As a means of encouraging greatness - I often cite things that could be improved. Sometimes I say some general positive things or defend Montage against emotionally based scrutiny (like my dog bit me and it's Montage's fault).

But the other day I was taking a look at one form of the "bones" of Montage. And that is its internal presets and how they're made up. As an instrument company combined with having a piano-like interface on this particular instrument -- and having a legacy of actual pianos (the reference is often made) --- this sets up a bias for making sure the piano sounds have "special care".

If I graphed how many samples are "spent" on each instrument - Pianos would win for standard AWM2 instrument sounds.

The "easy" performance construction of a piano for a CF3 comes from a multi-sample with 204 samples. I say easy because one set gives you 3 velocity levels already pre-setup for you. For the same instrument, there are so many sample sets cut different ways (more dynamic soft-, soft, soft+, med-, med, med+, hard-, hard, hard+) these skip a few samples (2-3 keys per sample) in terms of sampling resolution per key - but you end up with 612 samples for all those dynamics (expressive range) along with the ability to still combine in the every-key-is-sampled version if you need to. And the key off noise which I think has more detail than needed - they really spent a lot of time on even the key off sounds.

I mean, the man hours of doing this programming - even if somehow semi-automated - is fairly astonishing. Other threads show Yamaha doesn't necessarily publish these kind of details - but it would be great to make public some of this to keep everyone aware of the lace (intricate detail involved) as much as the glossy black paint.

"Wow, look at how much data this part of the piano sample takes" that I observed translates to - wow, look how expressive/responsive this instrument is - and how much "character" it has.

It's funny you mention keyscapes because I was 2 days ago looking at their youtube video with Greg Phillinganes. That sent me off on a journey checking out Greg's interviews (including the redacted Red Bull music one - really a horrible chop shop where the editing floor has a lot of great stuff - where he plays). His response is authentic - because I believe he can be nothing other than authentic in this context. So I did "like" just seeing a master run keyscapes through the paces. Of course he could make a roll-up piano sound great (slight hyperbole) - but I'm more in tune with his relationship with the sound than what the sound is. His vocals weren't half bad either impersonating different singers.

Now keyscapes advertises at least twice the velocity resolution. And other techniques Montage doesn't employ (mainly modeling for sound creation). Although you could use FM to try to force Montage to do some of this - I wouldn't take that on. Pure rompler + effects is enough. Some of this targeted modeling business would be nice to have as an extra knob to turn - there's not a clear winner (sampled vs. modeled) for all parts of the sound.

Yamaha has been able to excel at the "less is more" game for a while. Less memory - better results as one example. Keyscapes in terms of sample size weighs tons more than Montage. Part of Yamaha's success is using compression. These days Yamaha does have the most it's had - still less - but more than before. Using "less" does allow for possibly a tighter loop as - although it takes time to decompress - it also takes time to push data around. The more data - the more latency at some point.

My main driver for hardware vs. software (like keyscapes) is the reliability. Even though most flagship keyboards are all some form of a computer behind the curtains - they still are a 1-trick-pony computer streamlined to make noises. When I try to make music with a general purpose PC - all kinds of things start falling apart despite the relative success others have had with software. I believe the software route has more moving parts and therefore has a lower MTBF as a result regardless.

Thanks for the perspective.