Hello Brian,
I suggest that you stay with your TYROS for playbacking your Midifiles. The Montage is a brillant PERFORMANCE SYNTHESIZER which main use is to play and perform live with the great possibility to change nearly every element of a sound or a phrase live (so called Dynamic Control). It is not made to sequence or playback midifiles altough you can use it with a DAW. Therefore the internal 64 songs are pretty much.
For your setup: Record the songs - use the wavs and play them from your ipad - use the ANALOG IN in Montage and use the Montage's Motion Control Engine to change the sound of the WAV.
Again: The Montage is not a substitute for a TYROS! You can't replace a ukele by a chuch organ. 😉
Best regards
Marcus

This is the ultimate, "Do these shoes fit my feet?" question.
By that I mean you are asking if you will like the Montage. Undoubtedly you will - whether it makes for a different workflow, well, that's a guarantee. The two products are very different. But because you say you don't use the Tyros for what it was designed for "at all", your question is curious because the Montage is very different. And therefore, only you will know if it's a good fit (pinches your toes)!

Hello, I currently have a Tyros 5 76 that I use live... playing back sequences I created on my computer and then saved as midi files to the Tyros. I Picked the Tyros because of the sound quality but do not use the accompaniment features at all. It is just a giant sound module which is kind of a waste of technology but the sounds and articulations sold me.

The Montage is but 16 Part multi timbral through MIDI, the Tyros 5 is 32 Part. So while you can playback a MIDI file using the Tyros' XG/GM engine, you can still play on top with the second 16-Part tone engine.

The Montage has no such XG/GM engine. The sixteen Parts of the Montage are fully editable, synthesizer sounds each with its own dual Insertion Effects and 3-band EQ pre- the Inserts and 2-band EQ post- the Insert Effects. Each Part is the equivalent of a Motif XF Voice or an 8-Operator FM synth. You only have the sixteen Parts, so, yes, you would either need to record your Songs as .wav (which the Montage can stream from a USB stick on playback) or you would need to play one of the sixteen Parts. This is possible, but again you would be using the technology but not at its fullest.

Montage is also iOS class compliant you can connect to an iPad/iPhone to the TO HOST port or connect a handheld playback device to Montage's A/D inputs....so you could keep your Songs as .wav or as .mid played from an iPad, for example, that play through the Montage leaving your entire front panel for performing... that is really the optimum situation... with the Montage being a performance synth, you will want to leave your front panel for performing.

You should visit your local authorized Yamaha dealer, bring some of your data. Please recognize where there is very little editing of sounds on a Tyros, the Montage is completely programmable. Like apples and oranges when it comes to this.

Try one on, walk around with it a bit, it's very different. But only you can decide if it's a good fit for you.

Thank you, Marcus and Bad Mister! Very helpful 😮 ... Much appreciated! I sort of figured that would be the case. I play plenty of gigs and sessions where I would just use the Montage the way it was intended and could really get into the sounds... so.. .... yes I still want it. The transformation of sounds with the knob and how I could use that is pretty amazing.

The big reason I want to know..... is it would be nice to offset the cost of the Montage by selling my Tyros 5. Frankly, if they made the Tyros 5 with 88 note weighted action in the first place, I might not be in the market for a new synth. I am forced to use ( midi up ) a Yamaha P-45 on the gig so I can play pianistically and I just want to bring one keyboard going forward.

So just out of curiosity and to be clear, if I were to use my iPad Pro or the internal 64 songs to play back sequences on Montage, then I would have to leave at least two channels ( out of 16 ) open if I were playing a split over the top of the sequence with say a piano in the left hand and a solo instrument in the right or if I wanted to change instruments a bunch during the song ? Correct ?

It sounds to me like perhaps the best thing to do is to record all 100 plus songs I have sequenced on the Tyros ( OUCH !!! ) and turn them into wav. files for playback. Then moving forward without the Tyros, I could use the Montage in the studio the same way I use the Tyros5....... in that I would use it like a sound module and construct the song as normal. Then when I get it right I commit it to audio. At the gig, I then play over the top of the mixed stereo audio track.... being able to use the full power of the Montage live. Let me know what you think.....

The only thing I am going to really miss from the Tyros live are the custom drum styles I created that allow me to kick LH bass and add drum fills and different drum sections on the fly. It is a very cool feature that gives you complete flexibility when doing a tune with a singer or soloist so they can stretch out on solos and ad libs. I don't suppose there is any way to set something similar up in the Montage... is there ? Thanks

Not completely the same, but you could perhaps get the same type of "feel" by using ARPs and bringing in drum fills and the like, double-time, etc with ARPs.

You would find a preset in the style of music you would want to do this in - maybe not a 100% fit - but in the same genre. And also one that has ARPs on display - where you can run through ARP 1-8 and hear different sections of the music or fills.