A little addition to my comment above:
with "new voices for the montage" I mean for e.g. the Bösendorfer that will be available in May.

Oliver wrote:

Hi,

I have read that all the additional voices from the MotifXF will be compatible with the new montage.
I´m thinking of the premium contents pack and others. Is this true?
If so, then my next question is if the new voices for the montage will be compatible with the "old" Motif XF.
The montage has ten elements per voice so there is a little difference to the Motif XF.

thanks for replies!

Hi, Oliver, thanks for your questions, and welcome to YamahaSynth!

The Montage is able to load Motif XF VOICES... that much is true. All the Premium and Anniversary data is compatible. They load directly to Montage.
It places a Motif XF Voice into a "Single Part" of a Montage Performance.

No, Montage data cannot be loaded to a Motif XF. First, there are no Voices in Montage. Montage has a lookup table that will allow it to load previous Motif ES/XS/XF Voice data to Part 1 of an empty Montage Performance; your XF has no ability to translate Montage data (sorry). If you understand Motif XF - 8 Elements (each containing a Waveform) make up the basic playable entity, a Voice. In Montage, 8 Parts (each containing the equivalent of an XF Voice) make up the basic playable entity, a Performance. A Performance is made up of as many as 8 Parts.

In Motif XF you could have a Voice that was a single Element (Waveform). A maximum of 8 Waveforms per playable program, Voice. Each Element (Waveform) is a complete synth with an Oscillator, a Filter, Filter EG, Amplifier, Amplifier EG, LFO, etc., etc.,
When loaded into a Montage that Voice would appear in a Performance that contained a single Part. As many as eight Parts can be assigned to a Performance. A maximum of 64 Waveforms per playable program. Think of all this power. Each Performance could be used to create a single complex, very detailed instrument sound, or could be used as an entire ensemble of instruments... It's really the programmer's choice, how to use all of this power.

_ Performances are defined similarly to what you know in the Motif XF, except there are now 8 Parts, and 8 arpeggiators.
_ Performance is the only mode. As mentioned, you could use all of this to construct a single instrument or an ensemble or a bit of both.
_ A Performance recalls sixteen Parts, each Part is the equivalent of an XF Voice.
_ Eight of those sixteen Parts can be under "Keyboard Control" - which means they can be played directly by you and/or an assigned arpeggiator under your control.

I know this is, at first, something different to get your head around. The significance of this is the degree of real time control.
As to loading new stuff into the older product, no. Not even single Part Montage Performances are backward compatible. (Most things are not in this arena).

The Montage, in many ways is a departure from the Motif-series... although it certainly builds on the Motif architecture, as you can see. It is a music synthesizer that has massive potential for constructing new musical adventures.

The Bosendorfer (Imperial Grand) Library will be a promotional item, please lookout for details.

Very informative reply, as usual Bad Mister; thanks much for your expertise.

Ordered Montage, but it has not arrived yet.; also have an XF.

One issue I will have is if I keep or sell the XF, and that depends on what I can acceptably port to the Montage.

I use XF Performance Mode 95%+ of the time, so the new approach on Montage makes sense to me as it is preferable to mode changes.

So if I start with a 4-part XF Performance, and given the Voice compatibility (to be imported to a Montage Performance as you indicate), the steps I envision are:

1) Import the 4 voices constituting the XF performance into a single Montage Performance
2) Likewise import or recreate the effects associated with the XF Performance
3) If one of those Voices in the XF Performance uses an Arp, import or recreate the Arp on the Montage as well

My question is then, would the associated effects/Arps from the XF be readily imported; or will they have to be manually 'recreated' on the Montage.

Thanks in advance,
Mark