Although I can agree that the buttons on the right side of the keyboard appear to be less - I think the "loss of buttons" reaction may be overstated. There are new buttons and lots of them. The function of these new buttons is not entirely known. However, I think with the new screens new knobs and new buttons that we have a control surface more flexible than Montage classic. That's speculative -- we'll see soon enough.

It's too early to call and you do see in the video complaints that are taken back after finding buttons have changed shape and location rather than going away completely. This is one example, but the information is just too limited to make a call on what is or is not missing.

The function of these new buttons is not entirely known.

Any guess about the SHOW VALUE button?

I do hope show value was the ideascale I submitted where you hit a button and parameters show real-time offset values. But who knows. Navigation button is a mystery. Others don't have clear labels so more mysteries. Not known if any or all of the knobs can be pushed. I wished for this as a way to increase the control flexibility without losing space.

I counted about 20 more buttons overall in the M vs. classic.

I heard the Fantom is coming out with a big OS update about the same time as Montage M drops. I just sold my Fantom so I won't be able to try it out. Probably no coincidence either, Roland is prepared to compete even with current gear.

That's the rumor along with expansion packs.

I wish they'd make a Fantom desktop module without keys. I just didn't need another big synth taking up more space.

I used to dream for more voices like on the stage boards. Fantom had thousands and then kept adding more many like super articulation and all types of variety far beyond Yamaha. Many were like Genos level voices. The only problem is that there were so many hundreds upon hundreds I spent more time searching than playing. It's a perfect example of way too much of a good thing. What could they possibly add to the Fantom they don't already have?

I've moved beyond thousands of voices to Osmose and true analog type stuff and other types that are MPE compatible. Millions of sampled voices is just not that interesting anymore unless you can express them like a guitar. I think the world has heard everything sampled on earth or at least enough. Funny that the most famous songs in the world had nothing but one bass, a drum kit, a guitar or two, maybe keys and a vocal and that's all that was needed 90% of the time.

Hi David. Agreed regarding..."Funny that the most famous songs in the world...
On another note, Don't expect too much from Yamaha's Mx. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that their using the same screen.
Program editing has always been poor, as well the entire system. Yamaha is very slow to do anything really different.

Yeah I agree Phil, the screen looks to be the same identical size and they added a second screen with buttons around it. I doubt they changed how to adjust settings/engine format from the original Montage too much via the screen. I don't think we'll see a Fantom-like synth from Yamaha until they are done with the Montage series... Likely with a full new replacement (Yamaha Mosaic) model. That's just my best guess though...

One of the new buttons appears to be a second [SHIFT] button in the left hand (there's one in the right hand too). The benefit of this is that you can now one-hand store scenes or, more importantly, one-hand check and correct transpose (which I believe is a shift function of octave -- or the other way around). I would have preferred to have these split out so you could just look up and see if the instrument was either octave shifted or transposed without hitting any buttons - but this is a close second as an improvement. I'm guessing this is why the scene buttons are grouped together in a fairly tight grid -- for proximity to the nearby [SHIFT] button.

I guess it's worth saying that these days it's easier to fake even plausible stuff. So all of this analysis is based on an assumption that the pictures are representative. Time will tell.

If the pictures are fake, then someone did an outstanding job coming up with a new design, changing buttons, re-labelling them, adding a new screen, and making it look real. 😉

Yeah, I'm not trying to cast doubt - but it's true that you don't know until there's more information from Yamaha. The product names is all we have from Yamaha thus far.

I'm half way hopeful it's real and probably equally hopeful that it's an early enough prototype that some things may have changed in the production version.

That said, we've been fooled before - so I'm not too invested.

Im sure hardly any of the feature requests we put in for the Montage on Ideascale make it into the new Montage X. From what I can see the surface changes were never suggested by any user on this forum at any time. I wouldn't get too excited about this new Montage otherwise you will be let down when it arrives.

[quotePost id=122977]Im sure hardly any of the feature requests we put in for the Montage on Ideascale make it into the new Montage X. From what I can see the surface changes were never suggested by any user on this forum at any time. I wouldn't get too excited about this new Montage otherwise you will be let down when it arrives. [/quotePost]
A lot of very stupid statements in this thread, but this one takes the crown (for now).

[quotePost id=122977]Im sure hardly any of the feature requests we put in for the Montage on Ideascale make it into the new Montage X. From what I can see the surface changes were never suggested by any user on this forum at any time. I wouldn't get too excited about this new Montage otherwise you will be let down when it arrives. [/quotePost]
I was kinda thinking just the opposite. Of all the great ideas that were added in Ideascale for the original Montage, it would be just our luck that they add some of the good ones into the new Montage M and we never see them implemented on the Montage.
Regarding surface changes, it appears that they are trying to move/group the buttons around for better ease of use, functionality, clean it up/less complex and make programming/editing more logical & a better workflow, instead of having all the additional buttons on the right side serving numerous multiple purposes. I also think that if they added an AN-X engine, having the new screen and buttons on the top left will be pivotal in programming/editing sounds for that engine. Maybe that screen will also make FM-X programming more logical and clear when adjusting sounds..!?

It's anyone's guess whether the pics are the final product or just an earlier prototype. Either way, I think it's safe to say that the new Montage M will not have the same layout as the original Montage...
We'll know soon enough, but for now it's just fun to speculate and guess based on the puzzle pieces they have leaked..! 😉

If the photos are representative, then I can already see ideascale requests being implemented. Maybe not directly - maybe Yamaha didn't need an ideascale to improve a feature and internally already planned on the next gen to improve a feature that happens to match an ideascale.

Most of what has been requested would not be apparent from the control surface - which is about all we can glean. The photo with 3 keyboards has them turned on so you can see the new left-hand screens with "stuff" and can see with the algorithm on the screen - someone said they see a waveform in the bottom picture - too blurry for me but waveforms are sometimes used for sound design (FM or Analog) to dial in a particular shape and also for sampling to. The turned on touchscreens have what (blurry) looks like set list or category search. So not many clues there.

So most of what has been requested would be what it does from a GUI perspective including new engines, features, etc. Hardly any of this is apparent from the pictures.

Although I think there are more buttons near the mod wheel so maybe there's an expansion of XA beyond ASSIGN1&2 (Genos/Tyros super articulation I'm looking at you). That's pretty wild speculation - there's nothing really to even remotely confirm this.

On the left hand side I only see two knobs. The top one is master volume. The one right under it could be either A/D input gain (like today) or USB volume (like MODX has without having to menu-dive in Montage for this). I'm assuming this is A/D input and USB volume doesn't have a knob just like the last. I always thought this was a great feature introduced by MODX (USB volume knob).

There looks to be sort of a line from two LEDs just to the left of the sliders (in the all-the-way down position - there at the bottom). This is tending to indicate to me that the sliders (probably knobs too) can be switched from Parts 1-8 to Parts 9-16. If this is a case then it's a big deal since currently you cannot switch the sliders to 9-16 without also SELECTING a Part 9-16. It just can't be done. So if you had something you want to do to change a level or assignable knob/parameter in 9-16 you HAD to use superknob or the common assignable knobs to target 9-16. Otherwise, selecting the Part 9-16 would cut off the keys from controlling Parts 1-8 with keyboard control turned on. So, if this conjecture is true then this would be a pretty major thing for sound shaping in live performance.

If I looked more at this, I could probably come up with more things that match ideascale suggestions.