I think people think about memory size the same way they approach gathering food at a Swedish smorgasbord... Their eyes are bigger than their stomach. Same is true with audio Waveforms stored to memory. Or like buying RAM for a computer... I know a guy, typical musician, spent top dollar on getting the most RAM for his desk computer, only to find out later that he never even comes close to using a portion of it... But he's extremely happy (giddy) because "the more RAM the better right?"... He could have bought another synth with what he spent on additional RAM (that he is not ever going to be using)!!! I guess he thought he was going to running some space-age CAD softwares.

You can store additional sound libraries on any size external drive you desire. Then you can transfer (load) what you want to play into the provided on-board Flash.

What the 1.75Gb of Flash offers you is "real time" access. Yes there are types of memory that are cheap, but there are different types of memory for different applications. The really cheap memory cannot stream 128 stereo channels of audio on demand in nano seconds... The Montage is first and foremost a music synthesizer. Built primarily as a player's instrument. Going on stage with over 7Gb of Yamaha AWM2 sampled memory plus a full featured FM-X engine should suffice for any gig yet known to modern man.

Particularly, when you see how Library files are stored, loaded and accessed now, I don't think carrying around terabytes of data (on-board) makes much sense (on the practicality/price standpoint). If you are using the Montage mainly at home, hmm, then loading a Library is not so time critical, particularly at the faster load times achievable with the new system. How much do you actually need on board at once?

(I get it, I understand the "theoretical" but I must, like all of us must, live in the "practical"). Theoretically, I want to have a nine foot Yamaha CFIIIS Concert Grand for the opening, a Bosendorfer 209 Imperial Grand for that little interlude before intermission, and could you please have them deliver a Steinway D for that rockabilly number just before the end of the show... And oh, by the way, no blue M&M's in the green room candy bowl! 🙂

I get it, in theory, but practically speaking - in the real world that just ain't gonna happen... (Just so you know, you probably could load all those libraries in at once, but... I think my point is made..). Choose what is practical for real world situations, and don't think it's the end of the world if you have LOAD something else. Yikes.

Everyone that owns a Kronos knows what the extra memmory can do for a sample based engine like AWM2....

Makes me kind of sad some people are trying to deny this...

And while the Montage promisses to be a sensational instrument, there also seem to be many restrictions keeping it back, which makes me kind of sad... Sure Yamaha representatives need to sell whats there, but from a design point it could have been so much more...

Nevertheless, i will probably get a montage and enjoy whats there instead of breaking my brains over whats not there... Time has learned us, no instrument will ever be perfect to suit everyones personall wishes... It will be a great combination with the Kronos or the Tyros...

To be fair, Nord or Kurzweil offer even less than 1.75GB as far as I know. Kronos, of course, is different (but I think it is effectively a PC built into a keyboard?)

But still, 1.75 GB is a bit disappointing. Even if you swallow the "philosophy" that you should't compare it to software libraries, which are several hundreds of GB, you would have expected at least some improvement over Motif XF which has 2GB at max (if you use 3rd party Flash, even 4GB).

Moreover, if its true that Montage uses cheaper Flash ROM than the Motif did (NAND instead of NOR), its even harder to understand that limitation. Paul from sandsoftwaresound.net analysed the Flash used in the PSR-970, which presumably uses the same Tone Generator chip as Montage, and found Spansion S34ML08G1 Flash Chips which cost around 8 USD per 8 Gbit (= 1 GB) in large quantities. That would mean Yamaha has to pay about 32 USD for the (presumably) 4GB of physical Flash ROM in Montage .... that is just conjecture of course (btw I wonder if the 4GB have something to do with 32bit limitations?)

Anyway, I guess one can live with it, still happy to try out a Montage 🙂

Falk wrote:

To be fair, Nord or Kurzweil offer even less than 1.75GB as far as I know. Kronos, of course, is different (but I think it is effectively a PC built into a keyboard?)

Kronos (and Oasys before that) set a new standard for processing power in hardware instruments. Sure they choose for standard (and therefor relatively cheep processing hardware) but where you make sound that like a weakness, to me its the ultimate strength of the Kronos..

Anyway, i would have expected Yamaha to try and catch up to Kronos, which they obviously didnt do, they moved away from the all in one concept of workstations towards a more performance synth oriented format, because they realised they could not get close to Kronos proportions with their current hardware.. Which makes it unfair indeed to compare Montage with the Kronos... I think its best indeed to compare Montage with more performance oriented stage instruments... Like the Kurzweil Forte, Nord Stage, Roland Jupiter 80... Leaving the Korg Kronos where it is... Somewhere floating above the rest when it comes to raw power, flexibillity and creativity...

Where the Montage will shine, must be its userinteface.. So far it seems to me as if they created an easy accesibillity platform, that works like a box of buildingblocks.... But then again, you can not compare a box of buildingblocks to the drawingboard that the Kronos has to offer...

But back to the OP and the questions that have arisen, if we can allready see and feel the limitations of the Montage pre release will that not become irritators quickly after buying one? We do not know, but having to load new sounds and arps constantly including wayting times, might feel like a dejas vus with times long passed... There is a reason i didnt choose a Nord Stage once, i just dislike the fact that you can not have all those great sounds in memmory available all the time...maybe i am just to much of a collector. But in this time, i prefer to have all my sounds available at all times...having a limmited set of sounds works quite well in a gigging situation, but when using an instrument in a homestudio environment just make you want to have all your creative tools available all the time..
..

when using an instrument in a homestudio environment just make you want to have all your creative tools available all the time..

Not sure what DAW you are using but it might worth it for you to use something like the Cubase MEDIA BAY... it's Sound Browser feature allows you to keep all your creative tools available at all times.

Adding Voice Libraries to Cubase as VST Presets

This article discusses how to accomplish this with Motif XF, but it can be used with any hardware synthesizer.