comment on footprint. You're free to make any kind of decisions based on size, weight, etc.

Piano key dimensions is fair enough game. There have been discussions in the past. Yamaha synth keyboards tend to be on the slimmer side but still within range of different acoustic counterparts. Some believe a certain piano's dimensions is the gold standard. Fair enough. Some are not as sensitive to the narrower octave (key center spacing). Some prefer the more narrow keys in order to reach intervals previously unreachable. Wherever you land in terms of preferences: if this is a deal breaker for you (and it could very well could be) then the decision is to adapt, get an external MIDI controller with the key spacing that fits your preference, or purchase a different keyboard.

I somewhat understand your feelings.

Some solutions:

The QY100 Sequencer, made by Yamaha in the 1990's, is the missing ingredient. You can get these for less than 300 USD from Japanese second hand sellers on ebay, Rakuten and other places, fully serviced with power supply etc.

This is an amazingly powerful little composer and performance tool. And it's portable, so you can compose on the move.

It will open up your MODX like nothing else can.

The other thing to consider: MODX has better guitars, brass and strings than anything available in this kind of pricing. Just the guitar section alone will do your head in. I'm still wading through it and constantly surprised at what I'm finding.

And then there's the MASSIVELY UNDER USED sound design potential of FM-X.

In Japan, the Montage and the SuperKnob are very negative memes. As is the Korg Prologue.

Once you know this, a lot of what has happened since, with regards these products and their brand's activities, makes more sense.

But back to FM-X... this engine is an absolute monster of capability. But nobody has gone near to touching what it can do, largely because the two groups that could most benefit from it (drum sound designers and EDM sound makers) have been put off by other aspects of these products.

This is a bit of a travesty, as the kinds of rhythm based sounds and lead/bass sounds that can be made with FM-X are next to impossible with any other approach. And that's before considering what can be done to animate these sounds with the Motion Sequencer and the SuperKnob Automation.

Unfortunately, many serious sound designers that I know won't even touch Montage/MODX due to the workflow for designing sounds and (what they consider) archaic envelopes and the oddities of the ways none of the LFOs kind of gel together to get things done in a sensible way. I've come to understand this.

One of the few folks to climb through and around and over these problems is the Twisted Tools sound designer. This guy is a freak. What he's done in his Motif series of sounds works perfectly on the MODX, and will reveal more about how you can abuse and use AWM2 than anything I've seen. And because it's all been designed before Motion Sequencer and SuperKnob, all is achieved with them still being blank and ready for you to assign to whatever you might want to do with them.

Each time I descend into one of his sound designs I learn a few new things. What he does is truly astonishing. He should have been pegged and paid well to make a cutting edge MODX/Montage soundbank, or three.

Also get the Montage Expanded sound set to peer into many things and hear many vastly better uses of the FM-X engine than come in the default presets, you can read and find link here...

With a direct download link thanks to Martin:

https://www.yamahasynth.com/forum/sawtooth-sample-where-from#reply-116757

And now that you're downloading and installing sounds, you might as well get the best out of the MODX, since there are many other sound banks.

I think this is the best sounding of all sets, but I'm a sucker for the CS-80 and shed more than a few tears when Vangelis died:

https://shop.usa.yamaha.com/en/downloadables/sound-expansion-library/synth-voice-libraries/cs80-montage.html

And there's an extensive list of other sound sets here:

https://www.yamahasynth.com/forum/resource-list-of-montage-sound-libraries-including-xf-xs

and, for your sanity, I think you must watch this video from a MODX/Montage user expressing what it feels like to use this OS:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89P_uqcSHrA

Then perhaps follow his channel as he's seemingly working on a tutorial on how he uses Patterns and Scenes!

Although the last link I strongly disagree with the early premise that Montage/MODX are huge departures from the previous Motif series. The presenter has a similar background as me in terms of Yamaha experience, time, years, etc. I wouldn't regard Motif as intuitive necessarily and all of those parameters, settings, effects, structures, etc. are exactly the same in Montage/MODX. Having a previous Motif - I mapped out where all of the screens/parameters were in my Montage vs. the older Motif. I was able to find everything. The organization was very similar and certainly the DNA is identical.

But certainly any opinion is valid even though we disagree how to characterize the latest offerings in the product line vs the previous.

@Jason he's not a UI/UX designer, so doesn't have the language and terminology of one, but he does, in his way, cross all major principles and find the MODX/Montage poorly designed.

He's right!

Whether or not something has a good, empowering and flow enhancing experience is objective, despite the fact that we can only ever personally and subjectively experience that usage. When we make tools and instruments for others, their combined time and efforts are our responsibility.

The MODX/Montage are... worse than anything I've used in the audio world. They make the Waldorf Blofeld feel fun and spritely. And that's really saying something.

It absolutely blows my little mind that there's not been a full graft on of total operation mechanics via buttons and sliders (not needing to see nor touch the touchscreen) for accessibility. Just this exercise and realisation, alone, would forcibly make the UX vastly better, and encourage an entire other market segment to consider these devices.

The fact that this hasn't been done is, to me, a clear indicator that this product line has largely been given up on. Probably due to the (somewhat rightful) negative attention the SuperKnob and lack of flagship features and innovation drove in Japan during the first year of the Montage. That's a market sensitive to gimmickry and tokenism, and highly sensitive to price/feature weightings and considerations. On those metrics, the Montage was more of a laughing stock than the Korg Prologue (single LFO! etc).

The SuperKnob concept, and the way it's incorporated, doesn't feel Japanese Brand Product Flagship worthy. Especially in the first iterations of the Montage OS.

And a cynical take on the Motion Sequencer is that it's trying to make amends for shortcomings in the legacy LFOs they seem to have felt obliged to use.

The initial presets didn't barely use the new FM-X wave types of Res1/2, nor All1/2 much, either.

These kinds of things resonate very negatively in an astute, sensitive and sophisticated market - which is Japan. Their magazines, alone, would blow your mind in how much detail and analysis they go through over products and services. There's nothing like this kind of media presence in our living memories, as western media gave up being disciplined and earnest sometime in the 1950's.

And the magazines have nothing on the productions made for local television stations. This is a country that learnt to love presentation long before modern media came to be, and so they've really run with tech for presentations of insight. Add to this a fundamental curiosity about products and their hierarchy and what they say about brands and their corporations... you get a truly eye opening culture and modern experience, unlike anything else in the world.

It wouldn't surprise me if the Montage was conceived in the USA, and its feature specifications built out from a grab bag of older stuff that was deemed to be cheap enough and readily enough available (but not powerful enough for linear timelines) that it was permitted by Japan HQ to be used, and the desires listed off to an outsourced programming team somewhere outside of Japan (not in the USA) that didn't seemingly have any experience with iOS.

I suspect the original programmers of the Motif series had all retired or moved on, and therefore weren't available to make a Motif Motion+FM-X

That's about the only way I can surmise how this thing came to be. It's an oddity that seems part inspired by the idea that the JP-80 suggested workstations were no longer a thing and a desire to get something out at a minimal cost and with a seemingly arbitrary use of Yamaha chips.

SoundMondo should be a source of embarrassment, but nobody seems to care, yet it could have been the saving grace of these things, if it added the ability to make fully conditional arps, share samples and store and share custom curves etc.

But, it too, looks to have been somewhat given up on...

[quotePost id=117467]He's right![/quotePost]
No, *you* think he's right, and you're wrong.

[quotePost id=117469][quotePost id=117467]He's right![/quotePost]
No, *you* think he's right, and you're wrong.[/quotePost]

Got any evidence of it being well designed, as a whole?

Starting with the SuperKnob, work down from there.

The presenter feels that Montage/MODX is a huge departure from what he's happy about in Motif - and I'm surprised either that he's happy with Motif or that he doesn't recognize how much leverage and how little new items are present in Montage/MODX.

I don't disagree that there are things to complain about - I'm just surprised that the presenter looks so fondly of Motif given the critique of Montage/MODX.

Opinions aren't facts. I'm not right or wrong. The presenter isn't right or wrong. The conclusion one draws from using gear is editorial and not fact.

Thank you, Jason!
I had a premonition that it wasn't the same. Too big number.
But I really love roland keyboard. I've had several cheap models and they all have great keyboards. That's why I get irritated when I play the Yamaha. Quality, design, ergonomics do not improve from year to year. If there is, it's barely noticeable. Just take a cheap roland and compare. Yamaha keyboard for children's hands but not for men's. Casio, Korg are the same.
Sorry for being frank. Thanks to all.

I think if you find gear you love - your music will benefit. So however that works out is a good thing. Roland makes good gear.

The other thing to consider: MODX has better guitars, brass and strings than anything available in this kind of pricing.

I accept this.

But back to FM-X... this engine is an absolute monster of capability.

Some things are interesting in theory, but in practice everything turns out differently.
When I bought MODX I was very happy that I would have FM synthesis but in reality it was not so rosy. It all depends on the goals. Some like texture search. I'm closer to the sounds of real music that I usually hear around. If the texture sounds musical I take it. If these are just fancy algorithms, you can just talk about it. Something like this
Thank you for links, I'll to look this.

🙂

[quotePost id=117475]I think if you find gear you love - your music will benefit. So however that works out is a good thing. Roland makes good gear.[/quotePost]

I am still in the same boat with Yamaha and I would like to wish them prosperity.

🙂

There is something negative to say about Roland's timbres in summary. The Roland sound is kind of aggressive. It is closer to rock music. I compare the lead category by ear and they are too bzz. A lot of guitar overtones of rattling and clanging.
I like the soft dance sounds of the Yamaha.