Hopefully something big and extra features will come to Montage/MODX!!

Funny this morning I just google "Next MODX OS Update Wishlist" and now seeing this post!!

Sorry to deviate a little bit from the topic, talking about Yamaha Ideascale, I created an account yesterday, but I did not get anything back in my inbox yet, any idea if that's normal and how long it will take? Also is there way to see what has been posted before having an account?

Funny this morning I just google "Next MODX OS Update Wishlist" and now seeing this post!!

Ahw, thank you or my apologizes ?
It's purely a speculation.

Unfortunatly Ideascale is a closed platform. Where people can post ideas. And a few Yamaha employees are checking out those ideas and mark these in a certain state.

Overall Yamaha is being tight lipped. Even with lots of given suggestions Yamaha doesn't give any announcements about the features that received 'assessment state' researched. And users getting devided opinions between still under development or end of life.
like the Montage/Modx a lot. Also I did post some suggestions to ideascale that received immediatly the status: Assessment stage.

So I'm still thankfull for that, but we have no point of reference about our idea gets implemented. Only Yamaha knows! ?

It's a wishing well, not a feature roadmap.

When I throw a penny in, I don't wait for a gantt chart to come back.

What you do have is access to the R&D team. The same R&D team that works closely with the developers. It's fairly high up the implementation food chain.

Not all ideas will be implemented - but all do have a chance to cross the desk of those who can do the implementing. It's up to you how you utilize the platform.

Thank you Jason,

That's a great explaination! 🙂

IDEASCALE serves corporations perfectly, to hide away any discontent with their products.

All other presumptions about its purpose and pertinence to what comes down the pipe are blends of projection, desire and delusion, that the idea of IdeaScale is ideally suited to help you formulate in your own mind, rather than have you publicly complain and criticise (more publicly) problems and issues you might perceive with products.

As to what's coming for the MODX/Montage... consider this: are they even able to make any more of them, given the problems with chips?

Can they get them delivered?

Yamaha might not even be able to satiate demand, even if they were to do things to stimulate it, so they may not be considering spending any energy on the OS updates.

If they did care about their users, SoundMondo would be 3 or 4 versions ahead of where it's at, and a community being built around sound design and sample/oscillator recording and creation, the arpeggio creation software they use inhouse would be released to end users, and a step sequencer and TR editor for drum tracks added, and they'd add decent envelopes for better sculpting of those samples/oscillators.

Not things like the FM-X morphing, with aliasing that's unusable and quite ridiculous, for an uncontrollable and unpredictable "feature" that only ever serves to alienate FM sounds further from musicality. That's an engineered solution to a question that was never asked, if I've ever seen one.

We have been waiting for years for a firmware that updates Montage and Modx by inserting new synthesis engines.
Virtually all of Yamaha's competitors have implemented Wavetables and VA engines.
Most likely the two SWP70 present in Montage are not able to perform VA synthesis, but it is certainly possible to implement a ToneWheel emulation (YC61-derived organ engine) and some form of Wavetables-WaveSequences.
Regarding the latter, I succeeded without modifying the firmware: Yamaha could easily do it by having direct access to the synthesis engine.
Montage-Modx WaveTables

Let's hope.

[quotePost id=114429]There is something certain about Yamaha, they spend a lot more time into development. Each update is stable and when they check Ideascale they take the time to invest.

I do have a feeling we Montage/Modx users will also be surprised with a next OS update .

There are no announcements about other synth products recently that Yamaha will bring out soon. And Yamaha is on the list for Superbooth 2022 so I might think they're cooking something.

It's all just speculation, but I'm wandering if others share my thoughts 😀

[/quotePost]

I'm sorry, I don't share your thoughts. It's been more than 2 years since Yamaha have posted the last real update (v 3.5). Yet, during this time, many update for the YC have been provided.
I'm afraid Yamaha does consider the Montage as completely successfull.
Many good ideas have been suggested on Ideascale, along these 2 past years. If Yamaha intended to give an answer to these ideas, I'm quite sure it would have been done for a long time now.

Of course, I hope to be wrong, but that's my point of view.

Agreed, Fred.

Maybe they are working on a real workstation.

With Apple's M1 chip.

And screen brightness controls.

I've been hoping for a better sequencer, but I guess I'm going to have to get a different keyboard that is a true workstation. 🙁

Yeah the Roland Fantoms Bitwig/Ableton like sequencer is way better than what the Montage has on it.

[quotePost id=115320]
I'm sorry, I don't share your thoughts. It's been more than 2 years since Yamaha have posted the last real update (v 3.5). Yet, during this time, many update for the YC have been provided.
I'm afraid Yamaha does consider the Montage as completely successfull.
Many good ideas have been suggested on Ideascale, along these 2 past years. If Yamaha intended to give an answer to these ideas, I'm quite sure it would have been done for a long time now.

Of course, I hope to be wrong, but that's my point of view.
[/quotePost]

I don't expect anything further from Yamaha on the Montage; however I like to take the optimistic approach with the possibility that I could be wrong, instead of the pessimistic approach with a glimmer of optimism. Realistically, the way I see it (& I realize I could be wrong) YC is not nearly as complex to program as the Montage/MODX, and Yamaha likely had recent improvements as part of that product line roadmap, since they released that product...and the YC is quite new.
Yamaha are still changing the categorization on Montage/MODX ideas...why would they do that if they were not considering further updates?
I think there are several factors as to why there is such a delay in updates on the Montage.
- Covid!!
- Complexity of programming major changes (compared to their other products)
- Supply/Demand issues
- 4.0 is going to be HUGE ... they don't like to release major (or minor) updates unless they are fully ready and tested

Releasing an update with a completely new Engine, possibly another Sequencer, enhanced Scenes options, enhanced B3 emulation effect, enhanced piano resonance effect, possibly new samples & effects (i.e. Convolution reverb, etc.), is much more complex then an FM Morph drop-in.

I think the BIG ONE is coming and it's going to be a game changer!

But regardless, as it currently is, the Montage is still a Beast that can do anything I want and more. I don't care for onboard sequencers. ProTools is so superior to anything that could be done on the Montage, so I totally see why they dropped sequencing and got away from it being a Workstation. That's what the Genos is for. However, in hindsight they probably should have kept the sequencers that were on the Motif workstations. The downside would have been that changes/updates would take much longer to program and test, therefore it would have slowed releases down even more so.

Maybe it won't be until September, but the next update is coming and it's going to be Massive (but bug free)!

No need to apologize or saying sorry while you disagree 🙂 There are no hard feelings 🙂

I.m.o Personally the Montage serves me well. I'm more of a liveplayer and design my sounds from scratch and don't need the sequencer options. I really do like the FM-X engine of the Montage still scratching the surface but I'm getting usefull and nice results with it. Also I think the AWM2 engine is nice.

The Montage also pretend me from G.A.S. It's a wonderfull allrounder. And I can get the sound in my head easily. When I listen or watch reviews/demo's of certain gear. I think the Montage is able to sound in the ballpark of those demo's. Live on stage The Montage will getting compliments from your bandmembers and from the crowd in public. It's a great sounding platform! And indeed a real beast! ???????????? I still have high hopes for a future update because the Montage deserves this! And it's gonna be huge! (but no inside information or what so ever) ????

Thank you! and apologize for maybe my English. I'm not a native speaker 😉