Yamaha Montage M released... c´mon Korg!

[sosvos]

This is a beast! https://europe.yamaha.com/en/products/m ... index.html

[Pedja]

While Korg plays with recycling, Yamaha works and improves. The Yamaha M series is a real upgrade. I don't understand why Korg surrendered?
Yamaha M seria of instruments are fantastic, Bravo Yamaha!!!

[average_male]

This is a beast!

Beast as in, "an animal, especially a large or dangerous four-footed one."

Seems pretty tame to me. I do like the multiple pianos selection and the large stacking and polyphony it offers. But my money is on Korg to come out with something better.

[TheKorgDude]

Meh, I think Korg has proven that there's far more ergonomic and intuitive approaches to the pitch/mod wheel, and I don't know why other manufacturers don't seem to be picking up on that.

I don't think I could go back to a separate pitch/mod wheel style keyboard at this point.

[ChrisDuncan]

Having recently bought a Fantom, I saw a lot of features in the video that seemed to come from that platform. Largely, it felt like Yamaha was playing catch up to Korg and Roland.

Their big features are the analog synth engine and polyphonic aftertouch. The latter is a step ahead of the pack to be sure, but both Kronos and Fantom already had robust analog synth environments, and the Kronos has an FM engine as well.

It's definitely a cool keyboard, but nothing that would make me want to sell my Kronos or Fantom to buy. About the only thing I could do on the M that I can't already do is the polyphonic aftertouch, and that's not a major factor for what I do.

I did find it interesting that Yamaha opted to refresh their flagship and keep it a flagship where Korg deprecated the Kronos in favor of the ModX / Fantom-0 / "Kronos Lite" style Nautilus.

That said, it remains to be seen which was the wiser path in terms of making money. Korg is assuming that there's no longer a market for higher dollar flagships. Yamaha's pricing on the M is... optimistic. We'll see how it fares after the initial new product excitement (and holiday buying season) fades.

I can't imagine that Korg has hung up its design hat and given up on new products. My gut feeling is that the Nautilus was playing catch up to the ModX and Fantom-0, and also buying them time to figure out what to do next. Honestly, these flagship platforms do so much already that it's difficult to imagine a next generation flagship doing anything that would be considered groundbreaking.

And sadly, my crystal ball is still in the shop.

[average_male]

Another noteworthy point is that there will be a VST M released next year and will be free for owners of a physical M. Wondering if the sound will be 1:1 between the two. From what I gather, this is what a lot of folks wished Korg would have done with the Kronos.

[MartinHines]

Another noteworthy point is that there will be a VST M released next year and will be free for owners of a physical M. Wondering if the sound will be 1:1 between the two. From what I gather, this is what a lot of folks wished Korg would have done with the Kronos.

https://usa.yamaha.com/products/music_p ... Y#d2153609

Hopefully the VST will eventually be available to non-keyboard owners, similar to Korg’s modwave, opsix, and wavestate

[ChrisDuncan]

https://usa.yamaha.com/products/music_p ... Y#d2153609

Hopefully the VST will eventually be available to non-keyboard owners, similar to Korg’s modwave, opsix, and wavestate

My guess is that it controls the keyboard rather than being a sound library vst like, say, Native Instruments stuff. But of course, that's complete speculation.

[TheKorgDude]

I can't imagine that Korg has hung up its design hat and given up on new products. My gut feeling is that the Nautilus was playing catch up to the ModX and Fantom-0, and also buying them time to figure out what to do next. Honestly, these flagship platforms do so much already that it's difficult to imagine a next generation flagship doing anything that would be considered groundbreaking.

And sadly, my crystal ball is still in the shop.

I don't think anybody really wants anything groundbreaking, the Kronos just needs to be brought into the 2020s. The nautilus didn't achieve that.

A Kronos with a more iPad-like touch screen, a more user friendly UI, upgraded 64 bit architecture and with 2020s still RAM/SSD/CPU specs, near unlimited polyphony, and improved editor software would be fantastic.

[ChrisDuncan]

I don't think anybody really wants anything groundbreaking, the Kronos just needs to be brought into the 2020s. The nautilus didn't achieve that.

A Kronos with a more iPad-like touch screen, a more user friendly UI, upgraded 64 bit architecture and with 2020s still RAM/SSD/CPU specs, near unlimited polyphony, and improved editor software would be fantastic.

Since Yamaha and Roland already had the lower cost models of ModX and Fantom-0, maybe that was the motivation for the Nautilus since it's comparable to the other two - it's "flagship lite."

Perhaps they did that to fill a gap in their product line and are secretly scheming on a new Kronos model that they're not willing to admit to just yet.

The UI and usability features were the main reason I bought the Fantom, so the Kronos could certainly use some refreshing if they're going to keep it alive as the flagship.

Seems as reasonable as anything else. If so, maybe you'll get the upgrade you want after all!

[kronoSphere]

Maybe Korg is waiting for the quantic motherboard !

[steveyoung29]

I think Yamaha have missed some things. Sequencer should be at least 32 tracks. I can't see it started but midi also over USB. And there needs to be additionally at least one USB C connection, that can also send video over USB C to a monitor, or two, or three....

The £4,000, those things should be included without the asking, particularly if it really is to be considered the new Flagship Workstation Synth. Nearly there, but missed the target this time round.

Steve

[blazerunner]

Wasn't expecting to see a new flagship of this level but Yamaha knows it's customers and what they want when it comes down to their flagships. That's a brand that listens. I liked the Montage but at the time the Kronos was still fresh and the Kronos was what I was familiar with so I went with that. It's odd that now the Kronos is dead in the water and the Montage M is a fresh new fish. I'm curious to see about the depth of the sequencer and the ability of this keyboard to interface with a DAW.

[Mike Conway]

First impressions are that the Montage M is magnificent. The Kronos still kicks ass with wavesequencing, sampling, sequencing/HD recording, and more engines. I could not complete a project on the M, like I can on the Kronos, but I sure would not mind having one.

Interesting that AWM tops out at 128 note polyphony, while the 13 year old Kronos SGX2 pianos are 100 dual stereo voices (400 mono), 140 on lossless sample RAM/ROM. The only way to achieve 400 note polyphony on the Montage M is to combine internal AWM (128) with user sample import AWM (128), FM-X (128), and AN-X (16). Powerful, but a little misleading.

The Montage M has 10 gigs (when converted to 16 bit linear format) of ROM and 3.7 gigs of User sample import space. So 13.7 gigs of waves.

Korg Kronos streams up to 20+ gigs of lossless waves.

My biggest draw to the Montage is multiple filter types, the easily recordable 8 part arps, the secondary display and overall UI. I would love to have this as a 2nd main board.

Wasn't expecting to see a new flagship of this level

People like flagship workstations. I don't see them ever going away as long as people need keys to play on.

Honestly, these flagship platforms do so much already that it's difficult to imagine a next generation flagship doing anything that would be considered groundbreaking.

The foundations are there, but better housekeeping is always welcome The Korg platform could use UI improvement, increased RAM/Disk capacities, more program/combi locations, faster processing speeds, for quick bootups, greater polyphony. IFX should be married to the program so that they sound great in any mode. Common sense improvements, such as also marrying wavesequences and drum kits to program, without having to always workaround in Global. Combis should retain programs in a combi shell, so that loading different programs don't disrupt Combi program pointing. I would also like to see more filter types.

The Yamaha M series is a real upgrade. I don't understand why Korg surrendered?

Korg has remained far ahead, since the OASYS. They have become a bit complacent. Head to head with the Montage, the Kronos still trumps in many categories, like disk streaming more waveforms, full sample and song capabilities, more engine types, etc. But, I agree that Korg has allowed the competition to close in. Maybe, they wanted to see Yamaha's and Roland's hands, and then make adjustments for the next flagship.

The overwhelmingly positive reactions to the Montage M proves that interest in the workstation market has not dried up. I hope that its success wakes up Korg.

[ChrisDuncan]

Korg has remained far ahead, since the OASYS.

In terms of the top three flagships, if I had to buy today my ranking would still be Kronos, Fantom, Montage. From a sound engine perspective, the Kronos is head and shoulders above the rest in terms of capabilities. The Fantom got my attention because of usability (plus I really wanted the big four classic Roland synths without additional hardware). I like the Fantom for that, but the sound engines in the Kronos still reign supreme for my taste.

I don't own any version of Montage, and after the M I still feel no motivation to get one. That said, I do agree it looks like a wonderful instrument on its own merits. There's no mistaking it as a world class workstation.

It's only in comparison that it appears less desirable to me. In terms of sound engines it feels less than a Kronos. The M does handles some UI / workflow things better than the Kronos. However, not as well as the Fantom (it really looks like the M took some inspiration from Roland there).

For me, the Fantom doesn't have the heavy lifting of the Kronos engines, but that's okay. I already have a Kronos. The Kronos, as has been noted, is desperately behind in UI / workflow, but that's okay. I already have a Fantom. The M doesn't bring anything to the party that the other two don't arlready cover. As I mentioned, it really feels like Yamaha has been playing catch up. Nonetheless, if the M was all I had, I'd still be having a good time.

It would also be great if you werre right about Korg laying back and waiting for Roland / Yamaha to show their hand. If Korg took what they already have and added what they learned from Roland, and to a lesser extent Yamaha, their next-gen workstation could really take it to the next level.