still working on my piano,string ,organ performances , and I concluded a have to make part one the organ so the elements will come up in the window and or ready to be controlled by the sliders, drawbar functions basically, it seems that I'm losing polyphony when using the sustain pedal so I have this problem when the parts are 1. organ 2. strings 3. piano but if I exchange 1 and 3 then I don't have this problem but I don't have the drawbar accessibility since the organ isn't part one , I posted the performance on soundmondo under my name terry drake performance Balad Piano/Str/B3 so please check it out and let me know if there's a way to fix this
also on the performance 2FC7s that bad mister made for me to solve my foot controller problems which did work I'm noticing know that when I engage the sustain pedal the strings go up a little in volume or something happens ,how do I stop that from happening?
I still can't get montage connect going and yes the usb button is set to on, the montage firmware is 2.50 ,I can boot up my mac in 10.9.5 or 10.11.6 ,I tried connect 1.03 and 1.05 and it's showing off line no matter what I try ,any ideas on that?

The connect version needs to match your firmware version. Older connect versions are not compatible with newer firmware versions. I don't have the breakdown of version compatibility - but there is such a thing. I cannot really help specifically with Mac - but the general uninstall/reinstall dance is probably similar. You could always have conflicting hardware/software. Others have noticed uninstalling something has broken the chains of bondage for getting the system to work. This is too varied of a set of possibilities to be any less vague.

Reordering the PARTs does place different PARTs in different priority slots in terms of polyphony. How the note-stealing decisions are made are set by which PART slot the elements/operators are living in. That you get a different result when you reorder the PARTs is expected. A drawbar organ is about the "worst" offender of polyphony stealing since it stacks so many oscillators on top of each other - all firing at the same time - and a bunch are silenced but still running. This is because you can hold down notes - not strike any more - and turn up/down the elements and hear them come in and not. So there are a lot of elements that fire off simultaneously. Normally, a better behaving - or less "wasteful" type PART would only have one element sounding at a time. If you strike the key harder - it sounds a different element - but just one at a time. Not all 8 at the same time.

If you steal polyphony away from an organ - it's probably going to still have elements left over to play sounds. Since there are so many elements that could be silenced and still have a cohesive sound (although maybe a different tonal color). If you have a PART that is playing only one element - if you steal from it - you're going to hear it like a sore thumb that's loud.

There's not a way to fix the fact that organs are expensive in terms of polyphony. Unfortunately, you can't assign sliders as controller sources - since one way out would be to have some of the organ come from samples - and some from FM-X. Then you could assign a set of sliders to target a different PART that's FM-X which doesn't take away polyphony from AWM2 (it has its own set). That's not to say you're out of luck.

Does your preferred organ sound ever have any of the sliders always all the way down? And never, for that slider, raising it? If so, you could turn that element OFF instead of having it muted with the slider. This would make the organ less polyphony hungry. Each element you turn off gains you that times the number of notes you mash polyphony. Maybe you can't do this.

Back to the FM-X deal. You could have your assignable knobs set to an FM-X set of drawbars so instead of using sliders - you use assignable knobs. Say you turn off 4 elements of the organ - but still want those frequency ranges - so you use an FM-X organ for those 4 drawbars and use 4 assignable knobs above where the sliders would have been for the AWM2 organ. Sort of strange to control - but still do-able. Scenes would help turning on both the AWM2 and FM-X organs together. Say you only have 4 different preset sounds you like your organ to sound like (think the inverted keys on the lower end of a Hammond tonewheel). You could dedicate 4 scenes for those 4 presets and never touch sliders or assignable knobs.

The root of this is to arrive at turning off elements of an organ PART that uses all 8 elements (normally) all of the time. And if you are to replace this with anything, replace it with an FM-X that uses its own pool.

Piano actually uses a Sustain pedal. It is, in fact, designed to mimic the behavior when used on this type of sound.
Strings do not actually have Sustain pedals. Their behavior to applying the pedal is to latch (remain) at the AEG Level reached at the time the pedal is engaged.
Organs do not have Sustain pedals. The behavior here is to remain at maximum Level throughout.

Any expectation of instrument behavior should be understood via understanding the stages of the Amplitude Envelope Generator... which describes attack, decay sustain and release. All acoustic percussive sounds will die out eventually. The vibration is started by hammering, striking, or plucking the Oscillating musical device. The sound will ultimately die out as gravity and air friction work against the vibration. The Sustain pedal on the piano does not literally sustain the piano strings, it simply prevents the felt dampers from muting the strings before they stop sounding (but rest asurded they would eventually stop oscillating.A percussive sound will always be defined by an envelope where DECAY 2 LEVEL = 0

The envelope is described by Time and Level parameters. “How much” Time it takes to reach the next Level point which determines “how loud”.
The Sustain pedal actually causes the sound to latch at DECAY 2 LEVEL... If, as on strings, this is not typically 0, the strings will sustain at whatever segment they have reached when the pedal is engaged. If, as on organs, where the Level stays at maximum as long as the key is engaged, Sustain will literally be Sustain!

You should defeat the Sustain pedal completely for the Organ.
You should adjust the String’s AEG to behave as you require. Typically, since bowed strings behave entirely different from plucked strings, you need to understand that bowed strings can continue endlessly. They do not fade out due to gravity or friction with the air... they can continue as long as the bow is applying downward pressure and movement. Bowed and blown instrument envelopes would typically feature a Decay 2 Level where as long as the key is held the sound continues. This allows you as keyboard player to control with Note duration the length of each sound.

If you would rather the bowed Strings behave like a Percussion instrument (like the piano) set the AEG so that it mimics the behavior of a piano (Decay 2 Level = 0).

I posted an edited version of your data — with the AEG settings for the String pad, as described... its on Soundmondo...
https://soundmondo.yamahasynth.com/voices/36381

thanks to both of you guys and you fixed my performance and I appreciate it and I can use that as a template, just one more thing I still find puzzling on the 2FC7s patch you posted for me, when you engage the sustain pedal the strings go up in volume at least 2 db , can you check your original I just did cause I wanted to make sure I hadn't altered it by accident, I'm just curious why it does that and how to stop it from doing that, although that could be done in tempo with your foot for another style of music as an effect but not for what I'm doing at the moment , thanks terry

or it's the filter that the sustain pedal is engaging which made me think the strings went up in volume on the 2FC7s performance but if I set the decay 2 to zero and turn off the sustain pedal for that part then it won't do it but I'd like to know how or why it was doing it or I'm just missing something you've probably already told me

I don't know what sustain would do to increase the volume of a PART if you turned off sustain for that PART. Much like you would do for the organ.

Sustain is not a source controller for offsetting parameters - so, for example, you couldn't program "if sustain pressed, increase volume by +30". Sustain, while engaged and if recognized by the PART, will cause the notes to continue to sustain even if you press a different note. You will end up with simultaneous notes overlapping and this overlapping would be additive in both the frequency and amplitude (loudness). You seem to be describing something different, so I'm not sure what may be going on.

....or I'm just missing something you've probably already told me

In the “2FC7” example, I only setup the two pedals to be independent Part Volume controls... I did nothing to deal with Sustain pedal behavior.

I personally don’t use Sustain pedal on String sounds, and if I do, then I setup “Decay 2 Level” behavior so that it doesn’t cause all notes to be held (latched) at the Level reached when the pedal is pressed... because all notes played after the pedal is applied are added to the notes already sounding... that can sound like a build up in volume...

For me if a sound does not work alone with Sustain pedal, I don’t ever hide it under under a sound, like piano, that does work. By isolating the strings, I realize that played alone they often don’t sound like something actual String would play. So I adjust its Sustain behavior to match the instrument that does work with the Sustain pedal.

By changing the AEG of the String Pad in the second example (Balad Piano/Str/B3~$) I changed the AEG of the String Pad so that it behaved in a similar fashion to the acoustic piano. Holding acoustic piano notes, as I explained, does not literally “sustain” the piano, it simply prevents the felt dampers from stopping the piano string’s vibration before they ultimately are stopped by gravity and friction. The ear and brain are extremely sensitive to changes in level as small as a dB...

if you recall the “Init” Program, “Init Normal (AWM2)” hitting a Note or two it sounds like a piano... but your ear/brain quickly notice something wrong... it’s an acoustic piano alright, but with an organ envelope. The initialized AEG is Set to behave like an organ... no decay in volume... the Note once turned on remains at maximum volume... your ear/brain is bothered by the fact that the sound is not fading away. Holding a chord is laughably wrong for a Percussion instrument...

Why does the default AWM2 start with this?... It is a natural starting point. ... Waveform 0001 happens to be a piano (quite naturally).
And the default AEG envelope is the “organ”-type envelope... On immediately when Key-On occurs, full volume until Key-Off where there is immediate Off. The Key is just literally an On/Off switch.

Multiple notes played on a sound that doesn’t fade will seem to get louder the more notes that are engaged. But because percussion instruments are always fading in volume, it is not noticed as much...

ok I made a video to illustrate what I'm talking about

When I saw the video - I thought maybe this is due to damper resonance being an effect placed on the string PART and somehow the effect is causing this.

My quick way to test for the effects contributing to issues is to turn them off. It's an easy first-pass thing to do if there are gremlins that do not pop out as being caused by something else. I touch the "FX" icon at the top of the touchscreen - then turn off Insertion + System + Master. All effects off. At one point, we had a pushbutton for this. Commentary aside - I find this indeed does fix the volume swell with sustain depressed. Now I turn them off one-by-one to figure out which place to go look. What I find is that insertion effects are the culprit. So I go into PART 2 and look at the insertion effects. I can turn those "off" one-by-one too if both are active by setting InsA or InsB to "Thru" OR pressing the "OFF" button for that effect. That's with Insertion Effects turned ON (globally). Oh, look. InsA is "Damper Resonance" and InsB is "Thru". I know Thru isn't going to react at all to the sustain pedal - but boy did my theory pan out as there's damper resonance as ins 1. I know a piano is a string instruments - but we probably don't want ensemble strings to have a damper resonance effect unless you really want this kind of thing to happen. So turn off InsA or set InsA to Thru. Boom (fist bump).

The point of this soundmondo performance wasn't meant to solve all your problems. It's a starting point to demonstrate something other than effects. We got here probably because PART2 started as a piano and maybe JM tools were used to change the waveform -- or who knows. I'm not sure any of the preset string ensembles have damper resonance. Going through all of the "Strings" category with "Ensemble" (single PART) as the sub-category - none of them do. So you may want to copy the insertion effects from one of these single-PART ensemble strings.

I think it'd be good to get to the point where "silver platter" fixes are not necessary. Where a soundmondo trade doesn't have to be 100% usable - but you can take the pieces that are what you need to solve your issue - and apply them to your own Performances which may be constructed more the way you want them (without these insertion effect "issues" ).

so damper resonance on the insert was the colporate ,well now I know and I should of looked there, it was driving me crazy the last couple of days, I'm finally getting a handle on this keyboard , you guys have been a big help thanks again

Yeah, strings don’t have Sustain pedals and certainly don’t need Damper Resonance... however, there is nothing wrong with science fiction! The behavior of Damper Resonance is programmable. It is to designed to mimic the reverberation inside the sound box of an acoustic instrument. It is generated by the notes you are playing that have been captured by the Sustain pedal. Only when the Sustain pedal is engaged does the Damper Resonance Effect generate its effect. Whether the sound is mixed larger or smaller than the signal causing it is programmable. Whether it makes the behavior lessen in volume or swell the volume is programmable.

The Damper Resonance is like a Reverb but only for notes engaged by the Sustain pedal. If you are copying acoustic piano setting to the strings or pad, consider that Damper Resonance for String sounds (that don’t decay) would definitely fall under the realm of science fiction.

In the “Balad Piano/Str/B3~$” I simply set the AEG of the String sound to mimic the behavior of a piano. I gave it a Percussion instrument’s Envelope. This way it behaves better underneath the piano. It’s a bit sci-fi, strings don’t really behave anything like this... but it allows you play the sound as a piano with a string-like backing.

Since Sustain pedal behavior affects the Damper Resonance — and because we are typically dealing with a sound that would be fading out, if you set the Half Damper setting to adjust the level higher, that’s what you’ll get... when you step on the pedal. On sounds that are not fading out (Decay 2 Level is not going lower) sustain actual latches the Note at a specific Level... engaging more notes will get louder rather quickly. Half Dampering and the Damper Resonance work with the Sustain pedal and are two very pianocentric parameters... when used outside the intended use, you can write your own rules. But understand the behavior as being designed to mimic piano functions related to sound behavior in response to the Sustain pedal.

Thanks for the question...