Low hanging is not necessarily for users to discern and all suggestions are essentially new features. Ideascale is the best forum for these as the R&D team has regular meetings to comb through the suggestions thereby giving the best probability of adoption.

If you have a wish, no matter how tall or short of an order it really ends up being - search for something similar already posted and add to that or create a new one if unique enough.

I don't see envelopes as a mess. I'd see them as more of a mess if presets had systemic glaring flaws due to envelope issues. This is a matter of opinion and everyone is entitled to their own perspective. I've been able to adjust envelopes without stumbling on my own creations. At one point I wanted precise information from official sources as to the absolute timing (or calculated) of the "time" parameters. However, those gone unanswered (due to IP or otherwise, "laughed off" as an overly technical approach to music -- whatever that means for a synth programmer) one finds another way.

There are features and improvements which are not necessarily patches to anything broken - but available options where there are none currently. I'd be happy with more options to twist and flex parameters following each note (like envelopes - a unique property of envelopes). I think there are plenty of things one could come up with that significantly changes the options around envelopes.

Agreed on all fronts.

The envelopes and LFOs and Motion Sequencer and SuperKnob and Mod Wheel and Assign Switches and Scene States and Arps as Controllers and Patterns with Controller recording.

As someone else on these forums suggests (think it was ab), the Montage was shipped unfinished.

@Bill I'll get to writing a full response to your points... thought I could do it the last couple of hours... other things have taken precedence. So will get to it in the next couple of days. You touch on a lot of the reasons I started this little list, which it might be worth laying out as a more cohesive whole. Not least because we can be sure Dragos will love more reading 😉

Had a bit of a fiddle with all the LFO and envelope systems and read up a bit on what Jason's been linking to with regards the age of these features and their origins.

Combined with my thinking that nobody is working on an update for the MODX/Montage, there's a problem from what Jason's showing...

I don't think the way the LFO and envelopes are integrated can be changed to fix the glaring (more modern than 1980's) misses and absences. Am now pretty much convinced that the only way to get anything done is to open source the OS. Which won't happen.

My cynical side now thinks it's right in believing the Motion Sequence System is a patch over remedy to the issues with LFO and envelope architecture misses in DX FM origins and AWM2. And that someone then thought "what about a Uber Mod Wheel" which became the SuperKnob - something that's become a meme in Japan - as a USP gimmick.

The way you rigged up Motion and the SuperKnob in the first couple of iterations of the OS on Montage were... bad!

It's still nowhere near good. But that first way was levels of busy work that'd make a sarariman proud.

Am also near certain that the software was outsourced, hence the lack of small, progressive updates to the many low hanging fruit opportunities to improve the user experience and add little bits of sweetenings to the things it does. I don't think there's an inhouse team totally familiar with the code such that they could progressively improve it. So if/when there's a need to add something and have a substantial update, the old outsource team is probably roped in. I don't think that's happening anymore.

This product looks to have been mothballed, and what they've learnt from it is probably being applied to and incorporated within a new range designed to create virtuous cycles of behaviour in its user base - something this product has done very poorly at despite having a significant capability at a somewhat reasonable price and 3 years without any competition.

ADD: Filters per FM-X Carrier

Nothing would be more wonderful than this, for FM-X. Especially if each is controllable by LFO 1 and 2, and the Motion Sequences.

It'd make those stray, lone carriers that are often used for subs way more wonderfully characterful and useful, especially when using Res1/2 with a bit of Resonance and Skirt. They'd become full blown little beasts in their own right.

And for multistacks, amazing! Polyrhythmic filter sweeps in a single FM-X part, etc.

// could include a bypass of the Part Filter, or if CPU is an issue, auto bypass if the Carrier Filter is used.

Move almost all Common Arp settings down into the per Arp "Scene" settings.

Add for Pattern Sequencer User Flow:

Provide a means to Loop a chained sequence of Scene/Track changes (the Pattern Sequence).

When user attempts to Copy a Part within a Performance with recorded Track content, offer to also copy the Pattern Content to the new Part along with choices of current Scene or a selection of Scenes (tracks).

Controller Assignment Deletions with Current Active Resultant Value Retention:

the ability to delete Assignments and retain the current RESULTANT value in any control assigned properties.

I'd suggest a [Shift + Delete] option should do this, so the existing functionality continues to work as is.

// excuse moment of programmery nonsense - in other words, on delete, set(), wherein it's set to what it's currently at as a result of the current position of knobs and controllers, not what it is without those mods. Aside from what you do yourself to twiddle into a desirable sound, a lot of presets have some tweaks already applied.

This way you could fiddle with all the controllers as much as you like, get the sound "just so" and then delete all Assignments with the [Shift + Delete] resultant value process, and have a "hardened" version of your new sound, with all Assignment slots free and ready to do new and more Motion orientated things.

Why?

The assignments you'll have wanted for tactile responsiveness during sound design are not necessarily what you'll ultimately want to animate and/or situated where and how you'd want to animate them, and there's not an infinite number of mod slots and controllers.

Warn when All Assigns for a Part are Used/Full
Flash the Assign Control button when a user is anywhere near looking at assigning a controller in a Part that's used all 16 possible assignments already (is "full").

It's disconcerting and troubling (as a user) to sometimes have the Assign Controller button light up, and sometimes not light up, anyways. Until you realise this is telling you that whatever is selected can be Assigned to a Controller.

To then have this user learned information flow break when a part is full, but there be no other indication that the Part's assignments are full is ridiculous. It makes the user question if the light in the button has broken, or something else has gone wrong. Instead, when a parameter that is assignable is selected, but the Part is "full", flash this button repeatedly as a warning/indicator that the Part's assignments are full.

Further, if the user does click this button whilst it's flashing, take them immediately to the Mod Assignments page, with ALL selected so they can peruse and choose if something can be deleted to free up a slot.

To that end...

ADD an easy way to see "orphaned" Assigns.

Realising that the user might want to add an Assign to a full Mod setup, it'd be great if the OS made it easy to find the least utilised connection assignment.

Eg. (and going from memory, so this might be wrong..., but makes for a good example even if only theoretically...)

CFX Stage is a Single Part Performance. It uses all 16 Assigns/Mods, so there's no easy way to add SuperKnob Control to it for something else.

But Part Assignable Knob 6 is set to Cutoff, and not otherwise accessed or used or controlled Envelope Followers, nor set or driven by Scenes, Motion Sequences or SuperKnob. This is what I consider an "orphan", for these reasons. Deleting this assignment is the least damaging to the capabilities of this sound, and therefore the first that should probably be considered to be freed up for the user to use for something else.

Showing a list of "orphaned" assigns would make it vastly easier for users to find and utilise these somewhat less integrated assigns.

Fix Motion Sequence Assignment Default Behaviour:

Motion Sequence being set as Controller, via Manual Insertion, default to 0 influence on assignment, please!

When adding a Motion Sequence as the Modulation Control Source, before the Lane is chosen and the Motion Sequence turned on, a maximum extent minus value is already being applied to the destinations, despite 0 being the midpoint of the Motion Sequence.

This breaks least surprises etc and means the user must now go and immediately activate and set the Motion Sequence just to return to how they were hearing things prior to making this assignment.

I don't know what you mean by 0 as the midpoint of a motion sequence exactly. However, the general message seems related to something I was wrestling with in 2016.

https://www.yamahasynth.com/forum/motion-sequence-quirk

I hoped that when motion seq=OFF the destination parameters of lanes would not be offset. This isn't the case. Motion seq=OFF resets the lanes and so the output of of lanes (the source controller(s) during a motion sequence) will impose whatever parameter offset is at the lane's reset position. That reset position depends on unipolar vs bipolar pulses (the part where you program how the lane operates over time). This, to me, is a primary reason to pick bipolar and unipolar within both MS lane pulses and the final control assignment curve. Picking one or the other gives you ways to handle the reset condition.

I still don't like the choice of how this works. I wished (and this was before ideascale) that there was a mux function when motion sequence was off (globally, or Part level) that would remove the influence of MS Lane offsets. However, since "uncovering" the behavior for myself - I've just lived with how it works and programmed around it.

Still (if not related), I may not quite understand the totality of your motion sequence comments and maybe you can help me understand.

You got it, and identified another annoyance - that even once created and utilised, OFF is not OFF for a Motion Sequence.

This should be fixed, too.

Low hanging fruit, but would be super useful for live set performances...
Per performance Global Transpose and Tempo, within a Live Set, just like Volume

I'm loving my new MODX but there is one feature I'd love to see, and I think it would be relatively easy to add within the next firmware update.
Once you've added a performance to a Live Set, there are edit options to set "Slot Name", "Color" and "Volume", but it would be so helpful to also have the ability to set "Global Transpose" and "Tempo Override".
Sometimes, you turn up to practice or play live and the singer wants/needs a different key or you want to play the song a bit faster or slower. I know there options to note shift all parts of a performance and re-save, but this gets messy quickly and doing this for multiple key/tempo combinations is madness.

It would be great just to have these settings saved at the "per set and per performance" level so that you can run through the set list without having to also mess with adjusting on the fly that "this song must be transposed -2", "that song need to be at 106 bpm instead of 110", etc.

I'm not sure if this is the best place to request this improvement?
I tried to create an account for Ideascale, but it states that I need an "organizational email address", which isn't very helpful.Any suggestions?

Does anyone agree with my functional enhancement suggestion?

Best regards.

Improve:

MIDI Out & Through on USB whilst MIDI IN via MIDI DIN.

Improve:

Let me search by Favourites in a Library!

Just tried to search for my favourites in the Twisted Tools library so as to quickly find some examples for Bill, and was unable to do such a thing because Favourites and Libraries exist in the same Column.