But if I were incorrect then the stage board wouldn't be a thing but it's a pretty big thing. Pro level musicians also use stage boards. I don't know the figures concerning numbers sold but the stage probably beats the Montage. Since I purchased the SY77 and then SY99 working at Waffle House I've purchased every arranger and synth Yamaha has made. Once I had about 20 SY77 & 99 in my room replacing the backlights for people. The guts had to be completely removed to get all the way to the screen. Repaired tons of AN1Xs and RS7000s and RM1Xs, DXs anything vintage. I probably know a little about these inside and out. Oh yeah I hand soldered those tact switch buttons by the thousands. I had to rig an SY77 with the screen and backlight interface routed out the back in order to test each new screen and backlight before it took me two hours to reassemble each unit. I'm an engineer and own my engineering company and I wasn't smart enough to figure out a lot about the Montage. I'm glad it's easy for some people but probably not most people. I'll be buying the Montage+ and I hope it's been refined and simplified.

[quotePost id=121356]I wasn't smart enough to figure out a lot about the Montage. I'm glad it's easy for some people but probably not most people. [/quotePost]
You didn't want to, that's all.
Tons of musicians out there who are much less technical than engineers and can use it just fine.
It's becoming a bit strange how you insist to project your very personal reasons and situation into defects of some instruments or reasons for the existence or various instrument classes like synths and stage keyboards.

[quotePost id=121336]You can very well use {Montage} just as a basic rompler.
Big touch screen, Category Search, Live Sets... probably one of the easiest boards to use if you just want to find a sound, load it and start playing.
Easy splits and layers right on the Performance home screen.
[/quotePost]
Well... maybe up to a point. 😉 Splits and layers, while extremely flexible, are not nearly as uncomplicated as on something like a CK, YC, or CP. There's a lot to know, and until you do, things may or may not go as you expect. Considerations include...

... adding a new split/layered part vs. replacing the sound in an existing split/layered part with a different one, and if the latter, which settings from the previous occupant of that part it should inherit vs. bringing in its own parameters, i.e. the "param. with part" options (see https://yamahasynth.com/learn/modx/mastering-modx-category-search)

... related to the above, the different kinds of category search options that come up when you're locating the sound you want to add as a split/layer, and what behaviors bring up one as opposed to the other (same link, but another wrinkle at https://www.yamahasynth.com/forum/perfromance-merge-vs-category-search )

... bringing in sounds that rely heavily on their own master effect settings, so they sound different when brought in to an existing performance as an additional split/layered sound (e.g. https://www.yamahasynth.com/forum/parts-not-sounding )

... attributes/controls of the sound combination can vary depending on whether you added sound B to sound A, or added sound A to sound B (e.g. https://yamahamusicians.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19689 )

... ramifications of single part sounds vs. multi-part sounds

... relative complication of octave-shifting any of your split/layered sounds, which is a common need when splitting/layering sounds. On the CK, to lower a split/layered sound by an octave, for example, you hold down the button for the part you want to shift, and hit the octave down button, done. On the Montage, there's a step to get to the Performance Home screen that you mention, but once there, it's actually a bunch of further navigation... I think you select the Part you want to shift (assuming it's a single-Part sound, so best case), hit Edit, tap Part Setting, tap Pitch, tap Note Shift, dial the knob down 12 steps until it says -12 , and then exit back out. The first is quick, and straight-forward, and something you could do on-the-fly in the middle of a song if you wanted to. Not the second. It's not hard, but it's not quite so quick-and-easy, either.

If all this was anything like it is on the CK, there wouldn't be all the detailed support and customer questions (or "surprise" results) related to doing these things on the Montage/MODX. But that's the trade-off. The Montage gives you maximum flexibility, which means more choices, more navigation, more to understand, more ways for things to go wrong, even for a "simple" function like split/layer. The CK does only the basics by comparison, but does them much more easily. But those are two different design goals.

Long, boring weekend, I reckon.

LOL. It was just ironic to see a reference to "easy splits and layers" when I had just recently seen all those posts of people having issues/confusions with adding split/layered parts. They were all from just the last couple of weeks! And having just gotten my hands on a CK, the easy octave switching made an impression on me.

Funny that YouTube just suggested this to me yesterday, for some reason 😀

(the important part is at 2:20)

[quotePost id=121418]Funny that YouTube just suggested this to me yesterday, for some reason 😀

(the important part is at 2:20)
[/quotePost]
Though don't forget, he finishes that part by saying "now it's still a little complicated, don't get me wrong..." 🙂

Obviously, the split/layer stuff is all do-able, and made more so not just by the manual, but by resources like the articles and Q&A on this forum. But that's not the same as saying it's easy, or comparably so to a CK, or that you don't have to put in a bunch more initial time to figure it out, or that there isn't some decent likelihood of something not necessarily behaving as you expected and you have to figure out why.

[quotePost id=121421][quotePost id=121418]But that's not the same as saying it's easy[/quotePost]
Oh yes it is.
"It's easy".
I just said it.

The guy in that video is wrong. Montage/MODX don't have a different workflow.

They released these products differently - as just work, no flow.