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Reasons for to change the Montage for a Motif XF

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Jason and Bad Mister :

After six month of using my Montage I am seriously considering to sell it and to buy and "old" but practical Motif XF with 2 Mutec 2GB Flash Ram boards and, if I get one, with a really old Fire Wire interface.

As I work as orchestrator and arranger, my main interest is to sequence (and hear) lots of tracks in realtime for to correct, mix and master them in the shortest possible time.

In my job "time is everything" because in most cases people pay per hour.

Sorry Jason and Bad Mister, the multipart performance design (instead of simple part voices) has become for me in a losing time nighthmare.

For to be useful, this type of approach requieres lots of modifications, that I think there will not be possible in this instrument, most of them are in the MIDI side and in the digital audio routing capabilities, but also in a lack of flexibility for to manage and free edit libraries.

In some areas Montage has excesive but unpractical and messy capabilities.
As an example: consider how usless is to have the possibility of to transmit in eight MIDI channels at the same time without having a handy, manual and direct control for to enable /select / change which channels I want to use and which I want to mute with a single touch (I am speaking of MIDI channels not of parts in a performance that is not the same concept) and at the same time you have only a SINGLE MIDI port for the eight channels reducing higly the possibilty of to control at the same time several independent sets of MIDI instruments or computers.

Very useful functions hidden in multiple layers of nested menus easy become useless.

I have a few doubts after taking the final decision:

I read in some place that the Motif XF has the ability of audio streaming directly from HD or portable Flash Drives. Is this true?

Has the Montage the same capabilities?

Is this a capability of the USB port or of LAN port of Motif XF?

The SP/DIF output of the Motif XF has the possibility to take the signal from individual channels or is only takes the signal from the Master Output'.

Without surpassing maximum number of allowed samples by the OS, with two Mutec boards (4 GB) Is it possible to address the full range of memory?

I know there are lots of features that I will lose, for me the most important is the FM-X engine, but I need the synth as a work tool for my job and not as and expensive intergalactical toy.

 
Posted : 21/11/2018 3:55 am
Jason
Posts: 7896
Illustrious Member
 

Not sure why you would need to apologize to me. I neither designed nor support the product. I'm just a keyboard player that owns one and deals with the same features/flaws anyone else does and tries to make the best out of it. There's a laundry list of things lost from the Motif XF time. Mostly touted as simplification to help the user focus on making music and less on setting up their keyboard. I'm not a big fan of simplification as I still try to stretch out Montage even though there's slightly less fabric this go-around (in certain dimensions).

I didn't think Yamaha keyboards really went down the "streaming" route. That means something slightly different to me than maybe it does to you.

There's an existing thread going into gory detail about those Mutec boards and those gory details: https://www.yamahasynth.com/ask-a-question/mutec-expansion-boards-yikes
Hint: I found it searching google for "site:yamahasynth.com mutec"

This post seems to say the S/PDIF port is a digital coax version of Main L&R. Having owned a Motif XF only a few days - I'm not sure what the routing capabilities of S/PDIF are (if there anything beyond being a mirror of Main L&R). https://yamahasynth.com/forum/motif-xf,-cubase-and-additional-audio-interface

 
Posted : 21/11/2018 6:14 am
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