Hello Guys,

is it possible to setup Motif XF to hear Audio trough USB as it is in MOXF? This would be pretty cool feature MOXF manage to have.
Thanks a lot.

Guy’s what do you think about this topic? Shouldn’t Yamaha add that feature in 3 time more expensive keyboard? It is all about driver, nothing else. I hope that they avoiding it because sales of FireWire card? Yamaha, do you have any answer on that?
Thanks

Some things to consider:
Do the XF’s hardware and firmware support USB audio? Are audio packets available at the TO HOST connector, ready for the appropriate driver to access them?

Background:
The MOX, which was the first to have audio over USB, came out about four years after the XS. The XF is based on the XS design.

I’m sure that Yamaha would like to continue selling FW16E interfaces, but that’s not the entire story.

Thanks for your replay 5pinDIN. What I know is that MOXF (as per Yamaha’s advertising) has same heart as XF. This can be seen also on comparative charts. 
However, many of us has paid a lot of money for our XF’s which are based as you said on XS’s design. Many of us purchase FireWire interfaces as well for quite some bucks.  I did… mine is fully loaded with all available expansions. I love it more than any other instrument after 30 years being in music.
But this is not what I find problematic. 
More to consider is fact that we have top of the line machine which unfortunately do not support something you show us with your new “budget” generation just one year after XF was released.

As per my knowledge Audio trough USB feature was supported with first MOX versions.
Sound structure is the same. All is the same except that top of the line keyboard do not support this major thing makes life’s so much easier. 
To back up what I am saying I attached chronology of release dates.
This is what makes me feel and many others kind of fulled.
Imagine to buy Ferrari and after just one year you got your 10.000 miles on yours.  Your friend buy his own brand new for 30% of the price than you paid and to top it all his car has even more important features. This really sucks.
To sum it all, Yamaha do not plan to add this feature in future versions of firmware?

Click thumbnail to see full-size image

I’m not really sure how you can claim be fooled when the XF came out before the MOX and MOXF did.

The MOX and MOXF are also mid range workstations.

The USB audio functionality of the MOX and MOXF is nothing like that of the FW16E.

The USB audio functionality on a MOX or a MOXF only gives you 4 out (or two stereo pairs) at 24 bit 44.1 kHz.  The FW16E can give you 16 mono channels (or 8 stereo pairs) at 24 bit 96 kHz.

The MOX or MOXF is a very basic interface by comparison to the FW16E.

You also have SPDIF as standard on your Motif XF, which the MOX and MOXF do not have.

Technology will always change and those changes will always upset someone who bought something before those changes.

Your only other choice is to never buy anything, but you did buy it and you sound rather happy with it, anyway.

damir65 - 01 July 2015 10:30 AM

Thanks for your replay 5pinDIN. What I know is that MOXF (as per Yamaha’s advertising) has same heart as XF. This can be seen also on comparative charts.

The MOXF and XF share the same basic sound engine. Aside from that, there are numerous differences between the two models.

 

damir65 -

[...]More to consider is fact that we have top of the line machine which unfortunately do not support something you show us with your new “budget” generation just one year after XF was released.

I don’t know who “you” and “your” refer to. I certainly don’t work for or represent Yamaha, and nobody else who currently posts on Motifator does.

 

damir65 -

As per my knowledge Audio trough USB feature was supported with first MOX versions.
Sound structure is the same. All is the same except that top of the line keyboard do not support this major thing makes life’s so much easier. 
To back up what I am saying I attached chronology of release dates.
This is what makes me feel and many others kind of fulled.
Imagine to buy Ferrari and after just one year you got your 10.000 miles on yours.  Your friend buy his own brand new for 30% of the price than you paid and to top it all his car has even more important features. This really sucks.
To sum it all, Yamaha do not plan to add this feature in future versions of firmware?

Your timeline doesn’t represent the actual development of the Motif XF. The time between the XF and MOXF releases isn’t the point. Although the MOXF includes certain features from the XF, the MOXF is based on the MOX. The MOX was introduced four years later than the XS. That means the XF is based on a design four years before USB audio was included in the MOX. That’s the situation, for better or worse.

I posted this in an earlier thread:
Previous introduction or release dates, as best I can determine from Yamaha and other relatively reliable sources…

MO 11/2005
MOX 5/2011
MOXF 9/2013

Thanks guys for your replies.
I didn’t meant to offend anybody here. Now when I tried to analyse myself I realize it is all about my specific situation where I had to take all bunch of stuff with me to holidays oversees to have my production setup ready. My Mac mini due to the FireWire input, Monitor audio interface, MOTIF XF, cables, pedals and other small stuff. If I would have MOXF this would not be necessary. Laptop with installed Cubase and MOXF with USB would do all I need to get me work on new album.

damir65 - 01 July 2015 11:53 PM

Thanks guys for your replies.
I didn’t meant to offend anybody here. Now when I tried to analyse myself I realize it is all about my specific situation where I had to take all bunch of stuff with me to holidays oversees to have my production setup ready. My Mac mini due to the FireWire input, Monitor audio interface, MOTIF XF, cables, pedals and other small stuff. If I would have MOXF this would not be necessary. Laptop with installed Cubase and MOXF with USB would do all I need to get me work on new album.

No offense taken, and none intended.

I understand that having certain features could make life easier, but unfortunately “you can’t always get what you want”.

Interfacing a synth to a computer will probably remain a problem to some degree in the foreseeable future. Computer technology is improving at a rapid pace, but synth development tends to lag it a bit. There’s a also a tendency to keep synths for a long time, while frequently updating to the latest computer. That tends to make having the “right” port/bus available somewhat hit-or-miss.

I used to own a MOX (as you might have guessed from my name) and I really liked the audio over USB that the MOX offered. But I decided to go from the middle of the line series (which includes MOX and MOXF) to the top of the line series (XS, XF) because of the additional capabilities it has to offer.

Yes, audio over USB is a convenience, and at first I missed it when I went from the MOX to the XF.  But as Phil and 5Pin pointed out, the audio over Firewire on the XF offers far greater functionality.  However, that functionality comes at a price, both in complexity and in cost.  Agreed, it would be nice to have both (I really do miss audio over USB!), but that would just drive the cost up even more.  So if each keyboard only has one audio interface, adding the convenient but limited capability of audio over USB to the MOX/MOXF series, and the more flexible audio over Firewire to the XF, makes sense to me.