From the title I thought you were talking about the Montage OS V2.0 :p

Although I can navigate through Yamaha's interface pretty well (it hasn't changed much from the Motif ES days - or even EX5 days - both of which I've owned/used before) I have still always advocated elevating the "elegance" of the interface. There are lots of things that I believe can be made more straight forward, require less interaction (less steps to get the same end result), etc. And I also believe all of these can be done without dumbing down the keyboard (losing functionality).

Although I'd love to see some inroads here - it's a fairly tall ask for the entire interface to be overhauled. What I see as a transitional step (or even a longer term change - meaning keep it this way "forever" ) would be to keep the advanced mode similar to what we have today with warts (subjective call) and all - and then add more streamlined "mode" (or shortcuts) that would require practically no documentation to find and use.

Some things certainly "need" to be revamped like the file system. It's always been one (being nice here) step behind the best practices of the time the keyboard was launched. I wish it wasn't so hard to select 10 Performances move them to a library. I say move - not create a full user backup, then delete everything except for 10, then create a library then install that library then restore the user backup, then delete 10 Performances that are now in a library slot. That's just one example - the file system has lots of steps you have to go through to do something that seems relatively easy on other devices. One could go on for days of all the filesystem related things that are less than elegant. Improving this wouldn't require two different modes - the feature would be made better for advanced and novice users alike without any loss of functionality.

All of this has been communicated already in various forms throughout the years. Certainly before the follow-on keyboard was too far along in development to make some direction changes. However, given much of this hasn't changed in decades - I am not expecting revolutionary change in the next iteration.

We'll see.

(Thanks spam filter)

I am pretty new in this "synth-bubble". I knew Yamaha as a company, which made very nice keyboards with the best sounds in comparison with others. I had an old PSR500 ... 600?... model from ca. 1990. Don't remember. Was extremly reliable! Used it over 20 years, 'til it landed somewhere in the basement, beside my first organ from 1980 😉 Because I prefer "playing" instead of "programming", I more dealt with organs. Unfortunately sounds on organs are pretty modest ... in return no polyphony-limits (theoretically).

Yamaha was also well known for their Grand Pianos. Never heard anything bad.

But those "synths" ... this MODX I have... holy moly

Those old wise men, representing Yamaha in their videos ... nostalgicly reminiscing DX-times ... in my personal memory an "epiano" and never ever a synth... huuuuuuhhhhhhh Whenever Mike Oldfield wanted to play nasty sounds, he switched off his DX, put it 2 floors down on his rack ... and used the real synth on top!

In one User-Video the man said "Yamaha has broken with its heritage ... of usability". This man had Yamaha synths before the MODX and meanwhile sold the MODX again. I fully agree with the post above.

My personal favorite maze is this "control assign" chaos. Holy cow ... what a mess. In the first times I tried to understand the way, the manual shows ... press "+", choose this and that, and "source" and ... whaaaaaaat?????????
Meanwhile I understand it a little bit. There are shorter ways ... press "control assign" ... turn a knob ... and hope that this knob is not in use already. Forgot: first hope that "control assign" is available.

For further adjustments go to the page, where "modwheel" is the preselected. Not "All"; "Modwheel"! "All" would be to much overview. "Modwheel" is better ... said the software-engineer ... or the clever engineer, who adviced the software engineer. He told him: "NO! "All" is not good!!! Too much information! No, no! Could mean "perspektive". No! We'd like to keep it obscure! Set it on "Modwheel!"
Also VERY important "uni" or "bi". I NEVER thought about it twice! I thought about this only one time! But not a second time!
Maybe because it did not function as I imagined it. What do I do instead? I toggle between them. Then I play around with the values to see, what happens. This hole procedure lasts ... 1 Minute!? Work done!
Before I understand Yamaha people's explanations, I'd rather write a doctoral thesis in quantum physics.
No, I am not stupid ... I can mathematically prove, that some adjustments there are redundant and that a value of 127 minus a value of 64 doesn't result in the value 0 😉 Perhaps in a midi-minded-musician-brain. But most likely not in the rest of the universe.

To be able to operate the MODX/Montage doesn't necesarily mean something else than that.

Where does this whole synth-bubble go?

I played grands here and there ... Bechstein, Kawai, Schimmel and also Yamaha. I am one of the worst piano players ever. But I know how they sound. My ears function pretty well.
No matter which keyboard ... Yamaha allways had the best piano sounds. The BEST!!!

In this "Synth-Bubble" ... the piano-players make big speeches!!! And they clearly influence Yamaha. There are more piano-variations inside the MODX than my brain could ever grasp. Okay ... there are also 300 "different" basedrums ... and snares ... and toms ... must be important. I don't know.

And with NONE of those sounds, those "experts" are satisfied with. The only topic is "piano sounds" ... comparisons between synth-manufactorer ... how "poor" the Yamaha piano-sounds are ... judgements about "keybeds" ... from people who don't know anything about "keybeds" ... nothing do they know! They neither ever saw a pipe-organ key, nor an expensive high quality Wersi-keybed (eOrgan). Nothing do they know about keybeds. Those "experts" think that "quality" is determined by the pounds your finger must press.
And because those reviewing and discussing experts are taken serious by Yamaha, we have such crap onboard like "key noise" and the disturbing noise of a leslie speaker, which all organ players hated. In former days, when you switched on such an organ, it was like an airplane starting at JFK Airport. And the funniest thing: the audience never heard this, because they are far away. The same procedure with a church organ. By the way the noise-sample of pipe-organ's windwerk is missing on the MODX. A serious engineering gap.

If natural born piano-players are determing which direction "electronic instruments" have to go....
If children-minded freaks wish machanical noise-samples... because it is cooooooool....
If 10.000 is more important than a proper cathegorized system, where needed things can be found in seconds and not in days and months...

If nobody focuses on important themes, I don't see a bright future for those machines. Like every bubble, their fate is to burst one day 😉

We probably needed this thread before Yamaha completed the Montage2. Not like they'd read it. Yamaha will do what Yamaha will do so I hope it's different. In all seriousness there's different (Osmose/Iridium) plus the new vintage is back (Oberheim/Deckard's) everywhere around us. What will they offer that isn't already here and is pretty awesome. Call them "affordable" but a CS80 was $20K now about $4K in modular and the Oberheim X8 module now around $3K. My Iridium was $2,200 so although these aren't cheap a regular person can now afford these dream machines. I'm suggesting more modules as we don't need 10 boards with 10 sets of keys. We need the brains not the keys. Call me/us zombies but I want "brains, brains". I am loving these modular options using (2) Osmose units to control everything in a double MPE manual. Not sure what I would ever do with the Montage2. Hope they will reveal what it is sooner than later.

There are synths that do one thing better than anything and there are synths that do a little of everything pretty well but the heart and the soul reside in the last 15% of any voice. Some synths have 2000 voices that play up to 85% max quality or authenticity but the synth that can only do one thing well can play up to 100% so that 15% additional makes all the difference in the heart and soul of that voice. Then there's the MPE Osmose that plays 115% pushing the limits even further. If you want an Oreo or a Coke or KFC you have to but that exact brand. The off brand variety pack is such a deal with so many options but none of them contain the original. We are tempted by all the bells and whistles in one container, they attempt to do everything but don't quite measure up to the original. And they also can get very confusing trying to make everything work the way you want it to. That's why I like modules the most, easy to buy, add, remove, sell and layer as many as you like without the DSP maxing out. They get as close to the original as possible. Better to have 100 authentic original voices than 10,000 85% or less voices. Both are still fun and make music, but I'm getting to the point of only wanting the best available at my age.

To get everything you want, e v e r y t h i n g, just use a DAW.

Since I met REAPER I am wondering the reasons for Montage, Fantom and the likes to exist.

Yesterday I added track #144 to my latest song, and playing them simultaneously is so
great I cannot tell you.

No digging in endless menus: click, track added. Click, instrument added. Click, delay added. Click, transposition added. Click, repetition added. Click, fixed velocity out added....Click, click click. Play. Enjoy.

There is a great, big beatiful song
shinning at the end of a simple chain.
Your song, a single click away...

And then comes AI, a great help when
making everything you might need as you go
playing.

https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=279068

Might buy whatever is released in October, but
in an effort to keep the collection alive.

????
????

Yes for building songs and speed and ease there's no reason to ever have a hardware synth. The Kronos put a computer inside a keyboard case to attempt to achieve the best of both worlds. I didn't like it. If you are on a stage you want a synth that can never fail or at least boot back in a few seconds. NO fans running either.

I'm the opposite, I hate using a computer since I use it for work endlessly, so I think the thought about hardware is that you can touch it and what? it's something intangible like it's more intimate. Something inside some of us wants to behold a machine and not software.

Same as like dating on a computer app vs dating a live person you can touch. Your computer app or AI date is perfect and easy and cheap and does anything you want and never talks back. Oh yeah baby! but then try that with a real woman and suddenly it becomes impossible and yet we still want it. The real woman has many flaws same as us and yet we deal with it. Yeah we're crazy but give me hardware so I can curse at it. It suppose we like the challenge or something. I'm a man, I like fire even though it keeps burning my fingers.

When actually making money is the objective forget the complexity and go to software and get it done fast.

[quotePost id=122669]I am pretty new in this "synth-bubble".
Those old wise men, representing Yamaha in their videos ... nostalgicly reminiscing DX-times ... in my personal memory an "epiano" and never ever a synth... huuuuuuhhhhhhh Whenever Mike Oldfield wanted to play nasty sounds, he switched off his DX, put it 2 floors down on his rack ... and used the real synth on top!
[/quotePost]
Maybe you have only watched some of the Yamaha based videos. Have you watched any of Dom Sigalas' videos and other "younger" artists who have demoed the Montage/MODX? I wouldn't consider Dom an old man, but to say that about anyone would ageism anyway. Dom programmed Preset Performances that are on the Montage/MODX and he demos many DX/FM-X and AWM2 pads & sometimes nasty "synth" sounds in numerous videos that he's done.

Perhaps this Mike Oldfield just doesn't know how to program his DX well enough for playing nasty sounds, or maybe he doesn't realize it's capable of such sounds? I think the DX is every bit a real synth as any other synth out there. I can make pretty much any analog synth sound via DX / FM-X that I want and I'm not nearly as good a DX programmer as some out there.

Here's one Performance on the Montage that I programmed from scratch using more DX/FM-X PARTs than AWM2 PARTs for the "synth" sounds.
https://soundcloud.com/dclowe/montage-justin-bieber-intentions

I'm pretty sure that the original recording of 'Intentions' didn't use much if any DX based sounds, but that doesn't mean you can't program and use DX for more analog or nasty type synth sounds...

[quotePost id=122671]
We that have inculcated ourselves into the Super Knob "work flows" are the super knobs.
[/quotePost]
I think there are many super knobs out there, but not necessarily the ones who utilize the Super Knob "work flows" fairly heavily in certain performances, myself included! I proudly leave my light pulsing...
But I also find the light pulsing on the SuperKnob a great way to quickly see what the tempo is of a song that starts without any Sequencing or ARPs, so that when I do press the play button 1/3 way into the song, I am right on tempo! But that's just my preference.

[quotePost id=122681]Yes for building songs and speed and ease there's no reason to ever have a hardware synth. The Kronos put a computer inside a keyboard case to attempt to achieve the best of both worlds. I didn't like it. If you are on a stage you want a synth that can never fail or at least boot back in a few seconds. NO fans running either.

I'm the opposite, I hate using a computer since I use it for work endlessly, so I think the thought about hardware is that you can touch it and what? it's something intangible like it's more intimate. Something inside some of us wants to behold a machine and not software.

Same as like dating on a computer app vs dating a live person you can touch. Your computer app or AI date is perfect and easy and cheap and does anything you want and never talks back. Oh yeah baby! but then try that with a real woman and suddenly it becomes impossible and yet we still want it. The real woman has many flaws same as us and yet we deal with it. Yeah we're crazy but give me hardware so I can curse at it. It suppose we like the challenge or something. I'm a man, I like fire even though it keeps burning my fingers.

When actually making money is the objective forget the complexity and go to software and get it done fast. [/quotePost]

Those places, if I am not wrong, help you dating. Once done, you meet each other.
Yes, you can touch.

And fanless is here...

https://www.cirrus7.com/en/

????
????

"It's so simple even a caveman can do it". That got canceled because it was insensitive to all the cavemen out there.

I wondered why those women never called me back, I just thought they were bots or that's what I told myself.

If you can't get a good bot these days you might as well play music. My wonderful wife is the opposite of having synth interest, she reminds me of 100 other more productive things I need to be doing like mowing or compressing amazon boxes for the trash.

I've been checking out the Moog One if the Montage2 is uninteresting. I wonder if they will be offering a Moog One module to compete with Oberheim. I'm considering a departure from the traditional workstation and get into real analog for a while.

That's what was leaked concerning the new Montage2. It will have a much larger throbbing knob. Ok that didn't sound right, I'm going to get some coffee now.

Mechanically for me the Super Knob was the weakest link. I've seen others with damaged SKs too. I hope this is designed more robust in the future so I don't have to order spares to keep the keyboard functional.