Oh I see you are deliberately misrepresenting what my point was. Not all that surprising. You said234north wrote: Sat Jun 20, 2026 2:58 am Huh? Number of octaves has nothing to do with whether a keybed is high quality or not. By that standard the Williams 88-key "piano" we bought for the kids ages ago is premiumAs a player you should know that the number of octaves has nothing to do with anything other than the...number of octaves. And a Bosendorfer Imperial Grand is better than a Steinway because it's got some extra keys too right? Lordy.
"The hardware is about as premium as it gets"
only that's not true at all. Even if you don't see the advantages of a bigger keybed the Prophet 5 Rev 4 uses the Fatar TP 9/S. That is the budget line of Fatar keyboards, to get as Premium as it gets you would need to have the Fatar TP/8S. As for needing more than 61 keys the Prophet 10 and the Gforce Prophet 5 are bi-timbral with a split point. With 61 keys one timbre will have a maximum of 30 keys while the other has a maximum of 31. Meaning that each timbre can only play 2.5 octaves per timbre. How is that as premium as it gets for a player?
Fatar makes 76 key keybeds that have synth action. That would give you 38 keys. As a player how can you not see that is better?
IvyBirds wrote: Sat Jun 20, 2026 12:35 am and the keyboard itself is just a Fatar 61 keybed. Very nice for sure but lots of MIDI Controllers and Synths have the same keyboard. My 88 key Montage M blows it away however
Yes they do have multiple lines and Sequential took the cheap route and didn't get the premium one. And for Bi timbral instruments more keys is betterYour Montage M keybed isn't a synth action so "blows it away" isn't even a relevant comment. It's like saying the action in my Kawai digital upright blows away the keys on the P-5. Makes no sense. Prophet-5 is an analog synthesizer, not a workstation instrument built for piano players. (and for the record Fatar has multiple lines of 61-key actions).
Only the Montage M was designed to be user customizable. I can set it up however I want pretty much everything is programable to do whatever I want. But beyond that saying that Sequential designed it that way, doesn't address why you are settling for that. Don't you want the experience to be about as premium as it gets? It never ceases to amaze me how people will say how import physical controls are and then turn around and just blindly accept what the hardware manufacturer decides to give you in the layout they chooseBecause they designed the instrument. Why should you "settle" for how your Montage M is laid out?IvyBirds wrote: Sat Jun 20, 2026 12:35 am And you are correct the full experience of using the hardware isn't matched by the software and a generic controller. It completely blows away the hardware because it does way more and can be configured exactly how you want it to be configured. If you really want physical controls why would you not want the best experience possible? Why would you settle for whatever Sequential think you should have laid out the way they think you should use them
