Thank you Per for sharing your work 😉

You are welcome, Joel. I also appreciate your sharing of knowledge and work. 🙂

this is great, thank you so much!

Late to the party but I also thank you!

I really wonder why this doesn't have more comments, because this is awesome!
it does have almost 500 views though. probably many downloads but only 3 thank yous.
I used your sets on the XS, its great to use them on the Montage, they still sound beautiful.

Hello Pel - can't think how I missed this, I am always interested in what others can do. Generous isn't the word for your gifts, so thank you very much - I have downloaded them and will load them up as soon as I can. Wish I had more Montage time!

Like Eyal, I am also surprised this offer hasn't produced a storm of appreciation. It should have, I'd have thought ...

Thanks for sharing!

Hello Per - I'm working my way through your soundsets (as Libraries) and I must say the work you've done is admirable - you must have spent months at it! A question though - the downloads were very quick, and I wondered if the waveforms came with them, or whether they are all derived from Montage presets? ie: the waveforms are not transmitted, so the recipient must have a Montage to be able to hear them. I am also interested in how you manage to compress several Parts into just one - is that a matter of using elements as Parts, or is there a technique involved - if so, would you share it? Most of my efforts are centred around 4 Parts, and it may be useful to be able to compress them into one. Thanks again - a lot of nice stuff ...

The sounds were initially conceived on the XS voice mode.
the Montage has no voice mode, but all the waveforms of the XS, which were retained on the XF and later in the Montage. that's why it sounds great.

in voice mode you could utilize numerous waveforms at the same time, and afterwards you could make a performance out of a 4 voices. many performances on the Montage actually use a single voice in each of the performance parts, which makes a problem - because you can't do the equivalent of the XF performance mode -

if a Montage performance has more than a few parts, you won't be able to load 4 "voices" into a single "performance" on the Montage in the same way that was possible on the XF. I wish this could be fixed.

Each Montage PART (AWM2) has 8 elements (waveforms) which is equivalent to Motif's Voice structure which supports 8 elements (waveforms). The only thing you "lose" with Montage is a way to organize user voices as building blocks you can recall as atomic units. But otherwise I'm not sure I follow how Montage is limited vs. Motif in terms of the end result number of waveforms/oscillators per performance.

In fact, Motif XF's performance structure allowed for 4 voices per performance. Montage allows for 8 PARTs ("equivalent" to Motif voice) in a performance that are under direct local keyboard control. So this ends up being two Motif XFs in terms of number of simultaneous elements.

If a Montage preset already has 4 PARTs used - then this is like starting with a Motif XF performance that uses all 4 Voices. In Motif - with an equivalent performance - you'd be stuck having to throw something out if you wanted to add elements. With Montage - you can load a full 4 more "voices" (PARTs) on top of a Motif XF "fully stuffed" performance.

With simplicity (one mode) all I see is that you lose some convenience of voice mode. Whereby you could save your own more atomic building-blocks for integration into a performance (saving user voices). The work-around is to use performance merge and perhaps save off single-PART building blocks in the user area as "voice" equivalents and use merge as a method of treating these single-PART performances as "voices". So you really do arrive at a workflow that seems no different than the capabilities of the Motif XF paradigm other than naming convention with an additional bonus of having twice the "voices" (PARTs) per performance.

... you didn't bring this up as any form of limitation - but if I look at Montage as supporting two Motif XF structures inside of it - and I see the max memory capabilities of Motif XF is 2GB - then I start to wonder perhaps why the memory size didn't scale accordingly (beyond cost). Because each performance can now have a maximum of 2x the waveforms - seems like a reasonable fit would be to target 4GB (vs the 1.78GB - lets just call it 2GB to "round up"). Motif XF suppoted 512 user voices (4096 theoretical max waveforms - limited to 3977 actual = 97%). So if we scale the user area - including libraries - we get 640 times 9 (user + 8 library slots) worth of space to store user content. That's 640*9*8 PARTs worth of space. At any rate - the amount of raw space to save "voices" is a much larger pool than the "2x" number - but just sticking with the least common denominator of 2x, memory seems a bit starved (a bottleneck) vs the other specifications which have increased over Motif. So it's a bit like doubling the Motif XF but only loading (less than) half the expansion board for each instance. The lack of user upgrade of the memory in Montage doesn't provide any option to fully utilize your two Motif XFs (inside Montage) in terms of memory expansion.

Let me know if there's a specific limitation I'm overlooking.

Thank you Gabi, Larry, Eyal, Rod and Geoff for your support.

Jason wrote:

Each Montage PART (AWM2) has 8 elements ...

Let me know if there's a specific limitation I'm overlooking.

It is true that the Montage is significantly expanded in terms of memory relative to Motif XS and XF, and also with regard to new functionality. But at the same time, important functionality has been cut away - functionality that was in the Motif, and functionality which I lack to the extent when I work with sound creation at the Montage. It's about all the possibilities that were in Voice Job mode. Here, it was possible to copy an element's data from another voice (- in Montage thermonology from another performance part), thus adding a new sound to a voice. This feature I have been used over and over again on my XS, but on the Montage this is not possible - it is only possible to add a new part to a performance, either from a preset, library or user performance. So here the functionality has moved up one level.

Another significant functionality limitation in the Montage is the ability to customize a parts sound relative to the other sounds of a performance. This has happened with the omission of a parts common EG settings - AEG adjustment (Attack, Decay, Sustain and Release), FEG adjustment (Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release, and Dept) and Filter settings (Cutoff and Reso). In Motif, these settings were both possible in Voice mode and in Performance mode, but in the Montage this option has been removed and this significantly reduces the ability to achieve a good sound result when different soundparts are connected - here you need to go down to the individual elements to adjust. And it's too difficult - it should be done better!

Honestly, I'm thrilled the effects on each part don't affect one another. I had a Roland Juno Stage for years and I was constantly having to rule out certain patch combinations I used in splits because you don't want a piano to share, say, the same distortion level as an organ. Yes, you could assign which patch's effects were used, but it was still universal across the whole performance.

Per - I've mentioned the tradeoff of flexibility before as a consequence of transitioning from Voice+Performance to Performance (no voice) -- so I'm with you on this one. Like you, I was perfectly OK with a structure where I could make Voices - then assemble voices with the ability to offset parameters of the voice within a performance. This allowed a different style of re-use in the past architecture.

That said - you can actually do something very close to the previous Voice+Performance paradigm by leveraging the Mod/Control offsets. Generically - what was previously given to us as a "Performance" offset to a "Voice" structure is available today in Montage as a Source+Destination pair. Before, the "Source" was the Performance-level offset to the voice parameter. Now we can assign a source as a controller and offset parameters. In the case of AEG, for example, you could assign the source as something that is not going to move (like AssSw1 - if not using that, or an envelope to a PART that is not used such as EnvFollow 16). Then you can setup your AEG more easily since, under the destination for this parameter, all elements can be turned "on" and affected at the same time.

The limitation - if you're going to use Mod/Control as a replacement for the Voice+Performance style offsets is that you are limited to only 16 destinations. So you can run out quick if using the system in this manner. But it is a possibility.

When/if a PC-based editor is available, it would be possible to add a feature where you could scale all elements' envelopes in concert. The problem is not necessarily what you can (or cannot) do with assigning parameters -- but how this is accomplished (and how easy/difficult it is). Although not as convenient as an on-board mechanism - a PC-based editor with enhanced controls would go a long way to bridging the gap. I do not see memory space (in terms of slots = 640) as a major issue.

It is interesting how flattening the architecture - a move meant to simplify things - has actually just "pushed the bubble" and made some things harder and some things easier.

I think performance merge provides an OK mechanism to re-use single-PART performances (equivalent of Motif XF voice) as if combining voices. The ability to organize similar to Motif XF is still there - just differently termed and differently managed. And at some point you do run into the brick wall - where the differences lead to situations where one keyboard can do something the other can't. But - up to some limit - the two have equivalent structures. Certainly if willing to one-one-by (each performance) go "deep" into the settings - Montage allows for covering all the bases. Which is where (cross my fingers) currently vapor-ware software comes in to make programming easier in terms of re-use.

Thanks a lot 🙂
A bit offtopic, i succesfully loaded the libraries onto my montage, and thought merging all electric pianos into one library to reduce have more library slots available but this task proved to be more than i can handle. I encountered this situation some time ago with another sound libraries.
The ''import to user'' feature in the Montage has only ''Name'' and ''Date'' available and it's time consuming to go through all 1152 performances to import only the electric pianos. Basically, i'd have to write down all the electric piano names and search them by name or date. Maybe in the update....10.0 they'll add this option.

Ideally, the import to user screen could have a similar layout like in the category search screen, the performances being sorted by category, 4/4 layout, same sorting options (default, name,date) etc. or more ideally, as many users requested, the abilty to import to user directly from the category search screen.

Until the update ( LOL ) could you please make a library file with all the electric pianos from the all 3 libraries? Thanks a lot.