No ofence to you guys here but It makes me really disappointed and sounds like a joke! because the sequencer in MOTIF series has a memory equivalent to Arduino Uno R3:

http://arduino.cc/en/Main/arduinoBoardUno

The original board is $20 and the knock offs are around $10. To be honest what Yamaha is really thinking about?

It’s very disrespectful of a company like Yamaha to produce such a hardware… It’s officially disrespecting your customer’s intelligence.

5pinDIN:
Well, I wasn’t sure where the sequencer memory usage is given in the MOXF, but I found it in the Reference Manual. Press [UTILITY], [F2](SEQ), [SF6](MEMORY). That should display the remaining free sequencer memory. I think knowing that before and after using Total Librarian might provide a clue to what’s happening. Let us know.

5pinDIN, thanks for pointing me to the right menu. It’s exactly as you assumed; right after the factory set, the sequencer memory was 295.6kB/896.0kB (33%), and after the “default” song/pattern bank store & restore procedure using Melas Tools the sequencer memory was completely filled up, displaying 896.0kB/896.0kB (100%).

What surprised me is the fact that the sequencer memory in the MOXF factory state (including 3 short demo songs and 3 simple patterns containing a few bars only) already uses 1/3 of the total available sequencer memory capacity. I guess it will never be possible to utilize all of the 64 pattern / 64 song allocations in a reasonable way.

5pinDIN:
Did you follow the link within the thread I linked to?
If not, see http://www.motifator.com/index.php/forum/viewthread/469168/ That should help you with clearing the sequencer memory and might provide more insight.

Yes, in the meantime I also followed this thread and I already performed the “clear song” and “clear pattern” procedures as described. The tricky thing here is that you shouldn’t leave the pattern or song mode right after such a “clear” procedure before you also haven’t “stored” the whole package to the MOXF. Failing to do so will immediately bring back all patterns and songs to their original positions without notice! Maybe this is caused by the internal memory buffer to which all changes are done first before they are finally stored. So again, please store your “cleared” patterns and songs first, otherwise your sequencer memory will not change at all. After a successful “clear” procedure the memory-meter will now really show 0kB/896.0kB (0%), and it will also stay like that - even if you switch the device off and on again!

Okay, after “clearing” the entire sequencer memory, I repeated the restore procedure from the application, sending back all “default” song/pattern data, again using Melas Tools. This time the banks where transferred over to the MOXF without any “Sequence memory full” error message.

But - surprise surprise - guess what the memory-meter displays this time: 704.0kB/896.0kB (79%). Howcome the value is still higher than the original value (704.0kB vs. 295.6kB), meaning that the required memory capacity has suddenly been more than doubled for holding the same data?

However, “clearing” the song and pattern memory directly on the MOXF prior a Melas Tools pattern/song restore procedure is not a good idea at all. Why? As I found out now, Melas seems to administrate Mixing data only, no related track MIDI events (at least not in the MOXF version of the Total Librarian Tool). That means, only Mixing data for songs and patterns seem to be stored to / restored from the Total Librarian application. Therefore, if patterns and songs are manually “cleared” first on the MOXF before the Melas restore procedure takes place, also all included tracks and MIDI event data belonging to each pattern/song will be lost. Only the pure Mixing data will be restored back to the MOXF to each song and pattern, thus ending up with empty MIDI tracks in patterns and songs which don’t have a name and won’t “play” anymore. That doesn’t make any sense to me, as MIDI tracks and their related Mix data should always be treated together, as they depend on each other. Unfortunately there’s no way to “clear” only Mixing parameters in advance without clearing the whole track data, too.

That’s why I’d like to raise some “stupid” questions from a MOXF owner to Motif XF owners:

1) Is the Motif XF version of Melas Tools able to transfer the whole sequencer content to/from the Total Librarian, meaning that all pattern/song mixing data and the related MIDI track data are transferred? Or just the Mixing data like on the MOXF?

2) Does the sequencer memory allocation on the Motif XF change between a pattern/song store & restore cycle using “Melas Tools for Motif XF”? Is there also an error message if not “clearing” the Motif sequencer memory first, or is there at least a noticable sequencer memory value increase between store and restore?

Knowing these answers could eventually help to localize where the real problem lies and if it only applies to the MOXF series.

cmayhle:
I would additionally suggest you pose the question(s) to John Melas directly. I have found him to be quite responsive to inquiries, in my experience.

cmayhle, thanks for the advice. After getting more clarity on the sequencer related differences between the Motif and MOXF series, I will contact John in parallel. I was already bothering him in the past, raising some strange questions ;-).
In spite of all - as you said - he was always very cooperative to me!

B.Minor - 24 October 2014 11:17 AM

[...]However, “clearing” the song and pattern memory directly on the MOXF prior a Melas Tools pattern/song restore procedure is not a good idea at all. Why? As I found out now, Melas seems to administrate Mixing data only, no related track MIDI events (at least not in the MOXF version of the Total Librarian Tool). That means, only Mixing data for songs and patterns seem to be stored to / restored from the Total Librarian application. Therefore, if patterns and songs are manually “cleared” first on the MOXF before the Melas restore procedure takes place, also all included tracks and MIDI event data belonging to each pattern/song will be lost. Only the pure Mixing data will be restored back to the MOXF to each song and pattern, thus ending up with empty MIDI tracks in patterns and songs which don’t have a name and won’t “play” anymore. That doesn’t make any sense to me, as MIDI tracks and their related Mix data should always be treated together, as they depend on each other. Unfortunately there’s no way to “clear” only Mixing parameters in advance without clearing the whole track data, too.

That’s why I’d like to raise some “stupid” questions from a MOXF owner to Motif XF owners:[...]

As I mentioned previously, I have a Motif XF, but I don’t have the Melas software. Nevertheless, I do have some information and observations that might be interesting…

On the XF, it’s possible to do a SysEx Bulk Dump of a Song or Pattern Mix. Each dump is exactly 2903 bytes long (including header and footer), and it’s strictly the Mix data - just as you’ve described what the Melas software does, this Bulk Dump includes no MIDI track event data. I’d expect the MOXF Mix dumps to be within a few bytes of that same 2903 byte length. For the six MOXF factory Songs and Patterns, that would be only about 17 kB in total for the Mixes.

Hopefully you’ll get some replies from XF owners who are using the Melas software. However, it would seem that asking John Melas exactly what Song/Pattern data his software saves, and for an explanation of what’s causing the increased data volume when it’s restored to the MOXF, would indeed be the thing to do.

Unless/until that gets resolved, using the MOXF’s native file formats would appear to be the better way to save MOXF sequencer contents.

I don’t mean to be a party pooper here but 896 KB of user memory on the MOXF? really?  I mean come on, you can buy a terabyte of memory for about 50 bucks these days, or even just an 8 GB memory stick for 10 bucks which would be TEN TIMES the memory on this nearly $2000 keyboard.  I would have been more than willing to pay a few bucks more to have some decent memory installed. 

This “sequencer memory full” error is driving me insane.  I have tried to copy everything to a thumb drive and when I checked the memory after saving everything from the keyboard on to it, it said it was still basically empty, with 99% space remaining.  I thought, that cannot be right, all this keyboard user data that keeps filling up the sequencer must be be so much more than that so I plugged the thumb drive in again to check and of course when I went to load it, it wiped out all the new songs and patterns I spent days working on.  They are simply gone… vanished. 

I have deleted everything from my user patterns / songs that I am comfortable deleting from the MOXF and I am still getting the “sequencer memory full”

I don’t get it. Am I missing something here?  Is there any logical reason anyone can tell me why there wouldn’t be at least as much internal memory in this keyboard that my crappy $49 cell phone has?

Sorry but I’m very frustrated.

Jeff R 50 - 28 October 2014 05:24 PM

I don’t mean to be a party pooper here but 896 KB of user memory on the MOXF? really?  I mean come on, you can buy a terabyte of memory for about 50 bucks these days, or even just an 8 GB memory stick for 10 bucks which would be TEN TIMES the memory on this nearly $2000 keyboard.  I would have been more than willing to pay a few bucks more to have some decent memory installed. 

This “sequencer memory full” error is driving me insane.  I have tried to copy everything to a thumb drive and when I checked the memory after saving everything from the keyboard on to it, it said it was still basically empty, with 99% space remaining.  I thought, that cannot be right, all this keyboard user data that keeps filling up the sequencer must be be so much more than that so I plugged the thumb drive in again to check and of course when I went to load it, it wiped out all the new songs and patterns I spent days working on.  They are simply gone… vanished. 

I have deleted everything from my user patterns / songs that I am comfortable deleting from the MOXF and I am still getting the “sequencer memory full”

I don’t get it. Am I missing something here?  Is there any logical reason anyone can tell me why there wouldn’t be at least as much internal memory in this keyboard that my crappy $49 cell phone has?

Sorry but I’m very frustrated.

Dude 8GB of memory is 10,000 times more.  896KB is about 1MB. 1000 MB is about 1GB and then you multiply it by 8. I said insult to costumer because the internal hardware used in MOXF is a freaking micro-controller belonging to the 80’s-90’s and probably the chipset inside can’t handle addresses more than certain size.

Logical reason? Minimal requirements! Micro controllers are extremely cheap! when I say cheap I mean under $10… If they added memory, the circuitry would become more expensive (few bucks) and more complicated to design.
MOXF doesn’t have memory bus, external RAM support. Ultra simple operating system (embedded OS) and so many many other benefits.

Abdol, thanks for that clarification.  I guess I was confused.  Now I’m even more upset with Yamaha.  I think I have a 30 year old Casio watch with more memory that this 2014 $1,700 MOXF8 has.  Maybe someone at Yamaha can explain why the memory in this board is so basically non-existent and totally inadequate?  What would it possibly have cost to even put a couple of GB in this thing?

Jeff R 50 - 28 October 2014 09:34 PM

Abdol, thanks for that clarification.  I guess I was confused.  Now I’m even more upset with Yamaha.  I think I have a 30 year old Casio watch with more memory that this 2014 $1,700 MOXF8 has.  Maybe someone at Yamaha can explain why the memory in this board is so basically non-existent and totally inadequate?  What would it possibly have cost to even put a couple of GB in this thing?

Sorry I responded a bit late. As I said budget wise, it makes sens for Yammy to save money! Design becomes more complicated…

The interesting point here is, if you look at all the series Yamaha produced in all MOTIF series, it’s using an embedded operating system called ITRON OS. Don’t you see similarity in all UIs and functionality in all of these hardware Yamaha produced?

Yamaha already has the circuit board designed. What it does in it’s hardware section is identical to it’s software section: milk it as much as possible.

Then again it’s just my humble opinion. To some people MOTIF XF is the best synth ever created. It sounds far beyond than anything anyone could ever built and it sounds better than whatever will be built in the future by any other companies except Yamaha.

EDIT: This excludes MOTIF XS and XF. In competing with Korg’s OS (OASYS) Yamaha upgraded from micro controllers to SOC (If I’m right). It was a challenge for Yamaha to do it though as you can clearly read it in this paragraph copied from here:
http://www.mvista.com/download/case_study_MontaVista_Linux_and_Yamaha.pdf

“Yamaha designers appreciated the the basic functionality of μITRON as a real-time OS. However, when
they determined the requirements for Yamaha’s next-generation MOTIF XS, the development team realized that
achieving their vision for the products would not be possible with μITRON.”

5pinDIN:
However, it would seem that asking John Melas exactly what Song/Pattern data his software saves, and for an explanation of what’s causing the increased data volume when it’s restored to the MOXF, would indeed be the thing to do.

In the meantime John Melas was so kind digging into the described problem, and he already replied to me with some information. As already assumed, the Total Librarian application only transmits and receives Mix parts information for songs and patterns. Any other sequencer data - like MIDI event data - are not supported on the MOXF to be transferred to/from the synthesizer via SysEx messages.

Considering that information, the “Sequence memory full” message which is displayed on the MOXF in my case can only be caused by the MOXF itself, namely while receiving back the same Mixing data via SysEx messages which also have been transmitted to the external application before. While restoring the Mixing data back, it seems that the MOXF will internally duplicate some of these data and therefore will utilize more than twice as much sequencer memory than it used before that transmit/receive cycle. In most cases the sequencer memory will not be sufficient anymore to complete the whole procedure - receiving 64 song and 64 pattern mix data - which may lead to the described “Sequence memory full” error message. However, as this situation should never occur, it must be considered as a serious MOXF bug in the current F/W V1.10.2.

I learned from Dave that every potential issue posted here in this forum can automatically be considered as forwarding it directly to the Yamaha design team. I hope that the Yamaha guys can take care of this problem and will soon provide a solution for it in the next F/W release.

As sequencer data cannot be stored onto a flashboard, maybe the implementation of new SysEx messages for exporting/importing track-based sequencer data for songs and patterns would be also very useful, as a simple way of overwriting whole patterns and songs with new data (e.g. during a gig) could help to overcome the shortage of available sequencer memory available in the MOXF.

I’m still trying to understand just this lack of memory issue.  I only had 5 patterns and about 6 songs stored in my MOXF8 before the memory started crashing.  So I have cleared out ALL of the user patterns I made and 3 of the 5 user songs I made.  Now I am trying to just record another new song idea and all I got was the drum part done, but I cannot get through the piano part without the “Sequencer Memory Full” error stopping me in my tracks.

Why on earth is this happening?  I deleted far more data that I am trying to add so why is it still crashing?  And why on earth did Yamaha include 64 user patterns and 64 user song banks when they knew good and well a person could never use all of those?  Maybe if we all played “Chop Sticks” on the piano only (without sustain of course) we could possible use up maybe half of those user song banks.  However, I think its safe to assume that since there are 16 sequencer tracks available that many of us foolishly believed we could actually record a multitrack song or two without even imagining the sequencer memory would fill up after only a couple songs.

Can Bad Mister or MrMotif lend a hand here as to what we can do about this?  Is there anyway to increase the memory with some software upgrade that maybe would allow the user date to store right to a flash card perhaps?  What is the purpose of the flash card expandability feature (besides adding new voices… which makes me wonder how many you could actually add before the memory fills up) if we cant even expand the user memory?

I just called Yamaha technical support about this inadequate memory problem and he completely agreed with me that it is a big problem with the MOXF’s.  I have to wonder what the design engineers were thinking when they were building this keyboard.  They put all these great sounds and features and a 16 track sequencer and 128 total user banks to create and store our songs and patterns. 

So what happened then I wonder?  Did they just say “Hey we can save $10 by only putting in less than 1 MB of user memory rather than say… 8 GB of memory (which as Abdol pointed out is 10,000 times more), that will keep the cost down to $1,699.  Otherwise we would have to charge $1,709 for the keyboard and who would ever spend that much more money for this? Heck they won’t even find out about this memory problem until they have had it past the 30 days and then it’s too late to return it” “Boy, the joke sure on them”.

Seriously, what the heck was going on in these guys heads?  Memory is dirt cheap, why skimp on it when it is so important to the usability of this keyboard?

Jeff R 50 - 29 October 2014 11:27 AM

[...] I deleted far more data that I am trying to add so why is it still crashing? [...]

Press [UTILITY], [F2](SEQ), [SF6](MEMORY). Please let us know what it displays.

5pin, it shows I have used up 859.5 KB of the included 896.0 KB available. I have only three - 5 minute songs recorded on the keyboard, and each has only about 5 tracks used.  Seriously, I think my electric razer has more memory than this keyboard. I’m stunned that there is actually less than 1 MB available in this board.

Some short questions to the forum gurus who might know that in their sleep:

How much sequencer memory is physically available on the little brother, the MOX? Is the capacity also just 896.0kB like for the MOXF? If yes, have there also been problem reports by users claiming that there are error messages during their work?

Even the Motif XF has only approx. 10% more sequencer memory than the MOXF which seems to be also a little bit poor. So, I really wonder if the “Sequence memory full” error message is only caused by a suboptimal memory management inside the MOXF, or if it is a common problem related to the whole Motif series.

B.Minor - 30 October 2014 02:17 AM

Some short questions to the forum gurus who might know that in their sleep:

How much sequencer memory is physically available on the little brother, the MOX? Is the capacity also just 896.0kB like for the MOXF? If yes, have there also been problem reports by users claiming that there are error messages during their work?

The MOX and MOXF have the same sequencer memory capacity.

 

B.Minor - 30 October 2014 02:17 AM

Even the Motif XF has only approx. 10% more sequencer memory than the MOXF which seems to be also a little bit poor. So, I really wonder if the “Sequence memory full” error message is only caused by a suboptimal memory management inside the MOXF, or if it is a common problem related to the whole Motif series.

The issue you’re having when using the Melas software is not the same as what Jeff R 50 is experiencing. Blaming the MOXF when “Sequence memory full” occurs while using Melas’ Total Librarian is unfair. I’m 99.9% sure (always leave some room for doubt  :-) ) that I know what’s happening - I don’t have the time to explain right now, but I’ll post again later today.

5pinDIN:
The issue you’re having when using the Melas software is not the same as what Jeff R 50 is experiencing.

It’s very clear that my described problem is of a different nature. However, it’s a fact that it also leads to the same result, namely exceeding the available sequencer memory of the MOXF.

5pinDIN:
Blaming the MOXF when “Sequence memory full” occurs while using Melas’ Total Librarian is unfair.

In my case the MOXF error message is even more incomprehensible than in Jeff’s case, as there is no user intervention at all producing “additional” data which weren’t already in the MOXF memory before. After all the related SysEx messages for any of these pattern/song mix dumps - in both directions - were developed by Yamaha and could be used by any external sequencer or tool. In my personal view Yamaha has to take care that sending the same data back and forth will not result in any memory violation or overload. Currently I don’t see any wrong user operation or malfunction of the used external S/W tool for which the user could be blamed for - that’s what I’d call “unfair” in this case.

5pinDIN:
I’m 99.9% sure (always leave some room for doubt :-) ) that I know what’s happening - I don’t have the time to explain right now, but I’ll post again later today.