I got blacklisted on Yamahasynth for this about the Montage

Cantabile
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Here is a major opportunity for C3 to gain some new customers. The Yamaha Montage has no MIDI receive flexibility. It is only 16 parts hard coded to each of the 16 midi channels. This has frustrated many users of the Montage 7 when using it in live situations with an 88 key controller. Yamaha has blacklisted any posts on their site complaining about it, and they have no plans to fix it with a firmware update. Yes, I was fairly expressive and angry.

Fortunately, C3 is a 100 percent fix for it. I am going to make a training video on it. Other companies have attempted to create programs to integrate hardware and software synths, all of which do not come close to C3. Camelot Pro is an attempt at it, and it falls short.

Anyway, C3 has resolved my buyer’s remorse and retained me as a Yamaha customer.

Hope it is okay to post the video link here when I get it done (I am super busy).

Just as I was going to give a shout out to the Yamaha forum concerning the Montage fix using C3, I was blacklisted (because I referred to the Montage as a powerful synth with a toy-like MIDI receive architecture).

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So, free speech is not welcome at Yamaha forum? I’ve been on many forums where people say whatever they feel to the max, and never get blacklisted. Ahh the power of C3!!

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I assume you mean the official Yamaha Synth forum and not Yamaha Forums?

There is a certain mod on Yamaha Synth who cannot take any criticism of any synth of theirs. His stock response is usually along the lines that you are basically too stupid to understand the brilliance of Yamaha.

If I treated my customers like this, I would be fired.

I am a long time Yamaha fan (EX5, SY99/SY77, FS1r, AN1x and a few others along the way) and I have the same criticism on the Montage, it has a really stupid MIDI implementation that makes it hard to integrate in a multi synth setup (esp if you do not want a computer on stage). Compared to the features on the EX5 and MOTIF in terms of external MIDI control it is a step backwards. In later OS releases they introduced Zone Master, so fine if you want to control external gear, but absolute rubbish if you want to control several Montage parts from an external single MIDI channel (e.g four layered performance parts). Basically you can’t as the receive channels are fixed. As a software engineer, I know that that would be pretty trivial to fix…

I have long held the view that Yamaha must have a “stupid quirks” department, in that no synth can be unleashed on the public unless it has a stupid quirk or two.

In the EX5 it was putting in a limitation that stopped a 16 part Multi-timbral performance from being able to play any more than two “layers” from the keyboard. Yet you could get around it by routing MIDI out to MIDI in!

The FS1r has a really amazing engine bit a) it is tortuous to program through its user interface, and Yamaha introduced a brilliant concept in FSEQs but then never released an editor for it!

PLGs - great concept, but you cannot program them from the front panel of a synth and you cannot read their contents - you have to dump content to them from an external editor, but they lose their content when you power off, unless you get the synth to save their content (which means that the content can be read…).

Etc, etc.

This MIDI problem that you describe in the Montage is its stupid quirk, which Yamaha are being lobbied to fix.

I have also posted on Yamaha Synth to say it is a pretty dumb limitation, but I am not worried about it, due to this wonderful software called Cantabile. :slight_smile:

Basically I just leave the Montage in single mode, and have Cantabile to do any MIDI routing/mapping to/from the Montage. Works a treat :slight_smile:

The other stupid quick in my view (and for which I was told that I did not understand the Montage) is that you can select a live set bank and live set slot via MIDI, but you cannot select a live set via MIDI (no problem with my Kronos).

So, I have live sets for general use, one for Welsh Floyd, one for my electronica music, etc. I have corresponding set lists in Cantabile, and when I select a song, I want the right live set to be selected. Currently I have to do that manually at the start of a gig. Not a biggie, but one more thing to forget… So I am lobbying for that as well.

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Thanks so much Derek!

Yes, I encountered the condescension of yamahasynth.com. They have a “good cop/bad cop” setup. Bad Mister is the bad cop and Jason is the alleged sympathizer supposedly not affiliated with Yamaha (but he obviously is). Jason draws out your true feelings about the matter Bad Mister disputes them with a dash of shame, then they block you.

I was so angry that I lost a night’s sleep over it. All I did was responded to Bad Mister’s condescension with noting the fact that on his own YouTube training video, he only used singes to record, which makes sense due to the illogical MIDI receive inflexibility paradigm. I made a snide remark as I mentioned above. I was blocked after that. It was on Synth Forum – Synth

It was a major relief to see your post!! Thanks.

Hence why I am making a video for the other frustrated and dismissed users of the Montage. I am not affected by their stupidity due to C3. Brad should be proud of the amazing product he has developed!

If Korg’s audio interface was as stable and powerful as the Montage, I would have gotten a Kronos instead since I love the Radias engine for electronic music. But my primary need was for an integrated audio interface and a MotifXF (plus) with a hardware DX7 (plus) inside. My setup time is very short now, due to the reduction in hardware gadgets.

Again, thanks!!

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At least they didn’t tell you that if you were a serious musician you’d be using a Mac like an official representative of Korg did when I complained about the lack of ASIO drivers for the Kronos!

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Ha! I have heard that one! Not from Korg, but at a multi band event. I was complaining about mainstage, so I had it coming. If the Kronos had a decent asio driver, I think I would have bought it instead of the Montage.

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No worries, you are not alone, and I have seen many people get the same treatment. So I don’t really frequent that forum much.

It staggers me. I was a forum mod on EX5Tech before its demise, and have been a mod on the other Yamaha Forums since 2008, and most forums frequented by mature adults are usually self moderating. We allow all sorts of views, both positive and negative, and will only come down on people who are spam advertising, trolling or flaming individuals.

I think Yamaha lose themselves a lot of friends with the behaviour over on their forum. If I was Bad Mr’s boss, I would be having a talk to him about Customer service and how to be civil (even when the Customer is genuinely wrong). It’s not hard…

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Have you guys directed this to the Mod, or sent an email to a corporate official? Since this is a “brand” forum, and not just an open discussion somewhere, I would think they would not want their site to deteriorate to this extreme. The squeaky wheel…

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I have actually passed on the observations to Yamaha via a back door route. But the guy in question seems to have the corporate blessing to dis anybody who does not share his view.

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Yes. I identified them by name. I hope that was okay. Phil has been with Yamaha for almost 20 years (that is how long I have been accessing the site), not sure about Jason.

I mentioned the amazing power of C3 to overcome the MIDI-receive weakness identified in the Montage. I believe that is the point where I was ID’d as a spammer, even though Camelot Pro is freely promoted on the forum. Camelot pro is complete crap compared to C3.

I would appreciate Yamaha fixing their problematic issues identified by many users, instead of condescendingly denying them.

If you see my posts, I accepted some of their great ideas, and attempted to go with the flow. Remaining justfyably frustrated with the unresolved MIDI receive issue.

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I can’t see your posts, do you have links for them?

I was going to dig out the relevant ideascale thread on this, but there seems to be site problems at the moment

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Never heard of it, so I checked some of their support team and who they work with. Yamaha is one of the handful.

> KORG and KORG products are registered trademarks of Korg Corporation.
_> _
> NORD and NORD products are registered trademarks of Clavia Digital Musical Instruments AB.
_> _
> ROLAND and ROLAND products are a registered trademarks of Roland Corporation.
_> _
> STUDIOLOGIC and STUDIOLOGIC products are registered trademarks of FATAR S.r.l.
_> _
> YAMAHA and YAMAHA products are registered trademarks of Yamaha Corporation.

Surprised?

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Here is the first one.

Here is the second:

I have been programming synths for over 30 years and didn’t need the “if that’s all you know…” statement regarding the Montage. 18 of my programming years were on the Yamaha Motif product line from Classic to XF. I have been a programmer of the DX7, and understand that architecture, as well. “If that’s all you know” reveals Phil’s willing blindness to the issue. “No man is so blind as the one who chooses to be.”

Additionally, if you (Yamaha) are getting complaints from several users, you should understand that it is not a petty issue but a major limitation that needs to be fixed.

Further, if you freely allow promotion of other software solutions and mark me as spam for mentioning C3, then you (Yamaha) are being both dismissive of your customers and exclusive about logical work-arounds for your product’s weaknesses.

A shameful forum indeed. One to which I will not return.

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Nice…:wink:

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Good day sir! I SAID GOOD DAY!

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And he is a real Mister Bad!! :wink:

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Indeed!!! Sad thing is that C3 is an amazing total fix for the issues with the Montage. Wish I could have shared it.

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Figures. It is a lame product. C3 would have exposed this had it had an opportunity before I was blocked. I even checked out VIP by Akai. Ummmm…no. All of these programs are inbreds that don’t consider input from users (As Brad so graciously does). C3 seems to be a collaborative approach with an exceptional point person. Other vendors could take a lesson.

If I didn’t have C3, I would have immediately sent back my Montage and stuck with my Motif until Korg generated a decent interface for windows that was integrated with the Kronos.

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I did break my promise never to go back to yamahasynth.com, but I did, to check on Corky’s observation. The funny thing is that in order to use Camelot Pro, Jason at Yamaha stated that you need to turn off local control on the Montage. That is not wise. C3 allows you to keep local control on, use all the power of local control and allowing the Montage to simultaneously be both Master and Slave. I believe that the inflexible MIDI receive on the Montage was an intentional impairment to seed their inadequate software solution that tries to mimic C3.

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Bingo !! :wink: :grin: