A drum part can play 30 Waveforms.

You can add portamento. It's not velocity sensitive. Either always on - or selectively on depending on legato (connected) playing or non-legato playing.

Note that a "Waveform" in Yamaha-speak is actually a multisample in and of itself. A Waveform can contain a number of non-overlapping samples, and thus a single element may actually play different samples depending on pitch and velocity.

Each Waveform can contain 256 individual samples!
Each Element references a Waveform
Each Normal AWM2 Part can have 8 Elements.
Each Drum AWM2 Part can have 73 Elements.

Each Waveform can be a complete multi-sampled instrument - each Sample can be mapped to a Note Range (C-2 through G8) and a Velocity Range (1-127)... this mapping is referred to as a KeyBank. 256 KeyBanks to each Waveform. A maximum of two samples per KeyBank - to accommodate stereo instrument samples. So an acoustic piano is typically made from hundreds of individual samples... a single acoustic piano Element, like in the CP1 data, can contain 250 samples and be one of eight Elements in the Part... and multiple Parts can be used to recreate the entire instrument (no competing brand comes close). Nuance and detail is a Yamaha thing.

One of the Synthesis features of the MONTAGE/MODX engine is the number of Oscillators (tone sources) you can bring together to create a playable sound. The limit is 8 Oscillators (Waveforms in Yamaha AWM2-speak) per Part, and 8 Parts per playable program. That’s right, it is possible to build a 64 Oscillator (normal) instrument sound. With 64 separately programmable Filters, 64 separately programmable Amplitude Envelope generators,... mostly that’s more than you’ll need to sound at once. But you can bring in different portions of the sound at different times... by morphing to different conditions, or switching to different sets of oscillators. Sure you could layer them all but serious programming involves using the power of that many synth building blocks to widen the palette of tones available to you as a performer.

If you are tasked with covering brass for a particular song, the Brass horn sections here give you access to the full brass ensemble, the ability to articulate sforzando swells, doits, drop-offs, shakes, octave leaps, etc., etc. all from the one Performance.

Study how changing play conditions (Assign Switches, Ribbon, Aftertouch, MW, Super Knob, Velocity, etc.) allows for more articulations to be available... you can customize when (under what specific circumstances) each Element sounds. Making playing this synth a compelling experience.

Portamento is not assigned at the Waveform/Element level of the architecture.
A Part can be set to Portamento - it can be “fulltime” or “fingered”. Fulltime creates Portamento as the name implies, all the time; while “fingered” will Portamento only when you play with a legato fingering.
Alternatively, you can use a Foot Switch = cc65 to turn Portamento On/Off
Portamento a Time is real-time adjustable, as well
Portamento parameters are found in Part Edit > “Part Settings” > “Pitch”

All Elements of a Part will Portamento together, each Part can have its own independent settings and will behave independently.
Only Normal (non-drum Kit) Parts exhibit Portamento.

🙂
A BIG BIG Thank you for all who responded. Especially BAD Mister who elaborated it in such great detail. Really appreciate it man.

I have opened another thread on Indian Tones ..

Each Waveform can contain 256 individual samples!
Each Element references a Waveform
Each Normal AWM2 Part can have 8 Elements.
Each Drum AWM2 Part can have 73 Elements.

Each Waveform can be a complete multi-sampled instrument - each Sample can be mapped to a Note Range (C-2 through G8) and a Velocity Range (1-127)... this mapping is referred to as a KeyBank. 256 KeyBanks to each Waveform. A maximum of two samples per KeyBank - to accommodate stereo instrument samples. So an acoustic piano is typically made from hundreds of individual samples... a single acoustic piano Element, like in the CP1 data, can contain 250 samples and be one of eight Elements in the Part... and multiple Parts can be used to recreate the entire instrument (no competing brand comes close).

Hmmm. No doubt, Yamaha does great in this department, but I'm not sure "no competing brand comes close" when it comes to this (how much sample data can be associated with a given sound). The Kurzweil architecture is pretty extensive. A single Program (equivalent to a Yamaha Part or what used to be a Voice) can have up to 32 Layers (which I believe correspond to Elements), each with a Keymap of up to 128 samples. That seems pretty competitive. At least on the surface, each architecture seems to have some possible advantages over the other.

But I'm brand-agnostic... Yamaha, Kurzweil, Korg, Roland, Nord, all have some fantastic sounds!