I think you forgot the most important, Fantom , like all Roland instruments, has a complete and standarized MIDI implementation, without the pretension to tell, teach or force the users to adopt odd non standard manners of to use their instruments.

Of course you can assign any MIDI input channel to any part and you can duplicate channels if you want.

What is not clear to me at this moment is if the tracks of the sequencer are multichannel (can mix the16 MIDI channels in each track) or simple monochannel tracks.

But the limited MIDI side of Montage is nothing that Yamaha, if have good will and hear their profesional musicians customers, could not fix easy.

I didn't forget it - but I don't quite have the details to discern this level of implementation. The intent wasn't to have a complete list - but open it up.

Mainly I wanted to give a space for this type of conversation apart from the sequencer thread - since that one was getting some sprawl over this topic.

The ONLY creative advantage Montage has over Fantom is the arp implementation. Fantom crushes Montage in hardware quality, connectivity, creative options overall, and it's expandable. This is not a fair competition- it's a slaughter.

One interesting difference - something that's been asked for on Montage - is how "elements" (called partials in Fantom) can be batch-edited. Meaning to apply changes to all "elements" at once. Fantom can select multiple "elements" at once. The edits will apply to all selected "elements" (partials) - so there's a way to make edits on multiple "elements" at the same time within the on-board GUI. There has been some requests for this sort of thing on Montage - but the only way to do this sort of thing would be to use offline software, at additional cost.

On the losing side - Fantom seems to support about half the Montage effects per ZONE ("PART" in Montage) . You end up with the same amount - but each Zone only gets one "MFX" in Fantom - which functions as Montage's insertion effect. Fantom has more shared effects (IFX + Reverb + Chorus). If Fantom has only one zone used - then this IFX can "act" as an additional Montage-style "insertion" effect - but beyond that - there are more constraints on how each Zone can get its own effects. Overall, I believe Fantom loses on effects resources from the perspective of each Zone (Montage "PART" )

Also Fantom does not have a reverb as a zone effect. So it's one reverb for each scene (= performance in Montage). In Montage you can have a reverb in a part - although not all reverb types are supported. So it's up to 16 reverbs per performance.

The Montage has remote control for Cubase, Logic, Ableton Live and ProTools. The Fantom has something related but it looks more powerful but less flexible. And apparently it support at this point only Logic and main stage.

In the Montage the parts are stored with the performances. So if you edit a part which is part of a performance and then store the performance, the changed part is stored with the performance. In the Fantom the zone (roughly equivalent to a part) stores only some parameters like transpose etc. The rest like waveforms, envelopes, filters comes from a tone which is referenced from the zone and not stored with the scene (equivalent to a performance). So if you want to change a tone you have to store the tone so that later the changes are audible when switching to a scene. Those tone changes are shared with all scenes using the same tone. So if you want to change only the tone used in that one scene, you have to store it to a new tone and change the tone referenced by the scene.

While this sounds complicated, it means that deep editing the sound inside a performance is easier in the Montage. You cannot accidentally destroy other performances or lose changes in a tone. Both things happened to me in the Integra-7 which has the same concept.

On the other hand the Fantom concept is more traditional and may be easier to grasp for some people. Also if you want to edit a tone which is shared between multiple performances and actually want to affect all performances you can easily do that on the Fantom. This is impossible on the Montage, you have to apply the changes manually to all performances.

I personally much prefer the Montage way after working with the Integra-7 for a couple of years. But other may prefer the alternative.

The Fantom 8 features triple-sensor keys, allowing for rapid single key repetition. This is included in Yamaha's CP88, but not the Montage.

One early report suggests that the Fantom has a curious MIDI limitation of its own, related to output:

The worst problem though is that it won't send midi when you are using the internal sounds. So forget about recording the midi out and the audio out into Ableton if you want to use your nice brand-new keyboard. (If anyone has figured a way to do this let me know). So far my work around is to use a different keyboard into Ableton and then repeat the outputs to all the zones I want played at the same time. The other trick has been to use an unused zone as an "EXT" instrument into Ableton and record from that. But its a really silly limitation.

Edit: I originally mistakenly stated that the CP88 did not have triple-sensor action.

The ONLY creative advantage Montage has over Fantom is the arp implementation. Fantom crushes Montage in hardware quality, connectivity, creative options overall, and it's expandable. This is not a fair competition- it's a slaughter.

I would prefer if people would stick to the comparison style Jason has started on this thread. Comparing features one by one in a factual manner helps while such general comments do not help. While I think the Fantom has a couple of advantages, the Montage also certainly has some. Like working multi-samples. Agreed, the Fantom can get that at a later time (and I think it is highly likely, considering the amount of hardware they have already invested to make it possible). But it is not there, yet. I cancelled my Fantom order after learning that it does not have that. I need it for my music. When / if it comes I can reconsider.

For this thread we should consider what is there and not what may or could come. And it's certainly no "slaughter", otherwise we would immediately see the Montage sales go to 0, while the Fantom sales would take over everything. I think that will not happen. See this threads for detailed comparisons which show that it is not a one-sided game.

In more specific comments:

• Hardware quality: I think the one thing I did not hear complaints about when it comes to the Montage was the hardware quality. It is really very sturdy, very well built.
• Expandable: The Fantom is certainly expandable. But so is the Montage. I am reasonably sure that the Montage could be extended to have some more engines. The effort is not clear, but considering that it is based on DSPs that should be possible. There was even a survey which asked if people would appreciate an AN-X engine or so. Sure, that's not proven and may never happen. But that's the same with the Fantom. We have not seen any extension engine. And from what I heard of former Roland owners (I have no experience with that) Roland does not really have a great track record when it comes to delivering new features with future firmware updates.
• Connectivity: Yes 100% winner is the Fantom. Some of the options are most probably niche, like the CV connectivity. But some like XLR outputs and inputs, phantom power are really nice

The chain set of the Fantom (which is similar to the Set List in the Montage) allows inserting and deleting scenes in the middle of a chain. This is something which has been requested for the Montage but is not there (yet?). With the Johan Melas tools you can do that, though. And much more.

The Fantom can use the USB MIDI in parallel to the normal MIDI. This is something which has been requested for the Montage but is not there (yet?). In addition there are 2 MIDI outputs, although the second one doubles as a MIDI through, so can have one or the other but not both at the same time.

The amount of additional content and software for the Montage is really huge:

• There are tons of libraries, most Motif content can be used and there are lots of Montage specific ones. Considering that the libraries for the MODX (which was best selling synth for quite some time and maybe still is) can be used for the Montage as well, there is a huge market for libraries. And the libraries can come with additional samples, which is apparently not the case for now for the Fantom. In contrast I believe at this point it is not clear if the Fantom can load any sounds from earlier Roland synths like the Integra-7. At least I did not see anything in the manuals or the marketing material indicating that.
• Soundmondo is an easy way to share sounds with others. I am not aware of anything similar existing or planned on the Fantom.
• The John Melas tools are a huge workflow improvement for the Montage. Editing sounds and samples, shifting around sounds between internal and libraries or between libraries etc. makes editing and reorganizing things really easy.
• SampleRobot which is free with the Montage (or at least was, not sure if it is still) makes sampling some other synths and using the samples in the Montage really easy. I used it to sample quite some sounds from the Integra-7 which eventually allowed me to not use it anymore on stage.
• Montage comes with a free Cubase license (some limited edition, not the full one, but still may be useful for many people).
• Montage connect allows it to easily integrate the Montage with Cubase (and I believe other DAWs). So you can automatically store your current sounding performance with the Cubase project. That's huge.

The Montage allows to load 8 libraries with 640 performances each in addition to the user performances. That's 5760 performances which are user editable. Each comes with 16 performance specific parts. I did not bother to calculate the number of parts you can store.

I did not see any hint for a library system in the Fantom manuals. The number of scenes (which roughly compare to the performances in the Montage) is 512. So that's pretty limited. Tones are shared between scenes on the Fantom so that may also be a limit. But it is not really clear how many tones can be stored. So that may not be a problem.

But the 512 scenes limit allow would be a problem for me! And I believe that those 512 scenes include the preset scenes. So if you use one, you overwrite a preset scene.

On the Montage you can search for performances by name. I did not see anything similar on the Fantom. Considering that you only have 512 scenes that's probably a smaller limitation than on the Montage which has something like 10000 performances. But for tones there is also no search, I believe. You can go by category (same as in the Montage) but not by name.

On the other hand, the Montage only has the "favorite" classification while the Fantom has 4 stars for rating.