TJ Cornish Posted May 5 Share Posted May 5 46 minutes ago, Keyboardplayer said: "For AWM2 and FM-X synthesis Montage M uses three Yamaha SWP70 SoCs" (they are 2015 chips, exactly the same ones used in Montage, MODX and MODX+), with an additional one in the Montage M. The Texas Instruments Sitara is a SoC (2015 system on chip) that contains 2 CPUs (a Dual-core ARM Cortex A15 and a Quad-core ARM Cortex M4 coprocessor), a DSP (Dual-core TI TMS320C66x) and a PoverVR SGX544 GPU for graphics. So nine-year-old technology. I've said previously on another thread, the music gear/keyboard industry is about 10 years behind the curve compared to the computer industry. And the Montage M is a prime example. The latest chip used by Montage is the Yamaha SSP3 which manages digital audio on the serial audio bus (AD INPUT, USB Audio, 3 X SWP70,…). Following are the detailed features of Montage and Montage M which are summarized for ease of comparison. Hardware Montage 2X SWP70: - Master SWP70: AWM2 128 Voices - SDRAM 16+32 MByte - Flash 4 GByte: User 1.75 GB + Preset 2.25 GB (5.67 GB when converted to 16 bit linear format) - Slave SWP70: FM-X SDRAM 16 MByte - SSP2 (SH-2 CPU core): management of digital audio on the serial audio bus (AD INPUT, USB Audio, 2 X SWP70,..) - Main CPU (management and user interface): Texas Instruments Sitara AM3352. SoC with 1X ARM Cortex-A8 32-bit - 800 MHz - 4 GByte eMMC (OS, software, presets, ....) + RAM 256 MByte ----------------------------------------- Montage M Hardware 3XSWP70: - SWP70: AWM2 128 Voice Preset Samples - SDRAM 16+32 MByte - Flash 4 GByte (10 GB when converted to 16 bit linear format) - SWP70: AWM2 128 Voices User Samples - SDRAM 16+32 MByte - Flash 4 GByte: User 3.7 GB + 0.3 GB ??? - Slave SWP70: FM-X SDRAM 16 MByte SSP3: management of digital audio on the serial audio bus (AD INPUT, USB Audio, 3 X SWP70,…) Main CPU (management, user interface and AN-X synthesis): Texas Instruments Sitara AM5728BABCXA SoC including: Dual-core ARM Cortex A15 MPU (1.5 GHz) Dual-core TI TMS320C66x DSP (750 MHz) Quad-core ARM Cortex M4 IPU (213 MHz) Dual-core PoverVR SGX544 GPU (532 MHz) eMMC? GByte (OS, software, presets, ....) + RAM 512 MByte DDR3 [Source]: Yamaha Musicians Forum @Benis67 Yamaha needs to step it up, IMO. The next iteration of the Montage in possibly six or more years from now could be a game-changer if Yamaha cared more about pleasing customers rather than how much profit they can squeeze out of a product. A larger and higher resolution LCD screen. A higher resolution sub-display. An HDMI output to compliment the higher resolution LCD screen. XLR input(s)/output(s)? More modern and powerful CPU's/SoCs. Polyphonic aftertouch for all three model versions. A much lighter 88-key version, so people without road crews can use it for gigging purposes on a regular basis. Case in point, the Nord Stage 4 88-key @ 43.2 lbs./19.6 kg. A lighter 76-key & 61-key versions would also be nice. And AWM3?, A Vocaloid/harmonizer? NINE DRAWBAR SLIDERS. A Brass Ensemble Section similar to the Genos/2?, 400 note polyphony all on ONE chip please?, An easier to navigate and understand User Interface. Right now, you basically need a Master Degree in computer science to get the most out of the Montage/M. In the studio you can spend hours trying to figure out the who, what, when, where, why, scenarios. I could go on, but that will give Yamaha something to chew on. And hopefully implement. In the meantime, enjoy your nine-year-old technology Montage M, folks. 😊 I think you just need to buy a PC. ASIC devices work differently that general purpose computers. The math and rules are different, and they are built for different applications. I responded to your other thread a few weeks ago - this “10-year-old architecture” can do things that new PCs can’t do including massive deterministic polyphony that PCs struggle with. I love the irony of dueling whinges- “why does this keyboard ruin my life because it needs a tiny fan that I never heard until someone told me to listen for it” and “why isn’t this keyboard powered by 25 500w Intel Xeon Gold server CPUs”. You can fault Yamaha for some of their software thinking, but for the last 40 years Yamaha has made some of the best engineered instruments on the planet from a hardware standpoint. Whatever their reasons are for the choice of fan and PSU, they are not going to negatively impact the reliability or lifespan of the board. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pjd Posted May 5 Share Posted May 5 6 hours ago, DmitryKo said: It's air movement, nothing else. The main board does have a dedicated voltage converter IC for the fan (TI LM73606, ICE02), so I guess Yamaha could implement fan curve settings in a future update. It's a 50 g part, with a 15 g plastic blade assembly - that's not going to cause any vibration in a 300 g metal cover attached to a 18 kg chassis, unless the fan is not properly secured, or the DC motor becomes defective. In my experience, even when the bearings wear out, the blades simply stop rotating. Hi Dmitry -- I had JFP's specific description/issue in mind, not a defect across an entire production run. Of course, it's difficult to analyze things when we can't hear what JFP is hearing. Perhaps a fix in his specific case is to tighten screws/stand-offs, rubber grommets, who knows. I'm pretty challenged when it comes to mechanical stuff. His description reminded me of the HP slim desktop right next to me now. I know when the fan kicks in and sounds like air movement -- usually off or super-quiet. Sometimes, tho', I move the unit slightly out of place and I hear more of a hum/vibration noise. (And move the unit back.) Just thinking that some M units might have an issue like that. Who knows what happens during shipping! 🙂 My problems this weekend are dealing with sound guys... -- pj Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DmitryKo Posted May 6 Author Share Posted May 6 17 hours ago, TJ Cornish said: “why does this keyboard ruin my life because it needs a tiny fan that I never heard until someone told me to listen for it” “why isn’t this keyboard powered by 25 500w Intel Xeon Gold server CPUs”. It's just your thought process is too rigid and not flexible enough to synthesize these two concepts into a brand new and exciting one 😂 18 hours ago, Keyboardplayer said: enjoy your nine-year-old technology Montage M, folks. 😊 I'm pretty much enjoying my 320 years old piano technology, 60 years old analog subtractive synthesis technology, and 45 years old digital frequency (phase) modulation and sample-based subtractive synthesis technologies, thank you very much. 18 hours ago, Keyboardplayer said: [Source]: Yamaha Musicians Forum @Benis67 What is the purpose of overquoting a post from some other forum when it essentially copies everything posted in this exact thread? Too much information for you to handle in absence of a Computer Science degree? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DmitryKo Posted May 6 Author Share Posted May 6 17 hours ago, pjd said: the HP slim desktop right next to me now. I know when the fan kicks in and sounds like air movement -- usually off or super-quiet. Sometimes, tho', I move the unit slightly out of place and I hear more of a hum/vibration noise. Desktop PCs have several different cooling fans for PSU, CPU, and GPU (if you have a discrete graphics card), the latter two with variable rotation speed controlled by temperature response curves in the UEFI BIOS / firmware. None of these fans are heavy enough to cause any vibration - what you're hearing is likely an increase in airflow when a higher rotation speed kicks in at some point. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JFP Posted May 6 Share Posted May 6 “why does this keyboard ruin my life because it needs a tiny fan that I never heard until someone told me to listen for it" ; that's simply not what it is like. If I tell you that the fan/hum sound that my M7 makes is audible even in another room, than I am not exaggerating or imagining that the sound my unit makes is clearly audible. It is not as if you have to put your ear to the unit to notice the hum, it's simply clearly audible and always there when the unit is turned on. The fact that some other units , or maybe all M8X models do not suffer from this problem, is no guarantee that other M6 and M7 units DO have an unacceptable high , let's call it noise floor and that people, like me , are indeed complaining about it. It is not as if I , or some others are too sensitive to this noise, or simply like to whine about something just for the sake of it. It is clearly an issue with certain units and seems to be especially common with the M6/M7 and less (or not at all?) with the M8X models. I had almost all kinds of keys under my hands you can imagine and this new M7 clearly stands out in this respect - not in a positive way. The only other unit with this kind of background noise I had was the Kronos 2 88, but there the fan was variable, could be turned of altogether , or easily be replaced by a 3rd party industry standard (standard connectors) silent fan. With the M7 it seems that is not so easy. Also there is no variable fan control or way to turn it off. It's simply stupid that this passed QC (if that still exists at companies like Yamaha). Therefore I compared it to the useless aftertouch implementation on the Fantom 7 with its flaws. Things like that are super easy to catch during development and testing IF YOU DO PROPER TESTS with people that are actually using the board and if the company is open for bottom up critical notes and follows up on those. Which seems doubtful somehow, since most Japanese companies still seem to have the "we know better / top down / no criticism allowed / no intentions to listen to input from customers, actual users" business model. I had shameful responses from Roland sometimes where they literally asked me how I had the nerve to post feature request or report bugs or even suggested ways to fix them or improve certain workflows. With Yamaha there is usually no response whatsoever. Also all the input on the so called musicians forum seems to be totally ignored. Products like the Fantom (EX) , Montage etc are not cheap or intended as a toy. So do your proper R&D, testing, implementation and QC and filter stuff out before it hits the market. And come up with a quick fix if something slips through. Often that doesn't happen. Fantom keybed AT still sucks, M7 / M6 background noise will probably be 'within; acceptable range" just to avoid call-back/repair expenses, also FSX without PAT (after 10 (?) years of developing a Montage successor) is a shame, Korg Keystage series without endless controller knobs is a stupid idea that should have been adjusted during development / beta testing, Arturia with faders and controls on the right instead of left (and tiny tiny round screen now) and so on. Why don't they let a bunch of experienced pro users / musicians test these products in real live and when all the quirks and stupid design choices have been fixed, come with the finalised design before productions starts (stupid choices are usually introduced by marketing and finance people or lab techies and programmers , but not by users or with users in mind). Enough ranting, but often I simply do not understand how things like this can slip though and how these companies can be so sloppy, out of touch with the customers and sometimes arrogant. There are so many misses and so few hits in this section of the music industry how hard can it be. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TJ Cornish Posted May 6 Share Posted May 6 2 hours ago, JFP said: “why does this keyboard ruin my life because it needs a tiny fan that I never heard until someone told me to listen for it" ; that's simply not what it is like. If I tell you that the fan/hum sound that my M7 makes is audible even in another room, than I am not exaggerating or imagining that the sound my unit makes is clearly audible. It is not as if you have to put your ear to the unit to notice the hum, it's simply clearly audible and always there when the unit is turned on. The fact that some other units , or maybe all M8X models do not suffer from this problem, is no guarantee that other M6 and M7 units DO have an unacceptable high , let's call it noise floor and that people, like me , are indeed complaining about it. It is not as if I , or some others are too sensitive to this noise, or simply like to whine about something just for the sake of it. It is clearly an issue with certain units and seems to be especially common with the M6/M7 and less (or not at all?) with the M8X models. I had almost all kinds of keys under my hands you can imagine and this new M7 clearly stands out in this respect - not in a positive way. The only other unit with this kind of background noise I had was the Kronos 2 88, but there the fan was variable, could be turned of altogether , or easily be replaced by a 3rd party industry standard (standard connectors) silent fan. With the M7 it seems that is not so easy. Also there is no variable fan control or way to turn it off. It's simply stupid that this passed QC (if that still exists at companies like Yamaha). Therefore I compared it to the useless aftertouch implementation on the Fantom 7 with its flaws. Things like that are super easy to catch during development and testing IF YOU DO PROPER TESTS with people that are actually using the board and if the company is open for bottom up critical notes and follows up on those. Which seems doubtful somehow, since most Japanese companies still seem to have the "we know better / top down / no criticism allowed / no intentions to listen to input from customers, actual users" business model. I had shameful responses from Roland sometimes where they literally asked me how I had the nerve to post feature request or report bugs or even suggested ways to fix them or improve certain workflows. With Yamaha there is usually no response whatsoever. Also all the input on the so called musicians forum seems to be totally ignored. Products like the Fantom (EX) , Montage etc are not cheap or intended as a toy. So do your proper R&D, testing, implementation and QC and filter stuff out before it hits the market. And come up with a quick fix if something slips through. Often that doesn't happen. Fantom keybed AT still sucks, M7 / M6 background noise will probably be 'within; acceptable range" just to avoid call-back/repair expenses, also FSX without PAT (after 10 (?) years of developing a Montage successor) is a shame, Korg Keystage series without endless controller knobs is a stupid idea that should have been adjusted during development / beta testing, Arturia with faders and controls on the right instead of left (and tiny tiny round screen now) and so on. Why don't they let a bunch of experienced pro users / musicians test these products in real live and when all the quirks and stupid design choices have been fixed, come with the finalised design before productions starts (stupid choices are usually introduced by marketing and finance people or lab techies and programmers , but not by users or with users in mind). Enough ranting, but often I simply do not understand how things like this can slip though and how these companies can be so sloppy, out of touch with the customers and sometimes arrogant. There are so many misses and so few hits in this section of the music industry how hard can it be. I have my own list of things I’m annoyed about, so I have no intention of being a shill for any keyboard manufacturer, and I’m truly sorry that either your M7 is defective RE fan noise or there is some large difference between the M8 and M7, but we have the tools we have. If none of the products out there from any vendor meet your standards, I’m not sure what to tell you. Dave Weiser (formerly of Kurzweil) has commented frequently on the difficulty of the musical instrument business. The fact that issues like this plague every product on the market speak to the difficulty of making a keyboard quickly/cheaply enough to make money selling it. Do I wish things were better? Do I wish there weren’t cultural factors at play that make some things Asian-HQ companies do feel a little odd to the Western world? Yes; but somehow I’ve coped with the horrendous acoustic sounds of every keyboard made prior to 10 years ago, the extreme underperformance of the Yamaha EX5, the key weights falling out of my Kurzweil PC2, SCSI frustrations on the K2600 and other boards, the Kronos’ 3 minute boot time and polyphony problems; the lack of patch remain on the VPiano and lack of LFO sync on the Fantom, the limited number of pattern slots and other oddities of the arpeggiator on the M7, and 100 other problems and made music with what exists, and not what I wish existed. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DmitryKo Posted May 6 Author Share Posted May 6 6 hours ago, JFP said: the fan/hum sound that my M7 makes is audible even in another room, than I am not exaggerating or imagining that the sound my unit makes is clearly audible. It is not as if you have to put your ear to the unit to notice the hum, it's simply clearly audible and always there when the unit is turned on. If you think you have a defective cooling fan, take your Montage M back to your dealer and have them inspect it and replace if needed. But if they say it's allright, you need to start assessing the noise at the exact same moment you're playing the actual keyboard, preferably with your headphones or speakers on, and stop monitoring it from another room. 6 hours ago, JFP said: Why don't they let a bunch of experienced pro users / musicians test these products in real live and when all the quirks and stupid design choices have been fixed Hell no, each to their own: engineers design digital musical instruments, 'pro users' whine and rant. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pjd Posted May 6 Share Posted May 6 4 hours ago, JFP said: “why does this keyboard ruin my life because it needs a tiny fan that I never heard until someone told me to listen for it" ; that's simply not what it is like. Hi JFP -- When I read your first post, I thought, "This sounds like a customer service/support issue." I hope you've pursued this problem with Yamaha or the dealer which sold you the M7. Given the M7's price, they should make it right. If Yamaha sees numerous warranty repairs, engineering will be forced to address the issue. I agree that it shouldn't have come down to you the customer. Honest to goodness, I would force them to repair it to your satisfaction. All the best -- pj Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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