Not really sure why this continues to be referenced.

Video is dated with several NAMMs between.

Published on Apr 15, 2014

There's been many Namm's between Motif XF and Montage as well. Yet, something did happen.

But Actually, we knew about the Montage name long before it's release. As far as I know, there is nothing new from Yamaha for a while other then, potentially software updates. I think the Montage is as good as it can be. And I feel certain it won't be more engines. But if Yamaha would implement VA waves, or some sort of emulation or controlling analog behaviour on the current waves and add modelled filters (classic yamaha filters) into the FM-X engine, it would make FM-X cover a VA purist's needs I'm sure.

@Robin: I was referring to the link provided. Not sure why it continues to be cited as if it is a rumor of what is to come. It was just an opinion back in 2014 of what the author thought would be a good combination of what was available during the time frame of the recording.

Jason wrote:

@Robin: I was referring to the link provided. Not sure why it continues to be cited as if it is a rumor of what is to come. It was just an opinion back in 2014 of what the author thought would be a good combination of what was available during the time frame of the recording.

I know.
I think most people don't take it for being a rumor, that would suprise me. Uije only layered three Yamaha synths together through midi just for fun.
Sure the example puts, FM, VA and sample playback together. Montage covers two of them. It would only take to add a few new features to the FM-X engine to cover all three.

It's interesting though that people want the synth of their dreams from Yamaha, regardless of what is offered by the competition. There must be a loyal fanbase.
There is alot of VA options out there, and Yamaha is possibly the only synth manufacturer that doesn't do VA in hardware at this point.

It's clear that Yamaha have a different approach to the market. Montage is a multi purpose synth, that covers the needs for most musicians, a jack of all trades. The other synths being lesser versions of the same (MOX, MX etx). And no single purpose synths. (AN1x, CS15, FS1r). Or something like a DX7 with knobs-per-function, a real hands on FM synth, around the 1500$ price tag.

Meanwhile, I will enjoy Montage. 🙂

Robin,

The Montage is a real hands on FM(-X) synth. everything is available to you via touchscreen and encoders.
there was never any better control for an FM synth. especially nothing as powerful.

Eyal wrote:

Robin,

The Montage is a real hands on FM(-X) synth. everything is available to you via touchscreen and encoders.
there was never any better control for an FM synth. especially nothing as powerful.

I have to disagree with you. DX7 has a slider and a screen too. Does that make it hands on as well?
How I see it, menu diving is not hands-on, browsing a touch screen is about the same as browsing pages by using a mouse on a PC.
Hands on is Knob-per-function.

Sure the Montage and FM-X is an improvement over SY77 or FS1r when it comes to navigation and control. But it's far from being a Prophet-5 or a Supernova.

I'm not saying the interface of montage is bad, I'm sure it's the way to go for a synth of this caliber.

But it would be possible for a pure FM synth, with less features to have knob per function, where most common parameters are easilly accessed by using the physical controls on the front panel. Imagine physical controls for an entire operator on the front panel, and select-buttons to select which operator to edit. Controls for Algorithms, Effects, mod matrix should be there as well.A screen for patch browsing, global settings etc is also nice to have. I hope you get what I mean. 🙂

The DX7 is not hands on because you get no overview at all using a screen that shows a single line and a slider.
The Montage on the other hand, shows you everything in great overview on the screen, where you can touch a parameter and tweak it instantly with the encoder.
There's lots of tactile control in the Montage. and FM-X can have THOUSANDS of parameters to tweak.

You're obviously not gonna get anything from Yamaha with a front panel that has the amount of knobs such as the Novation Supernova (which is VA). IMHO, I think its useless. Programming FM was never so easy as with the Montage to me. but it's great to be a dreamer and please let us know more about them when you have some! 😉

To me hands on has nothing to do with the overview. It's the imediate access to a parameter. DX7 used category buttons to access parameters, while Montage moved it to the touch display. It's not a big difference, and you could see the current settings on the small display, but DX7 was not the most difficult one to edit, and Montage takes it to a higher level with a large colour touch display and a much deeper engine.

I'm glad you reminded me of the word instant. When you must touch the display for each parameter or page before you can tweak with the encoders or sliders. That to me is not instant. But it's the second bests thing, depending on how many touches you need though.

Yes the Supernova is a VA. I actually learned how to program sounds on Supernova II. And I think an FM synth could be done with instant hands on controls at the same level. But with less features then a Montage. There are always compromises. Less features = more hands on. More features = Less hands on. With the amount of features Yamaha implemented in the Montage, I think Yamaha did a very good job. I just wish for an FM synth with less features and more instant hands on control.

But you are probably right about Yamaha. They have their own ways and policies, so my dreams and wishes might not fit into that. Unless the majority of people shares the same dreams and wishes. But I think it doesn't hurt telling Yamaha what I want, I'm not alone about the FM with instant hands on control.

Until then Montage is the best option, and it's a great one.

Robin wrote:

Until then Montage is the best option, and it's a great one.

with this I can agree, to me, there's nothing not to love about it!

Knob-per-function interfaces work with really simple things like a monophonic lead analog synths. To believe this will help you with FM synthesis is, well, perhaps a bit optimistic. You have two or three dozen parameters maximum on your analog synth. And while the number of sounds possible from a MiniMoog, for example, is probably infinite, the number of sounds from a DX7 menu driven digital synth is a "bigger infinity" 🙂 to make up a term.

Some company did put out a Knob-per-function interface for the original DX7, it was huge, I mean massive in size, and revealingly enough, proved wrong the concept that this makes it something intuitive and easy, in fact, it does not. It simply overwhelms you and does not make digital programming any more "intuitive". It can be intuitive or more so, with a completely different approach (IMHO)

What makes FM program intuitive is understanding what areas of control and influence you have. Attempting to make digital programming, analog-like only limits the results you can get from it. Which might be fine for some... but in the bigger picture not what makes programming fun. Once you understand how to create complex Wave shapes, and how the operators interact- you're on your way. But if you are only building harmonics by filtering you'll miss a fundamental "improvement" of the digital approach.

I'm working on an article that shows how to approach FM-X using the provided tools so you can "know" a bit more about exploring with purpose. This is what can make it more intuitive and fun to work with it. Controlling an electric piano with a tone wheel organ interface, helps you if you know the organ interface... but you have to admit it's a poor interface to control an electric piano. Why would you do that... ? Controlling an FM engine with an analog synth interface, because you think you know those 30 or so parameters, will be very limiting when applied to a digital FM engine.

I'm familiar with the DX7 programmer, though it's so huge, I think my arms would fall off.
Though I agree it's a lot of parameters. But it is possible to narrow it down without too much compromise.

I would say a single Operator alone have almost the same amount of parameters as a regular subtractive synth.

Say if you have 6 Operators, the one thing to do, is to have controls on the hardware interface for one entire Operator,
and add select/toggle-buttons, one for each Operator. So that you select the Operator you want to edit, and tweak the knobs.
I actually think this is a better way then having a gigantic front panel.

With the approach I mentioned, you could select more then one operator simultanously if you want the envelopes to be identical on several operators for example. Another great thing about it,
is that you can toggle between the operators with one hand, and tweak the knobs with the other, this way of programming would be very quick, which is the point of having knob-per-function.

For the operator section, it would probably cover 60% of the front panel surface on a DX7. The rest of the free space should be reserved for Algorithm select (1 knob), arpeggiator, a small graphical screen, effects, wheels, global pitch, LFO and a simple mod matrix. Things that are not commonly used, should be accessed from the screen.

There's nothing preventing someone from coming up with a software solution that shares similar properties as suggested (keeping the same "settings" from one operator to the next, etc). Although not hardware - it can be pretty close - and most programming, at least for FM, is done in the studio prior to the "on the spot" gig or practice.

Yes, there may be a live use for some of this (using some newfangled, unproven, but somehow better interface) - but I would submit such a beast is small potatoes compared to the studio use. Which is where I believe a software solution comes in - and Yamaha already gave the keys to the city of how one would implement this.

Sort of back to the topic of rumors. This is not something I've heard as a rumor - but it is an industry trend. Alternative nonvolatile memory technology is maturing. There are certainly lots of not-mainstream-yet newer technologies out there that are becoming more production ready. Each of these will compete as the betamax vs. vcr. The nanotube based memory is interesting. Embedded systems, which the Montage and keyboards essentially are serve as a possible target platform. I haven't dug into the speeds and feeds here - but Yamaha's platform is more memory bound than CPU bound since Montage/Motif (recent flagships) do not do modeling as the main engine. Therefore, perhaps the emerging winner of the next high-density, low power, faster, and nonvolatile memory will serve to define a new platform and leave enough scratchpad to get sampling back into the fold. I believe CPU advances will continue to outpace what a keyboard needs - so we'll likely continue to see "low bin" CPU in keyboards to keep costs down and also keep noisy fans from being a requirement.

Watching the recent rise of the melodica, I've wondered if Yamaha would offer a reface form-factor melodica integrating the breath controller. Even better if somehow you can "snap off" the breath controller part which itself has MIDI out to a Montage if you wanted to use the BC feature. Then folks may decide to lay down more money than just a BC interface in order to get a tiny keyboard with some melodica and other limited synthy/etc. sounds along with it. That snap-off feature is really too much to expect - but using a MIDI melodica (in its entirety) as a breath controller may not be bad if there's a stand to hold the melodica in place.

Maybe a bluetooth breath controller that integrates with the bluetooth MIDI accessory would sell more bluetooth MIDI.

Not Yamaha, but Behringer is releasing a keyboard with Wifi. This is pretty interesting. Ignoring the electrical noise downside - there are lots of benefits and possible uses for Wifi in a keyboard. Not sure what the standard will be (I could look it up) but newer AC standards push wireless to wired speeds. Compared to bluetooth (25 Mbit/s) 802.11ac wifi (433Mbit/s) is many times faster. Even with the extra network overhead of Wifi - this should be fine for MIDI and can probably handle using the lowest speeds half of the audio data currently supported through USB 2.0 (480Mbit/s). This is a large derating due to wireless vs. wired and 433 vs 480Mbit/s. 802.11ac max is 2167Mbit/s with facilities to double this assuming two different simultaneous bands. Running the numbers, there is a case for Wifi - although this is hardly regarded as a reliable connection - so who knows how many of the pro synths from the front-runner manufacturers will adopt Wifi.

https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/2017-winter-namm-rumors-confirmed/

https://www.gearnews.com/ - some Korg news

http://www.musicradar.com/event/namm

http://www.factmag.com/2017/01/12/namm-2017-rumors-preview/

http://www.synthtopia.com/content/tag/namm-rumor/

http://www.gear4music.com/NAMM.html

... and so on.

There's nothing preventing someone from coming up with a software solution that shares similar properties as suggested (keeping the same "settings" from one operator to the next, etc). Although not hardware - it can be pretty close - and most programming, at least for FM, is done in the studio prior to the "on the spot" gig or practice.

Yes, there may be a live use for some of this (using some newfangled, unproven, but somehow better interface) - but I would submit such a beast is small potatoes compared to the studio use. Which is where I believe a software solution comes in - and Yamaha already gave the keys to the city of how one would implement this.

I've used a Roland Gaia. One voice is three different synth engines in one. The whole panel represents one synth engine at a time, you just have to switch between one of the three you want to program. Replace those synth engines with the Operators (would require extra buttons, one representing each operator) and you have the exact same approach. It's a very small compromise compared to a gigantic panel, where for me atleast, my arms would fall off. Let's say you want to program more then one Operator at a time, you could just press two or three.. buttons at the same time to make changes to the selected Operators simultanously. This is possible equally in both hardware and software (it's all software in a hardware box). And this would be an advantage over a giant panel.

So what about in a live setting? I would say the Montage have the better interface for that. But it doesn't mean the knobby sibling would be bad at it, just not as good. I'm sure most people don't program their synth live, unless they know exactly what they are doing knowing what knob to turn for the current perfomance. But still you would have footpedals, wheels and aftertouch already programmed. For me personally, the hands on "quick to program" interface is important because I like to create sounds on the fly in my studio when I make music. I would love to avoid using the manual. Everything is just there, knowing FM, I know exactly what to do. This would also give FM a much steeper learning curve, because failing and redoing would be faster as well.

EDIT: I added an attachment to illustrate.