There are great points. I haven't summarized the bugs I see in the interface because I have not updated firmware yet. There are also other "glitches" I've noticed at least in the 1.02 firmware. Sometimes the previous menu arrow at the top of the screen brings me somewhere other than the last screen. In motion control, the GUI does strange things when you're editing the curves. There doesn't seem to be a "cancel" which leaves the curve alone. It's nice you can edit any curve when editing user curves - but it seems there are times when the curve was changed when I didn't expect it and I'd have to go back and put the curve back.

LEDs have different conventions. Sometimes, when dim or bright meaning you can hit the button. But sometimes there are buttons that are off (LED off) which can still be pressed to cause some action. I can understand sometimes there are exceptions in order to make the best of the resources (number of buttons with LEDs vs. number of items conveyed). However, the lack of common convention sometimes goes against the grain without an apparent gain.

As far as auto-converting I'm a bit torn on this one. My previous board is a MO6 - which will "never" receive an on-board converter. Converting samples is not something I would do on the bandstand. Anything I can't see ever doing at a gig I'd be fine with doing in the "studio" using a PC. File conversion an importing is one of these things - although native support on-board is "gravy". Given the underlying architecture, converters and such are much more modular with the added benefit that I suppose they could release a linux version of the utility which could be run on any platform with a virtual hypervisor (Mac, PC, ARM, varios SoCs, Android).

It's an interesting inflection point not only with Yamaha, but also the industry as technology goes through its trends.

An audio clip of the arp behavior (#14) and basic setup parameters may help illustrate the issue.

Without matching your firmware (I know, I need to upgrade) - sorry I can't help more and some of the above may not be relevant in the later firmware.

Thanks, Jason!

You're right, I should explain the #14 and that's why I attached the attacks.mp3 file.

For the first half of the mp3, I use basic "CFX + FM EP" with super knob turned maximum right. I'm playing 8 keys (d-a-c-e-f-a-c-e) and try to play these really tight, at the same moment to avoid arpeggio.

For the second half, I added "Trigger Horizon" pad but I turned its volume down to zero and played the same keys the same way (these are a bit longer, it's not the point). There comes the loose timing of chords. It isn't obvious for everybody, but it is crucial for some kind of music, for recordings, etc.

I understand that there's a lot of AWM2 elements:
- 3 piano sounds is 6+3+8 elements + keyoff (although there's only 1 element+1 keyoff playing for each key),
- the pad is 3+3 (6 elements for each key)
There's also FM-X engine on "Keys->FM Piano" and on "Pad->Bright" = two FM sounds per each key.

This adds to 7 AWM2 elements per key at the moment of keypress (but there's 24 elements to check if they are needed per key) and 2 FM-X sounds.

Multiplying by 8 keys it is 56 AWM2 elements when keypressing (192 to check!) and 16 FM-X sounds.

That 56/192 elements was the weak point of Motif XS and XF. Playing K-Sound piano (8 velocities upto G5, 8 velocities with long release for G#5+, resonance, keyoff, 2 elements per pad or strings) was a bit dangerous without experience (the glissando could get to the end even one second after me). That's why K-Sound turned off the hammers noise as default.

Of course Montage is a lot faster and comes out better in such test, but it's not enough for professional recording or very tight-playing bands. That's why I suggest to prioritize sounds basing on "Key On Delay -> Length" parameter. In the indicated scenario, I'd love to set "Key On Delay -> Length" = 1 or 2 for pad sounds to prioritize the "Keys->FM Piano" sound. (At the moment, setting any value, even much bigger, doesn't affect tightness of sounds with "Key On Delay -> Length" = 0.) The algorithm can also base on Amp EG->Attack value (any >0 value sets the sound lower priority as the sound is less critical.) The last factors for setting priorities might be sound category (eg. pads are always less important than drums/pianos/brasses/leads) and current volume of the part/element.

The talented programmer can do this and there's no need for faster hardware components then 🙂

(Yamaha Team: As I said, I have more ideas to improve Yamaha synthesizers for playing musicians, if you would like working with me. In such case, please contact me via email or fb profile.)

Thanks, Jason!

You're right, I should explain the #14. That's why I recorded the https://soundcloud.com/kamilbaranski/montage-attacks .

For the first half of the mp3, I use basic "CFX + FM EP" with super knob turned maximum right. I'm playing 8 keys (d-a-c-e-f-a-c-e) and try to play these really tight, at the same moment to avoid arpeggio. For the second half, I added "Trigger Horizon" pad but I turned its volume down to zero. I played the same keys the same way (these are a bit longer, it's not the point). There comes the loose timing of chords. It isn't obvious for everybody, but it is crucial for some kind of music, for recordings, etc.

I understand that there's a lot of AWM2 elements:
- 3 piano sounds is 6+3+8 elements + keyoff (although there's only 1 element+1 keyoff playing for each key),
- the pad is 3+3 (6 elements for each key)
There's also FM-X engine on "Keys->FM Piano" and on "Pad->Bright" = two FM sounds per each key.

This adds to 7 AWM2 elements per key at the moment of keypress (but there's 24 elements to check if they are needed per key) and 2 FM-X sounds. Multiplying by 8 keys it is 56 AWM2 elements when keypressing (192 to check!) and 16 FM-X sounds.

That 56/192 elements was the weak point of Motif XS and XF. Playing K-Sound piano (8 velocities upto G5, 8 velocities with long release for G#5+, resonance, keyoff, 2 elements per pad or strings) was a bit dangerous without experience (the glissando could get to the end even one second after me). That's why K-Sound turned off the hammers noise as default.

Of course Montage is a lot faster and comes out better in such test, but it's not enough for professional recording or very tight-playing bands. That's why I suggest to prioritize sounds basing on "Key On Delay -> Length" parameter. In the indicated scenario, I'd love to set "Key On Delay -> Length" = 1 or 2 for pad sounds to prioritize the "Keys->FM Piano" sound. (At the moment, setting any value, even much bigger, doesn't affect tightness of sounds with "Key On Delay -> Length" = 0.) The algorithm can also base on Amp EG->Attack value (any >0 value sets the sound lower priority as the sound is less critical.) The last factors for setting priorities might be sound category (eg. pads are always less important than drums/pianos/brasses/leads) and current volume of the part/element.

The talented programmers team can do this and there's no need for faster hardware components then 🙂

(Yamaha Team: As I said, I have more ideas to improve Yamaha synthesizers for playing musicians, if you would like working with me. In such case, please contact me via email or fb profile.)

Maybe you've got that soundcloud recording as private - I get a "We can't find that track" error here.

You're right. I revert it back to public. Hope everything's OK now. The link is https://soundcloud.com/kamilbaranski/montage-attacks .

(I can't log into yamahasynth forum with Firefox. There's "Bad Request HTTP Error 400. The request is badly formed." instead of the button in the upper-right.)

Since then, I'd ask one more question:

16. Maximum polyphony which is 128 for AWM2 right now. Are there any plans to increase this number? It is not enough for performance like "All 9 Bars!" - holding a chord when playing wide glissando with the second hand results in chord keys being decreased to 2-3 because of the polyphony limit.

Greetings,
KB