HI Chris
My words were overly strong out of frustration (and sympathy to Shiva) and I should perhaps have said instead that the Montage M8x and ESP in their current form are hopeless for the kind of music production that I do.
I write and arrange pop songs so not that different from classic rock apart from, maybe, making use of more tracks and making full use of all 8 simultaneous arps - and I'd like to make use of motion control as well (see later).
The biggest weakness for me is that - unlike with the MOXF (and Motif before it) - the ESP doesn't act as a VST instrument allowing real-time control of the hardware synth. Hence, I cannot mix the individual tracks using the mixer in the hardware synth itself (from Cubase - I can from the synth's front panel), or add automation. Rather, I have to bring all 16 tracks into Cubase over USB and then use Cubase's mixer to mix and add appropriate automation. But that then ties me to using the Yamaha USB Driver and so i can't use my audio interface at the same time to which my rackmount modules (and microphones) are connected. Yeah, I could route everything external to the Montage M8x into the Montage M8x's A/D in and then route it back out again over USB but I'm getting into serious faff then (and there are other downsides I won't go into).
The obvious solution therefore is to use the ESP - but then I discovered that the ESP is limited to parts 1-8 only, and so I can't make use of all 16 parts. OK, so I can have two ESP instances, but then I've lost synchronicity with the single performance that I created for my production in the hardware synth, if I ever want to go back to the hardware synth and change/edit something from the interface there while I'm sat at it, and synchronise it back to Cubase - that option is then closed.
Motion Control - maybe it's my system, but as soon as I have one or two tracks employing Motion Control I start to get real problems with performance in the ESP, even with ASIO buffer sizes set to maximum, getting audio clicks and buzzes etc, so I've had to forget about any idea of using Motion Control in my tracks. Once one of these "overload" events has occurred then I find I need to restart the audio driver to get everything working again which is another nuisance.
On top of that, everything is just buggy. E.g., there's some random bug I'm encountering with the ESP in Cubase where if I change the instrument on one part in the ESP, it causes the MIDI meant for that part to start playing a different part, even though the routings are correct. Then there are just the random audio clicks and whatnot that I get, not just related to system overload.
Maybe it's just me - I don't know - but compared to how easy music production was with my MOXF I'm feeling quite fed up about it. It's not buyer's remorse as such as I love playing the Montage M8x - the keyboard is wonderful, as are the sounds and arps and motion control and scenes and synthesis capabiliies, etc, etc - and I think I just have to accept that it is, indeed, a Performance Synthesizer, as Yamaha styles it, and not a Music Production Synthesizer like the MOXF (and Motif series in general) were.
There's maybe also a bit of a "luddite" thing going on with me as well (despite being an engineer). I could, for instance, really embrace software synthesizers like most people doing music production do along with samples and loops etc etc - but there's something about hardware synths that I really enjoy which is why I've hung onto so many of them since the 1980s onwards. But it looks like I might have to "turn to the dark side" and start using software synths for music production now. I suspect that using hardware synths for music production might start to become a bit "quaint", like stamp collecting or making model aeroplanes.
Sometimes I want to turn the clock back to 1990 and do my tracks with my Atari ST, Cubase 1 (well, there was no "1" in Cubase "1"!), hardware synths and a simple analog mixer. It was so easy ... and, yeah, it sounded terrible![:D]( "Very Happy")
My words were overly strong out of frustration (and sympathy to Shiva) and I should perhaps have said instead that the Montage M8x and ESP in their current form are hopeless for the kind of music production that I do.
I write and arrange pop songs so not that different from classic rock apart from, maybe, making use of more tracks and making full use of all 8 simultaneous arps - and I'd like to make use of motion control as well (see later).
The biggest weakness for me is that - unlike with the MOXF (and Motif before it) - the ESP doesn't act as a VST instrument allowing real-time control of the hardware synth. Hence, I cannot mix the individual tracks using the mixer in the hardware synth itself (from Cubase - I can from the synth's front panel), or add automation. Rather, I have to bring all 16 tracks into Cubase over USB and then use Cubase's mixer to mix and add appropriate automation. But that then ties me to using the Yamaha USB Driver and so i can't use my audio interface at the same time to which my rackmount modules (and microphones) are connected. Yeah, I could route everything external to the Montage M8x into the Montage M8x's A/D in and then route it back out again over USB but I'm getting into serious faff then (and there are other downsides I won't go into).
The obvious solution therefore is to use the ESP - but then I discovered that the ESP is limited to parts 1-8 only, and so I can't make use of all 16 parts. OK, so I can have two ESP instances, but then I've lost synchronicity with the single performance that I created for my production in the hardware synth, if I ever want to go back to the hardware synth and change/edit something from the interface there while I'm sat at it, and synchronise it back to Cubase - that option is then closed.
Motion Control - maybe it's my system, but as soon as I have one or two tracks employing Motion Control I start to get real problems with performance in the ESP, even with ASIO buffer sizes set to maximum, getting audio clicks and buzzes etc, so I've had to forget about any idea of using Motion Control in my tracks. Once one of these "overload" events has occurred then I find I need to restart the audio driver to get everything working again which is another nuisance.
On top of that, everything is just buggy. E.g., there's some random bug I'm encountering with the ESP in Cubase where if I change the instrument on one part in the ESP, it causes the MIDI meant for that part to start playing a different part, even though the routings are correct. Then there are just the random audio clicks and whatnot that I get, not just related to system overload.
Maybe it's just me - I don't know - but compared to how easy music production was with my MOXF I'm feeling quite fed up about it. It's not buyer's remorse as such as I love playing the Montage M8x - the keyboard is wonderful, as are the sounds and arps and motion control and scenes and synthesis capabiliies, etc, etc - and I think I just have to accept that it is, indeed, a Performance Synthesizer, as Yamaha styles it, and not a Music Production Synthesizer like the MOXF (and Motif series in general) were.
There's maybe also a bit of a "luddite" thing going on with me as well (despite being an engineer). I could, for instance, really embrace software synthesizers like most people doing music production do along with samples and loops etc etc - but there's something about hardware synths that I really enjoy which is why I've hung onto so many of them since the 1980s onwards. But it looks like I might have to "turn to the dark side" and start using software synths for music production now. I suspect that using hardware synths for music production might start to become a bit "quaint", like stamp collecting or making model aeroplanes.
Sometimes I want to turn the clock back to 1990 and do my tracks with my Atari ST, Cubase 1 (well, there was no "1" in Cubase "1"!), hardware synths and a simple analog mixer. It was so easy ... and, yeah, it sounded terrible
Statistics: Posted by Davelet — Tue Sep 24, 2024 9:03 pm