Please review the official announcement: https://www.yamahasynth.com/blog/namm-2018-introducing-samplerobot-for-montage

The key line is this:

SampleRobot Pro MONTAGE Edition will be available in April, 2018

Considering we're not yet into April -- and that April 30th would still fulfill the availability statement above - it's too early to complain that Sample Robot is not meeting expectations (at least as announced).

Yes, it took a long time to get a solution to sampling as part of an integrated system for Montage. There wasn't even a rumor until fairly recently. However, this does not demonstrate a lack of support. As you've pointed out, customers have the privilege of direct access to an ACTIVE (I would say very active - not "occasional" - but your opinion is valued - I just have a different one) Yamaha employee. Not only that - but there is a more "occasional input" Yamaha employee - Blake - who chimes in with very valuable information here. Not only do we have this wealth of information, but the frequency and scope of firmware releases also demonstrates (to me) a high level of support for the product. Not every "wish" gets integrated - but many have. The day-1 Montage does much less than today's Montage. This includes new effects, new sampled content, new free libraries, new conversion, new workflows, new ... the list goes on (see the "New Features" document for an ALMOST complete list - as some features were not included in the document and are mentioned in the Music Production Guide or tutorials).

Any organization could always do better. Hope your needs are met soon (within about a month) with respect to Sample Robot. A tool like this may spawn more sound libraries than the several which are already available. There is even at-cost user content which is starting to present itself (even without SR).

More information about Sample Robot can be found on their website: http://www.samplerobot.com/

The features are not going to stray far from other versions: http://www.samplerobot.com/funktionalitaet.htm
... except to have format export support for formats that can be imported (loaded) into Montage. Note: this 2nd link you're going to have to "cut/paste" rather than click on since there's some issue getting the link to work.

Drew wrote:
Since so few sounds developers are working on the Montage

We will have heard everything !!!!

"So few" represents this partial list:

Moved list to its own thread (to include XF/XS): https://yamahasynth.com/forum/resource-list-of-montage-sound-libraries-including-xf-xs

[...]

Then there are the hundreds available for Motif XS, Motif XF, and MOXF which have recently enjoyed some level of enhanced compatibility with Montage. This is not exactly support directly from sound library producers, but backwards-compatibility work which has recently come to somewhat of a workable "stopping point".

That said - the wider context of "so few" was compared to another keyboard. I do not have the statistics for that other keyboard (not active in that world) -- so I can take it on face value that there may be more sets available. The clearing house for their sound libraries shows, within the 1st 3 categories, 107 sound libraries. There are 10 more categories to go through -- so it is true that there are many more represented for a keyboard that was release 5 years prior to the Montage. Be sure to factor in the "head start" when evaluating as it's a bit unfair to expect parity given the difference in first availability dates of the two platforms.

Even so, the Montage could end up with 300x more sound libraries than its competition and this would be meaningless unless there was content which was useful to you. Although an interesting indicator - the "real deal" is if the instrument with its presets, libraries (as they exist today), and programmability (sounds you create, if elect to do this) can fit your musical needs. If the instrument cannot satisfy these needs - then hopefully there is one that does a better job.

Gentlemen.
writing this on the fly...sorry if a bit long and ambiguous..
Thank you for your replies and info. Firstly, I apologize if this was taken as an affront to this media source and its contributors. This was not an attack on Yamaha or the staff and especially not on the Montage (which I sold my Kronos 2 to buy). It was a mostly unanswered urgent inquiry regarding the development of the Montage third party software and any latest buzz regarding the development of Sample Robot for Montage. I mentioned the release date in my first sentence.
Has anyone used Sample Robot in the past was my second question regarding this product. I could copy paste quotes from my posts but honestly don't have time. Working on conversion for two other acts I work with now and my head is spinning. 
This was a plea (my third on this forum, never mind other sites, with no replies) for some of which "Jason" just supplied me in this post. I love this keyboard and want to use it to its fullest. I was looking for ways around its limitations at this point. NOW, I just learned that SR is supposed to convert from softsynth sample libraries as well as analogue signals. If true, this could be my non-vibrato short attack acoustic instrument solution, but I cannot find much to offer regarding this with what is to be expected except the NAMM clips. Any input would be appreciated.

Specifically, I will say my request (I'm not alone) for non-vibrato and short attack solo acoustic instruments, (strings, woodwinds. brass and such) are very limited and that my request is specific in that sense. The sounds are great but the vast majority have vibrato. If you can direct me to a specific 3rd party source that can supply these, three other heavily working keyboard players and myself would be most appreciative…one of them tetering on selling his Kronos for the Montage at this moment.
My reference to the Kronos sound development and such is that they are literally in your face with new developments, third party software and such. Bombarded with 3rd party sound developers and Korg emails with vids, I've been deleting so many since selling the Kronos last week. This isn’t happening with the Montage. Motif development was through the roof. This board deserves more attention was my point.

Side note: my fellow players and I have more than not gotten the wrong model Kronos on the road in other city rentals, weighted 73 in(Kronos 1, Kronos X, etc in lieu of the semi 61. After inquiries, I do not have any problems in major cities with the Montage thus far. Many rentals stock them. There’s only one which eliminates screwups. Got my first rental last week, upgraded to 2.0 on the fly, loaded my sets and was playing in no time. Live editing for last minute mods to the shows were a breeze. This is good to know for national live players.

So, again, with no mal-intent, my apologies if my requests were misinterpreted in a negative light. Just trying to make this well-designed board work in my favor as quickly as possible.
I hope soon to be a contributor to help with under-the-gun newbies like me in time.
cheers.

I cannot speak how well Sample Robot does its job, but the videos I watched show the general process of sampling another keyboard's sounds to generate content. If you hang on to your Kronos (or otherwise still have access to one through rental or other means) and prefer any of the sound libraries you currently have - then you can use Sample Robot to automate sampling of this library for your own use within Montage. Sample Robot will automate playing each note (or how ever many you program it to play) on your keyboard and will sample in what the keyboard plays then automatically "figure out" the loop points and generate content for Montage. My assumption is that the Montage version will produce an X7L file although Motif format would also work as an output which could be read by Montage. This is where Sample Robot's capabilities would deviate from the existing versions (in file export and import).

This is one of the workflow examples using Sample Robot. Since it will export formats which hold Yamaha Waveforms - you need not have a hardware keyboard to "sample in" data - but could start with files and do your own key mapping - or use file formats which already hold key mapping data.

http://www.samplerobot.de/Shop/SampleRobot_Import_and_Export_Formats.pdf

SF2 allows for velocity and key mapping
SFZ allows for velocity, key mapping,
SND (Wusikstation format) should have similar capabilities as SFZ

The information is a little confusing, but I am assuming the line:

Format details: same as Import

... means that each of the listed exports can be used as imports as well. This may not be true - I haven't found documentation or a video that supports this. And as far as I can tell from the PDF linked below - these are export-only formats.

It's possible you need to import by WAV and do your own key mapping. Key mapping can be "grabbed" by the filename - so naming your WAV files according to sample standards will help move this process along.

Sample Robot does not have a demo version that I can find. Wave robot does - but that's a different product.

"Skylife" is where you get the demo content: http://shop.samplerobot.de/index.php?language=en

At one point, there was a demo version (1.3.2) back in 2005. https://www.kvraudio.com/news/samplerobot-v1-3-2-demo-now-available-3789

The release notes mention demo versions all the way up to 4.25: "New SampleRobot Multi-X Demo cross-platform RELEASE"

There's an operation manual which may give more information - I haven't reviewed it much: http://www.samplerobot.de/manuals/SampleRobot_4_Operation_Manual.pdf

I did find a 4.5 Pro demo version:

https://web.archive.org/web/20150424214657/http://www.samplerobot.com/demo/SampleRobot%204.5%20Pro%20Demo.zip

... so you can play with a circa 2015 version with demo-version limitations.

Jason wrote:

"So few" represents this partial list:

Thank you so much for providing the list!

Great resource and lots of sounds to check out. 🙂

http://www.samplerobot.com

FYI - Now the Sample Robot April release date for Montage is pushed back to May...

That a bummer

Approaching to 10-day countdown assuming 1st week in July holds.

Source: https://twitter.com/SampleRobot/status/1008590319825444864

We're planning the release in the first week of July. We'll post the download link as soon as #SampleRobot Montage is available.

The mid-August date is approaching. Update from Samplerobot website:

Final polishing of #SampleRobot Montage is almost done. This is the new splash screen. @YamahaSynthsEU @YamahaMusicUSA