Yamaha Gets Back Into The Virtual Analogue Synth Game With The Montage M: New An-x Engine Joins Enhanced Awm2 And Fm-x Sound Generators In Flagship Workstation Keyboard

To no person’s nice wonder, Yamaha has introduced the Montage M, a new flagship workstation synth. Like its predecessor, the Montage, this appears to be like to be aimed on the ‘severe’ gigging musician, and combines a couple of sound-generating applied sciences into one keyboard. 

The spotlight for plenty of would be the new AN-X engine, an strive through Yamaha to seize the nice and cozy sound and feeling of actual analogue synths. This (form of) takes its identify from the AN1x, a fondly-remembered Yamaha VA synth from the overdue ‘90s, and provides 3 oscillators with a collection of 5 waveforms (two saws, triangle, sq. and sine), a noise generator, two filters with a collection of ten clear out sorts, ring modulation, pulse width modulation, a waveshaper and extra.

If you wish to have your synth to sound somewhat extra ‘antique’, you’ll be able to dial in some voltage flow or employ the ‘getting older’ purposes.

In spite of this new analogue-esque engine, like the former Montage, The Montage M could be very a lot an ‘all-rounder’, and different varieties of sounds are lined off through progressed variations of Yamaha’s pre-existing AWM2 and eight-operator FM-X engines. The outcome is as much as 400 notes of polyphony.

As you’d be expecting, Montage M provides USB audio and MIDI connectivity, and Yamaha tells us {that a} ‘Softsynth’ plugin that allows you to navigate the software out of your DAW will likely be launched in 2024.

There are 3 variations of the Montage M: the 61-note M6 and 76-note M7 are designed for ‘synthesists’ and ‘keyboardists’ respectively, whilst the improved 88-note M8x guarantees to present pianists what they want. The motion is ‘weighed’ fairly than ‘hammer’, so far as we will inform, and also you get polyphonic aftertouch for enhanced expressive keep watch over.

Certainly, Yamaha claims that it’s “reviving the expressiveness of the mythical CS-80 and DX-1,” either one of which had polyphonic aftertouch keyboards.

Different spec sheet highlights come with 9.97GB of preset WaveROM, 16 libraries (with 640 performances in line with library), 3.8GB of consumer flash reminiscence and a VCM rotary speaker emulation.

The Montage M is to be had for pre-order now. Costs are set at $3,500/£3,219 for the M6, $4,000/£3,629 for the M7 and $4,500/£4.049 for the M8x. In finding out extra at the Yamaha Synth web page.