I started it, but it seems like it is a data collection exercise rather than any altruistic attempt for owners to add input for future design, I gave it up half way through!

We hear you - but every little bit helps.

I started it, but it seems like it is a data collection exercise rather than any altruistic attempt for owners to add input for future design, I gave it up half way through!

Probably on the mark. But at least it is multiple choice and only takes a few minutes.

And, you never know, sometimes the numbers could tilt the scales in the right direction.

The IdeaScale site if the official Yamaha site for users to submit suggestions for new products or enhancements for existing products.

https://yamahasynth.ideascale.com/c/yamahasynth

Ben Israel, of Yamaha, reviews those submissions every week and often changes their status from 'Ideate' (original submission) to 'Assessment' for the dev team to consider.

The submissions are pretty much one-way. You will seldom receive any reply/response about what is happening with your ideas.

The more specific your idea is the more likely it will get serious consideration. Asking for a 'better bass sound' is too generic since there is no way to know what is being ask for. But something like 'the korg model abc has a bass sound called xyz. Please add one to the Modx M' allows someone to actually listen to the korg to hear what sound it is you are looking for.

Review the ideas already submitted for your instrument and vote for them. The more people that 'vote' for a given idea the more likely it will get attention and be taken seriously. 

It probably won't surprise you to know you will need to create an account first. And this one requires a two-step process. After you sign up you will see a screen where you need to enter a confirmation code. You need to leave that screen up while you check your email to get a code they send you. Then you have 5 minutes or so to enter that code into the other window.

The good news is you can save those credentials on your pc so you don't need to enter them next time.

It's reasonable feedback that the survey shoots itself in the foot if (some) folks who take the time to start it won't finish it because there's too many off-topic questions.  As subjectively surmised by the survey taker.

Not straying too far from questions that have a clear connection with future ESP or synth development may benefit the valid survey response count.  Or maybe better explaining what the tie-in to development is ... When there can be doubt.  It's not difficult to pick out the questions that are the weaker ones that likely fire off alarms for Dennis and like minded other surveyed/potential respondent.

It's all good feedback.  And nice of Dennis to spend the time to relay constructive critique.

Ditto. I am also someone who started, but gave up part way through.

I can't even say "half way" through because, IIRC, unless I missed something, there's no progress indicator to let you know how far into the process you are. But it passed my threshold of "this is ridiculous, I'm not doing this anymore." If I knew there were just a few more questions, I guess I would have kept going. But for all I knew, there could have been 50 more questions, and I was already irritated. I actually had no confidence I was ever even going to get to any question relevant to actually providing any kind of product feedback. (I'd be curious to know, if anyone here actually completed it, to what extent you felt it ultimately did allow you to provide useful feedback.)

It's kind of interesting it came out of Yamaha Japan, though. That may kind of make its off-putting approach more understandable. Some of YJ's interface design, terminology, manual writing, etc. has indicated a possible cultural divide, i.e. that the people in charge of this stuff don't really understand how our English-speaking brains work!

This conversation also made me think of this...

That's pretty common in most surveys - they seldom provide a "don't care to answer" or "no opinion" choice. The Yamaha survey lacks that as well but at least most of their choices are fairly benign.

The survey wasn't that long so if it helps it helps and if it doesn't then at least it won't hurt anything.

But they could have added a 'Other comments' text area at the end so people could at least mention things like the poor documentation.

There's a couple questions where they ask for anything at all you want out of the future MODX M/Montage M systems.  Both OS related and non OS related.   If I didn't know about the second question I would have put everything into the first - but you had two chances to free form put anything you like in there.

The bottom of the survey has a completion bar (to judge percent complete) but no count of questions.  Depending on your answers there's at least one spot where you get more (or less) questions.

I wouldn't say it's a short survey.   It's 52 questions when you tell it you have both a MODX M and Montage M.  Only a few less if you don't. 

I did answer everything.  If this is the same survey that was advertised previously in Ideascale.  Seems like the same survey.

Not having any M, I may have had a shorter survey.

In the second half they break down a lot of components (data dial, scene buttons, ... A list that takes up 2 screens when I have the zoom set to 50%.  Each "thing" they have you rate on a scale.  So it's probably one of the "meat" questions to prioritize what they drop in the future or what they keep.

It's kind of annoying that there wasn't a "back" button.  And something this long I think it would help if you could jump around.  Like an outline where you could go to a section and see if it's worth it or not to fill out the rest.  I don't know.  The survey could certainly have been more friendly.  Takes dedication to get to the end.

Posted by: Pete

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That's pretty common in most surveys - they seldom provide a "don't care to answer" or "no opinion" choice. The Yamaha survey lacks that as well

Well that wasn't supposed to be the message of that cartoon, but yes, there should be such options. 🙂

I gave it another shot, I still didn't bother finishing it.

Posted by: Jason

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The bottom of the survey has a completion bar (to judge percent complete) but no count of questions.  Depending on your answers there's at least one spot where you get more (or less) questions.

I don't remember if I noticed that the first time, but yes, I noted the completion bar... but I think it still doesn't tell you much about how much further you need to go. One page I got to had 13 separate questions to answer, and another had 27 (which is where I stopped). I"m not sure the bar takes that into account. Regardless, it's a lot... and picking up from what Pete said, times where no answer seemed accurate for me (or accounted for different possible scenarios... that's somewhat understandable... but I do buy boards for different reasons, which can make different features important to me).

I won't go into much detail here, but some oddities that stuck out to me...

They ask how important "Category Search/Audition" is. Well, category search navigation is of highest importance, but audition is of lowest. So how should I answer that one?

All the features to rank are listed using Yamaha jargon. How can you give a fair appraisal of how important you would find something if you don't know what it is? For example, it asks how important ABS is... since I have no idea what it is (I assume it's not antilock braking), how should I answer that one? So okay, if I don't even know what it is, maybe I should figure it's probably not very important. But then someone might think analog synthesizer emulation is very important, but not realize that AN-X is Yamaha's name for it. So with that kind of thinking, Yamaha is not going to necessarily get the "correct" answer from someone on that one. And so on.

There were multiple references to the importance of "design." Well, what exactly do they mean by that? e.g. are they talking about aesthetics, or about ergonomics? You might get a different answer depending on how someone interprets that one.

There were questions about what sounds are important. I don't find drum sounds very important, but I do place some importance on having drum patterns, which necessitates having drum sounds, so I rated them more highly on that basis. If I had known that the next page would let me specify that rhythm patterns are a somewhat important feature, then I wouldn't have had to rate the sounds as highly... but as mentioned, you can't go back. (And for some reason "sequences" is a sound category? The definition of "sounds" as opposed to functionality on that page is a bit blurry to begin with!)

Just in general, it's irritating that you MUST answer questions to proceed AND you can't go back. If I could scan the rest of the survey, and then go back and fill out anything I had skipped, I'd also have been more likely to decide to keep going, depending on what I saw.

There's more, but that's enough. 

Personally, I think this would have been a more enticing survey (and I think ultimately maybe more useful to them?) if, instead of focussing on what existing features you cared about, they selected a bunch of the more feasible ideascale suggestions, and tried to get feedback on them from a larger population of users. (I don't suppose they go in that direction on the later pages?)

Yeah, the survey software (engine+content) is second rate which is kind of a repeating theme (beyond surveys).

There's a design disconnect in consideration of the most important component of Yamaha gear: the user.  This probably doesn't land well but intentions don't drive results.  It's good that they're giving user feedback some weight (priority) but some systemic flaws are putting the finger on the scales to ensure Yamaha's biases are confirmed rather than being open to true collaboration with current and potential end users. 

This survey could have used a couple knowledgeable folks not afraid to criticize run through the survey and give feedback before going live.  Whoever was tasked to do this was too close to the project to notice the flaws.  That said: the lack of a back button was noticed by a blind man.

I only say this stuff because I want Yamaha to succeed and they don't seem to know what to fix without objective constructive feedback.

Audio Beat Sync - ABS. See p.369 of the Modx M doc - it's under 'MIDI Sync'

https://faq.yamaha.com/usa/s/article/U0009059

Maybe the 'documentation' team wrote the survey?

Common sense would suggest that you need to make it easy for people to answer the things they want to answer. Yamaha could easily ignore unmarked answers without losing the value of the marked answers.

Still - not sure adding a 'Survey Suggestions' category to IdeaScale would be of much value to them.

I had to look up ABS when I took the survey and resolved the best sync answer but I shouldn't have had to.  The surveyee shouldn't need to know jargon to answer.  Anything not in common knowledge should have enough plain/basic information to answer without a glossary, thesaurus, manual, music theory reference, engineering prowress, etc.   If there's an assumption of what background one should have to answer then this is very alienating.

And ABS is the kind of thing that would be valuable to learn who's syncing tempo to external audio and how that's working out or who really relies on it.

Ironic that one of the few times they get the terminology right is when they don't really explain the terminology to begin with.

The Modx and Montage docs don't mention ABS but the Montage M and Modx M docs do. So prior users wouldn't have any idea what it means.

MIDI Sync

Sets the parameters related to synchronization to the connected external device.
Select Internal for using the internal clock of this instrument, MIDI for using the external MIDI
clock of the DAW software on the computer or the external MIDI device, or A/D In (ABS) for
using the audio signal input from the A/D INPUT jacks, for playing back the Arpeggios, Motion
Sequencer, and Songs.
Settings: Internal, MIDI, A/D In (ABS)
Internal: Synchronizes to the internal clock. For using this instrument by itself or as
the primary clock source for other devices.
MIDI: Synchronizes to the MIDI clock received from the external MIDI device. For
using the external device as the primary clock source.
A/D In: Synchronizes to the tempo of the audio signal input from the A/D INPUT
jacks.

Hi folks.

I originally posted the following as a comment on
removed link

But this video is more than 7 months old, and on top not by Blake (but by Kraft Music), so Blake most likely won't see my comment.
So I post it here:

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