Welcome to the forum! 

And a 'bloody' (literally!) welcome to the 'bleeding edge' of MIDI 2.0 and Montage M.

Our company regularly contributes to the forums primarily for Montage M related content but are NOT associated with either Yamaha or Microsoft.

 I reported it to Pete over at Microsoft. But i was instructed to also post it here.

Blake does periodically monitor the forums but the better way to reach him privately would be to use the 'Contact Us' link at the bottom right of this page. That email will go directly to him at the support group.

Since the whole MIDI 2.0 area is so new it we think it important that Yamaha be made aware directly of any issues that arise with MIDI 2.0 in installing, configuring or using that functionality with the Montage M and Modx M models.

The lack of sufficient public documentation of what MIDI services are supported by the M or even how things are supposed to work makes it hard to know whether an issue is 'working as designed' or a serious problem that needs quick attention.

That said, we, and others, would be very interested in any info related to MIDI 2.0 issues that you might care to provide from time to time as we are also slowly working our way through Microsoft's staged rollout of the new services.

In that light please forgive us if we are intruding on a 'Blake only' issue.

Basically Montage M somehow gets knocked out as a midi device when Elektron Overbridge is running, but not only that I experiemented a bit and switching from Legacy mode to 2.0 requires I either restart Windows Midi Services or reinstall Yamaha Steinberg driver with MOntage M on and restart windows PC with the MOntage M ON the entire time for Windows to recognize it .

That sounds suspiciously like the issues that were discovered last November that caused the 2-month delay in the planned rollout of the midi 2.0 services. This is what Microsoft reported at that time:

• Failed Protocol Negotiation: If the Montage M was set to "Legacy Mode" (1.0) in its settings upon boot, the new Windows MIDI 2.0 service would sometimes fail to properly re-negotiate or detect the device when it was switched to USB MIDI 2.0 mode (Generic Driver, Legacy Mode OFF) afterward.

• Locked Service: When a UMP (Universal MIDI Packet) device like the Montage M was connected, it would activate the new MIDI 2.0 driver/service. If the system was not fully configured for 2.0 yet, the service would start discovery and lock the device, preventing it from falling back to the MIDI 1.0 driver until a full reboot.

• Result: The DAW would not see the Montage M, or it would appear as an incorrectly identified or inactive device.

Note - that didn't specifically involve Elektron Overbridge.

I experiemented a bit and switching from Legacy mode to 2.0 requires I either restart Windows Midi Services or reinstall Yamaha Steinberg driver with MOntage M on and restart windows PC with the MOntage M ON the entire time for Windows to recognize it .

Our understanding, from both Yamaha and Microsoft, is that Legacy Mode needs to be OFF when MIDI services performs its recognition activity. This is what Microsoft advised last November:

The fix was to ensure the Montage M was set to Generic and Legacy Mode OFF in its utility settings, then restart the computer so Windows could detect it properly in the new system

Also we had previously been advised that since the generic driver is needed it may be necessary to uninstall the Steinberg driver to avoid the wrong driver being involved in the recognition process.

The above highlights why you need to keep Yamaha in the primary loop (although your comments here would be appreciated). As users we can only report what WE have been advised and what our tests and results indicate.

But we have no way of knowing how this new MIDI stuff is 'supposed' to be working - only Yamaha knows that.

This problem surfaced in February sometime but really noticed it when Elektron released a new Overbridge update with their Syntakt update. Alos when I restored a DAW project with both pieces of equipment power on and running Montage M got knocked out.

Unfortunately that adds another layer to the issue. If the basic PC->Montage M functionality isn't working properly that can have direct impacts on any layer (e.g. Overbridge) on top. And the top layer can't really address problems in the lower layers.

Petes bug report is over on Github under Microsoft /Midi

Please post a link or sufficient info for us to locate that bug report. As a new forum user your links could get deleted so an issue number would be helpful.

As a secondary point, It does seem that the Steinberg audio driver portion causes the Syntakt to lose audio within the DAW 9using Overbridge), if i do the following: While project is open turn off the Montage M, the Daw then switches to something like FL studio ASIO driver but the syntakt goes silent. It requires repowering the Syntakt to get audio back on the device. not sure what that is. Something with how elektron overbridge works with other Asio drivers.

Have you been successful when you do NOT have other drivers installed? As mentioned earlier the M should not be in legacy mode and should use the generic driver. But if a steinberg/other driver is installed it could cause the M to not be recognized at all or not be recognized as a valid MIDI 2.0 device.

When you use 'Contact Us' to email Blake be sure to provide him with FULL details about your configuration: PC (cpu, memory, etc), OS version, any midi-specific add-ons (e.g. microsoft's midi toolkit), all audio drivers and software installed.

Here is a recent forum thread one of us contributed about the new midi 2.0 rollout. As you can see the MIDI 2.0 stuff is so new there haven't been any replies yet.

https://yamahasynth.com/community/montage-series-synthesizers/montage-m-initial-rollouts-of-user-facing-windows-11-with-midi-2-0-have-begun-but-there-still-seem-to-be-some-gotchas/#post-129779

Have you successful sending a MIDI-CI discovery message to your Montage M? If so could you post the results?

https://yamahasynth.com/community/montage-series-synthesizers/montage-m-sending-a-midi-ci-discovery-message-to-see-if-your-montage-m-is-midi-2-0-capable/#post-129919

You can also use Yamahasynth Ideascale as a bug report mechanism since the R&D reviews these weekly and have a direct line of site to the engineering teams.

Github issue #923 - https://github.com/microsoft/MIDI/issues/923

Put Montage M in MIDI 1.0 vendor driver Mode
Use the Yamaha/Steinberg vendor driver for the Montage M

From the customer report:

Issue Summary: MIDI ID Corruption (Feb/Mar 2026)
I suspect a recent Windows 11 update has caused a critical conflict between Elektron Overbridge and the Yamaha Montage M (Steinberg Driver). If Overbridge is active and the Montage is power-cycled, Montage MIDI breaks permanently until a full driver reinstall/restart.

The Verified Fix (Must be repeated if it breaks)
To resolve this, you must force Windows to rebuild the device node during active communication:

Power on and connect the Montage M.
Uninstall the Steinberg driver while the unit is on to trigger Windows to tear down the corrupted node.
Immediately reinstall the driver and RESTART PC.
This allows a "live handshake" that registers composite MIDI/audio endpoints before the Overbridge filter interferes. This remains stable only as long as the Montage stays powered on before launching your DAW. Turning off the Montage while Overbridge/Elektron gear is active will break it again.

No way to know for sure but this reads almost identical to what Microsoft reported last November

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/windows-music-dev/troubleshooting-recent-midi-issues-in-windows-11/

That earlier report lists several products that had issues

MIDI 2.0 Device problem

On a Windows 11 PC with KB5066835 installed, this impacts MIDI 2.0 UMP (Universal MIDI Packet) Data format devices, including the following, when MIDI 2.0 Mode is enabled:

• Native Instruments Komplete Kontrol S mk2 family
• Roland A88 MKII
• Studiologic SL Mk2 family
• Waldorf Iridium and Quantum family with recent MIDI 2.0 firmware
• Yamaha MODX M
• Yamaha Montage M
• Various other MIDI 2.0 test and pre-production devices

It does not impact devices which are MIDI 2.0 for MIDI-CI but which do not use the Universal MIDI Packet / MIDI 2.0 Data Format (Korg Keystage, for example).

When you plug in the MIDI 2.0 device, you may not be able to receive MIDI from it. The solution is to leave the device connected and then reboot your PC. You may have to repeat this is you add a hub or change USB ports in a way that makes Windows think it is a new device.

• Solution: Leave the MIDI 2.0 device attached, and then reboot your PC.

 

Needless to say any 'solution' that requires rebooting of things doesn't bode well for being 'ready for prime time'. Due to the complexity of a complete device manager rewrite on Windows such issues are to be expected. 

The goal is for the windows end of things to be able to:

1. detect all midi devices regardless of the midi version they support

2. determine which midi devices support midi 2.0 services and query (CI - capability inquiry) those devices to determine the level of support

3. provide support for midi 1.0 devices as reliably as supported in the past

4. provide support for midi 2.0 devices to the extent they are capable of such support

Microsoft has, by far, the harder job since to claim MIDI 2.0 compatibility it must either support ALL functionality in the current midi 2.0 standard or, at a minimum, document which services it doesn't yet support.

Vendors, on the other hand, need only support midi 2.0 functionality that they wish to support and even then that support can be introduced incrementally.

There will be a long road ahead to get all of the pieces working together as intended and in finding, and troubleshooting, issues that arise. Hopefully that process won't degrade into a 'finger pointing' exercise.

When Windows NT was in preproduction the testing I did often had to reboot to clear a hang, blue screen, or some other issue.  So the nickname I have to it was Windows NT Jr.

Just Reboot.

It's on brand to have reboots as a feature and not a bug. 

But, seriously, hopefully the industry will improve the condition of MIDI 1.0's evolution.

We think Midi 2.0 portends good things

But, seriously, hopefully the industry will improve the condition of MIDI 1.0's evolution.

Bound to happen. Meanwhile it is a 3-way 'chicken and egg' thing: OS vendor, Instrument Vendor, Daw/VST vendor.

They are each, in essence, bootstrapping each other up to get started. So it's gonna be bruises and bumps for a while.

Also the industry is distracted by the two letter shiny object that seems to be displacing nearly everything else.

Just make a batch file that restarts Windows midi services for now until they get it fixed