I bought a used Motif XS over a year ago and haven’t really felt the love for the instrument I was expecting. The problem seems to be when I play in performance mode.
It seems like a polyphony problem, but when I read about polyphony in the documentation, it seems to me that when to many notes is engaged, the notes that has been played earlier will vanish before new notes?

I have a performance with
1. Full grand piano
2. Some sort of warm pad
3. Mix strings
4. Another synth pad

When I only turn up volume on piano it is doing okay MOST of the time, but when turning up volume on the other layers, it performs worse and worse and soon the notes I play are of by
16th of a beat!
I tried turning of reverb, and cutting release time, so that everything would sustain for shorter time and thereby free more polyphony.

This problem I never ran into, using Roland RD series with full volume on all 4 layers.

How can this be solved?

Welcome to the forum.

In order to help, we first need to determine what it is you’re hearing, and a few other details…

The topic of your post includes the word “clipping”. Clipping, either in an analog or digital stage, produces distortion. It can be related to volume level, but it doesn’t introduce latency or other timing issues.
Look at some Google hits…
http://www.google.com/search?q=clipping+audio
Is that what you mean when using the term?

Polyphony is not affected by volume level. It can be affected by note velocity (how hard you strike a key) if one or more of the Parts in the Performance is programmed so that it’s triggered at velocity beyond a relatively high level. See (14)Velocity Limit on page 152 of the XF Owner’s Manual (http://download.yamaha.com/file/10074). Is the lower Velocity Limit of any Part in the Performance you’re using set so that the Part only triggers at higher velocities?

Note polyphony counting isn’t always obvious. See http://www.motifator.com/index.php/support/view/how_to_count_polyphony_motif_xs and the XS Data List (http://download.yamaha.com/file/8622). Polyphony usage is also determined by other factors. For example, are you using a sustain pedal?

A MIDI feedback loop could cause what you’ve described. Is the XS connected via MIDI to anything else?

Answers to the above questions might help us determine what’s causing the issue and how to resolve it. Please let us know.

Tthank you very much for your quick answer and for your patience with me!
I have experienced actual clipping along side polyphony issues,
The reason I haven’t answered for several days, is that it has gotten a lot worse and at a gig, I lost some splits/layers completely.
E.g. I was playing with bass in left hand and grand piano in right hand, and all of a sudden the bass was gone. I tried several things, but it was gone. It came back, after unchecking the box next to the layer in performance settings, and then checking it again.

I experienced the same with strings later the same day. A string layer just didn’t sound when I turned the volume faded up. I then disabled the layer then enabled it, and it worked just fine,

I feel like this could be a motherboard issue or something. Any thoughts?

My first thought is to back up EVERYTHING and do a factory reset. Also check the battery.

If the problem remains, it’s off to a service center.