I have read the long posts explaining the use of elements with the voices that can limit polyphony. But my experience makes me still believe there is a major flaw in the XS design. Using the “Brush drumset” I created a four measure pattern which had no more than two notes played on any one beat. The I added two ride cymbals on the 16th notes. This sounded ok. The third track was a “Fretless bass” which uses two elements per mono note. During the recording of the bass line, the bass notes were being clipped! I exchanged the unit and the new one is doing the same. Elijah Bradford, the tech at Yamaha experiences drop out also but thinks it is related to the number of elements used. I sent him the sequence with Vintage Rhodes and Lyricon voices added. He changed the drumset and the voice clipping stopped. The element information for the drums is not listed. I find it hard to believe the brush drum set and a bass voice used all 128 elements!

Re: Another polyphony problem

It is not clear what Voices you used. The Bulk data that is included recalls
Track 1: Everlasting Glory (USER 1: 001) (if you created and/or edited your own Voice, that also may be something that needs to be looked at… (to really get to the bottom of this you would need to include the Motif-Rack XS Editor file)
Track 2: Fretless Dry
Track 3: Wind Synth
Track 4: Felicity (?)
Track 10: Brush Kit

The “Everlasting Glory” Voice in PART 1 is what gets recalled because you probably created and edited your own Voice and stored it in location USER 1: 001, but since you only bulked the MULTI and did not provide the Voice Editor file, that Voice is not included in your data. I tried substituting several different sounds in this location… if indeed this is a piano performance (and the sustain pedal usage does point to this) there are moments in the track where the pedal is sustaining as many as 31 note-ons (just for the track 1).

Also there is some strange data in the file - and I don’t know if it is impacting the results or not. The data in it includes some strange META EVENTS… probably unnecessary to play the data. You do not mention on what sequencer the data was prepared but I highly recommend that you check the Preferences of your sequencer and eliminate any unnecessary items that it may be including into the MIDI File; like program specific locators, markers, text comments or such things. I have seen these thing do weird things to files (from inserting blank measures to causing sticking notes)… some software can write unnecessary (unnecessary for the Motif-Rack XS anyway), Cable numbers and port selection information into MIDI files…

There is a Copyright notice event and some others… sometimes these can cause havoc when exporting a file as SMF for play in other sequencers. Perhaps the file is corrupted by removing the Copyright details… (?)

I also do not find any Voices: called “Vintage Rhodes” or “Lyicon” in the Motif-Rack XS… we would love to help you get to the bottom of the issue but the information you provided is preventing a completely accurate analysis.

We did also find that choosing any other drum kit seemed to relieve the problem - but this is not conclusive evidence that this is the cause. We also found that slowing the tempo also cured all the note clipping/stealing problems in the file, as well - but that is not conclusive of anything specific either. But it does suggest that somewhere there is an envelope that may be holding polyphony…

Also the “lead” track, the one that recalls the “Wind Synth”, (a mono Voice) is polyphonic in some places - although this should not be a problem we do hear that Voice switching mid-note as it attempts at times to play more than one tone from a mono voice.

But for any definitive solution or answer, we would need to know the actual (correct) Voice data that you are using.

Just a look at the sustain data, this could be a conflict - although at tempo 120, even without the piano there is an issue… at times.

I also found Exchanging tracks (placing the Bass in PART 1, and the keyboard in PART 3) made a huge difference as well…

So in summary:
There is an Edited Voice that may be grabbing polyphony by having either a long release
Changing the order of the tracks seems to cure the issue so a timing priority may be at issue… Since the piano performance with all the sustain pedal seems to be the one needing the most polyphony perhaps exchanging the track with the drums on 10 would be the cure.

Without the actual data or knowing the origin of the data or sequencer it was recorded on ... I’m just making an educated guess.

Re: Another polyphony problem

Thank you for the reply and your time. Track 1 is the Vintage Rhodes, which I copied to the User Voice 1 position, no editing has been done to it . Wind Synth is the third voice. I initialized the Combination setup user 1 before selecting the voices. I used an ancient Powermac 8500 running Cubase 4.1. This has been a trouble-free and very stable setup for sequencing and I have had no polyphony issues with this few voices on my Roland JV-2080 module, my Kurzweil PC-88, or my Roland JV-1010 module.
The two MIDI files I first created with the polyphony issues on the Motif Rack XS play fine on these other instruments. I have also encountered this problem with my PC running Cubase AI software included with the Motif.
I have also experienced a new issue. When selecting a voice, in this case a Sax for track 4, I store it into the setup. But when I return to the main setup page, that voice has changed to a Violin.  I turn the Motif off and back on, and the Sax voice shows up until I turn on the MOTU midi interface and then it changes to violin. Cubase has no program setting assigned. It is a blank track in the sequencer. I create a fresh blank song and it does the same thing. Could this old version of Cubase not be compatible with the Motif?