That’s just the start of the control side of things with Montage, though… It’s very easy to home in on a particular parameter and tweak it live or edit it. You can switch between three layers of eight commonly accessed parameters (think filter cutoff and resonance, EQ bands and arpeggiation) and then make adjustments with the dials and sliders below them. In my preview, I detailed how this is similar to MOTIF’s way of giving you more hands-on control – perhaps the best you’ll find on any digital synth. For the control side of things, I’ll first touch briefly on the left hand area of the keyboard. Montage Controls Montage is all about these sounds,yes, but it is also about new ways of controlling them and playing them. As with the others, it comes with four main outs, USB (audio/MIDI), MIDI connections and audio input This is the rear view of Montage 6, the smallest synth in the Montage range. Then there’s the all-new FM-X engine which, as you’d expect, offers a huge array of FM sounds, a synthesis championed and made famous by Yamaha with the DX7 and now being used across all sorts of genres: from dubstep to shoegazing post-rock. (Not to mention my Roland D-20 did all of its sounds in around 32MB ‘back in the day’ – we’re talking huge now!). Of course, Hans Zimmer sample library users who have to clear around 200GB every time they want to play some of his percussion sounds might scoff at a mere 5.75GB, but when I tell you that this is eight times the size of the library on Yamaha’s MOTIF series – itself the standard bearer for digital synthesisers for a decade or so – you’ll realise this is quite a leap up, to say the least. AWM2 is Yamaha’s latest sample-based engine – think high-quality sounds of everything and you’ll be close. There are those two main synth engines: AWM2 and FM-X beneath an umbrella heading called The Motion Control Synthesis Engine. Specs-wise, I could go on and on – Montage really has big numbers backing it. These once-lauded ‘machines that can do everything’ were already taking a beating from DAWs that could also do everything and then along came analogue and seamless integration and the poor machines were left out of the party, stuck betwixt stools and as out of place as mullets in a Shoreditch beard competition.īefore that, we should talk sounds and Montage power. And when I say ‘digital’, I mean the type crammed with sounds, packed with features and also stuffed with enough gubbins to create complete productions, soundtracks, and albums in any genre, on any format, any time, any place. 520,000 notes (Pattern) approx.Where once the NAMM Show was about software emulations or ‘iPad everything’, the last couple have been about turning real knobs and switching real gear back on.Īrguably, it’s all part of a (perhaps) unconscious move by the production world to bring creativity out of a virtual environment back into a real one, with the software companies that once ploughed those pirate-laden waters now in on the act, creating hardware to seamlessly integrate their titles into a real, ‘non computer screen’ way (inMusic’s VIP, Ableton’s Push, NI’s Komplete Kontrol and Novation’s Launch range being perfect examples).īut one casualty of the rebirth of classic analogue synthesis (or perfect analogue emulation thereof), and the seamless marriage and transparency of studio hardware and software, has been the digital synth. 520,000 notes (Song)ġ Song/Pattern: Approx. Real time replace, Real time overdub, Real time punch in/outġ Song/Pattern: Approx. ,, MIDI //, FOOT CONTROLLER /, FOOT SWITCH /, OUTPUT (BALANCED) / (6.3 mm, Balanced TRS jacks), ASSIGNABLE OUTPUT (BALANCED) / (6.3 mm, Balanced TRS jacks), (6.3 mm, standard stereo phone jack), A/D INPUT / (6.3 mm, standard phone jacks)ĪC Power cord, Owner’s Manual, Cubase AI Download Informationġ6 Sequence tracks, Tempo track, Scene track Master Volume, AD Input Gain knob, Pitch Bend wheel, Modulation wheel, Ribbon Controller, Control Sliders x 8, Knobs x 8, Super Knob, Data dial Reverb x 12 types, Variation x 88 types, Insertion (A, B) x 88 types*, Master Effect x 26 types *A/D part insertion x 83 types (Preset settings for parameters of each effect type are provided as templates) Master EQ (5 bands), 1st part EQ (3 bands), 2nd part EQ (2 bands) Preset: 5.67 GB (when converted to 16 bit linear format), User: 1.75 GBĪWM2: 128 (max. Motion Control Synthesis Engine AMW2: 8 Elements FM-X: 8 Operators, 88 Algorithmsġ6 Parts (internal), Audio Input Parts (A/D*, USB*) *stereo Part
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