There are times when I think the Motion Sequencer was merely a wrapping of customisation and "Feature Marketing" around what would otherwise have been the modulation kitbag of the Montage/MODX.

The biggest evidence: No tempo syncing of the FM-X Part LFO - the one that most definitely needs and deserves to have tempo syncing as one of its options.

When they went and made the modulation kitbag into the Motion Sequencer, I think they forgot to go back around and up the power and flexibility of the LFOs for Parts.

Which might also explain that odd absence of a sine wave.

Fred - what about using the Motion Sequencer?

- Edit a part and choose the "Common" tab
- Select the "Motion Seq" tab
- Click "Load Sequence"
- Select "Preset" then you'll see a couple of pages of motion sequences. You can see "Big Sine 1" and "Big Sine 2"

This is what "Big Sine 1" looks like:

Andrew - I've heard the expression "the squeaky wheel gets the grease", but in your case I wish you would just quit dumping irrelevant toxic responses in people's threads. I think by now we all get you don't like this synth lol.

So sad, still yet thinking, since first saw it in late 2016, Montage will never be at my reach...so truly complex.
Staring at that page , Big Sine 1, and still wondering what I could possibly do with it...
Perhaps I might better just go, buy and start touching...but I see it so hard to understand.
What a pity...

Fernando - Initially - yes... it is a little impenetrable, and much of how it is organised is counter intuitive. This gets annoying and sometimes even infuriating.

Yamaha were very close to brilliance, but that last (and most important) 20% of design effort never occurred.

Part of this is a very dry approach by Yamaha towards how things are, and why they are the way they are. Their expectations of their users' abilities are what they lean on, rather than holistic design, to solve problems of understanding how to do things within their system.

And they lean on Bad Mister.

Bad Mister's posts are the other extreme - with enormous and prodigious insights into how things are.

Sometimes, for me, speculating as to why things are helps find some coherence and get more intimate with a way that leads to being able to THEN intuit a little of the whats and the hows, and to conceive of creative ways to exploit what is there.

In this case, and the envelopes, I suspect the CPU became a limiting factor.

Calculating (evaluating) a curve at a given position in time is much more computationally expensive than evaluating the position on a straight line.

When modulating the rate of the LFOs, and modulating the rate modulation of the rate of the LFOs, whilst being able to do the same with some aspects of the envelopes, the little processor in the Montage/MODX might have been at a point where evaluating curved LFOs and/or curved envelopes became a bit of a computing issue.

So they leaned on the Motion Sequencer to provide some of these curve features.

Which is, as you rightly point out, a little like using a hammer to crack an egg.

FM-X LFOs offer sine waveforms as an option. This matches previous FM generations. SY-77 as an example. Matching with that previous SY-77 example - the AWM2 side doesn't include sine for the LFOs.

Using 16 steps of the user LFO (Part LFO, AWM2) - you can draw something approximating sine.

If I look across the pond at other gear - the Moog Mother-32 has 2 shapes. Square and triangle. I know this isn't a direct competitor to Montage - but just a random example of other gear that is more limited than Montage in the LFO shapes. There are going to be other examples. That's not to say other gear doesn't have it. Korg Kronos, and ASM Hydrasynth, Roland Fantom are examples that have sine (among others) shapes for LFOs.

(For the Rompler section) I'm not sure absence or presence of SIN LFOs is grounds for embarrassment. It is, however, a difference between Montage and the direct competition.

Fred:

The KA Pro CS80 Sound Set is free and VERY good.

I can't rate this sound set highly enough.

It completes what you probably thought you always wanted out of the Montage/MODX as default demos of Yamaha-ness.

But, much more importantly, it shows a professional sound designer using (and abusing) the Motion Sequencer, even for relatively static sounds, to make up for exactly what you're finding is missing from the 'base' architecture.

He has even, very generously, included a folder of his Motion Sequencer presets, so you can see them for what they are. It's a wonderful thing to see and explore and realise is necessary. Mentally liberating to realise this is how Peter deals with some of the issues you're encountering.

Jason:

The LFO with Sine is limited to pitch, amp and filter. And also is not tempo sync-able.

There is a grace and elegance to a sine wave that's much more desirable for certain modulations than all other wave shapes, due to its perfect round nature creating perfectly smooth transitions. If that's what you're ever wanting, you know why you want it, and what it is. Fred is definitely in that group of users.

As am I.

I agree with Fred, it is a little embarrassing that something so heavily reliant on sine waves for more than half of its being (FM-X) doesn't have a sine wave that's both tempo sync-able and able to be set to control anything that any other wave can control, in the base LFO architecture for each FM-X part, at the very least.

And it would bring a wonderful natural additional smoothness to core motions of the AWM synth samples.

I'm not defending the design. FM-X has sine LFO.

I didn't address this part

Besides, we don't have Sines choice of Osc Elements either. (Of course we have Sines in the FM-X, that's the basis!)

As I read it - this seems to be talking about the sines as the oscillator itself outside of FM-X (not as an LFO). AWM2 as sample playback supports sine as the "oscillator" using Waveform 2139 "Sine".

Thank you all for your answers. First, let me precise that I love this synth. Its sound quality is absolutely gorgeous. It offers me a fantastic complement to my other synths, in particulary my Kronos.
Diving progressively deeper in it, I just point out some things that can be enhanced.

Thank you Michel for your Motion Sequencer tip. I will try this.

Jason said :

FM-X LFOs offer sine waveforms as an option. This matches previous FM generations. SY-77 as an example. Matching with that previous SY-77 example -

Absolutely. I was wrong about that. Thanks.

Jason said :

Jason wrote: Using 16 steps of the user LFO (Part LFO, AWM2) - you can draw something approximating sine.

Yes, I know we can draw user waves. But you can draw a Triangle, not a Sine one. That's what I've pointed out.

Jason said :

Jason wrote: If I look across the pond at other gear - the Moog Mother-32 has 2 shapes. Square and triangle. I know this isn't a direct competitor to Montage - but just a random example of other gear that is more limited than Montage in the LFO shapes. There are going to be other examples. That's not to say other gear doesn't have it. Korg Kronos, and ASM Hydrasynth, Roland Fantom are examples that have sine (among others) shapes for LFOs.

Exactly, we can't compare root analog synth as the Mother 32 with the Montage (except that my Grandmother has a Sine LFO wave.
Concerning the Kronos, indeed it has 18 LFO waves and each one can be shaped with a "Shape" parameter !!

Jason said :

(For the Rompler section) I'm not sure absence or presence of SIN LFOs is grounds for embarrassment. It is, however, a difference between Montage and the direct competition.

For an LFO, in slow motions, the difference between Triangle and Sine is clearly audible. My "little" Behringer Deepmind 12 provides the both triangle and sine LFO waves.

We could even speak of another convenient LFO feature : the Sample and Glide, which is a Sample and Hold with progressive transitions.

Andrew said :

Fred:

The KA Pro CS80 Sound Set is free and VERY good.

I can't rate this sound set highly enough.

It completes what you probably thought you always wanted out of the Montage/MODX as default demos of Yamaha-ness.

But, much more importantly, it shows a professional sound designer using (and abusing) the Motion Sequencer, even for relatively static sounds, to make up for exactly what you're finding is missing from the 'base' architecture.

He has even, very generously, included a folder of his Motion Sequencer presets, so you can see them for what they are. It's a wonderful thing to see and explore and realise is necessary. Mentally liberating to realise this is how Peter deals with some of the issues you're encountering.

Thanks a lot, I will explore that.

Jason said :

I'm not defending the design. FM-X has sine LFO.

I didn't address this part

Besides, we don't have Sines choice of Osc Elements either. (Of course we have Sines in the FM-X, that's the basis!)

As I read it - this seems to be talking about the sines as the oscillator itself outside of FM-X (not as an LFO). AWM2 as sample playback supports sine as the "oscillator" using Waveform 2139 "Sine".

Indeed, you're right. I did a bad research and didn't find it.

argh... my mistake on focusing too much on the LFOs.

Good catch, Jason!

I'm a huge fan of the Saw samples.

Btw, any ideas why, when using the KA Pro presets, usage of the settings assignment button for modulation is blocked out, and the Motion Sequencer's ability to pick destinations at Part level is not there?

I'll try to translate your question into something I know - let me know if I'm off target.

Btw, any ideas why, when using the KA Pro presets, usage of the settings assignment button for modulation is blocked out

I'm going to say what you mean is - why doesn't the [CONTROL ASSIGN] button light up anymore even though I know I'm selecting parameters that can be modulated?

If you look at the destinations used in any given Part - 16 destinations is the maximum count. "Mod/Control"->"Control Assign" - filter by "All" - then count how many destinations are in use. 16? The cup is full. You can add no more. Delete a destination if you need to add a new one.

THANK YOU JASON!!!

This is it.

Instead of flashing when full and/or showing a popup informing the user that all 16 assignments have already been made... nada... bananas.

Super intuitive.