Hey guys!

I have YAMAHA MOTIF XF8 synthesizer. Originally it wasn’t equipped with YAMAHA FW16e expansion board. So I used coaxial S/PDIF to connect my MOTIF XF with Focusrite Scarlett 6i6 external sound card wich I had at that moment. As well as I used USB 2.0 connection with PC for MIDI. So there weren’t any problems with this configuration except for these:

1. Long syncronization between synthesizer and PC on project startup in Cakewalk DAW via YAMAHA XF VST plug-in.
2. No ability to record sound from synthesizer in multichannel mode in DAW.

It was actually hard to find YAMAHA FW16e expansion board but I did it. I also found an old PCI VIA 1394 OHCI controller wich I installed into my PC with Windows 10 on board. I bought two FireWire cables KRAMER C-FM6/FM6-10 (10 ft/3 meter). And finally I bought Steinberg MR816csx sound card wich also has FireWire connection. Moreover it uses the same YAMAHA Steinberg FW driver wich MOTIF XF8 uses. So that’s what I did step by step:

1. Installed last YAMAHA Steinberg FW driver.
2. Didn’t remove USB 2.0 connection between Synth and PC.
3. Connected Steinberg MR816csx sound card with PC using FireWire cable (MR816csx [FW1] -> PC PCI VIA 1394 OHCI controller [FW 6pin IN]).
4. Turned on PC and installed last drivers and utilities for Steinberg MR816csx sound card.
5. Tested the sound by playing some music files. All was OK.
6. Connected YAMAHA MOTIF XF8 synthesizer with Steinberg MR816csx sound card using FireWire cable (YAMAHA MOTIF XF8 [FW1] -> MR816csx [FW2]). AS far as I know it’s called ‘Daisy chain’.
7. Turned on all equipment and problems came (look further).

The main problem is there are lot constantly scratches and sound drops/gaps. It happens all the time when my Synth is powered on. I played with ASIO Buffer size setting in YAMAHA Steinberg FW driver and it didn’t help. And only YAMAHA Steinberg FW Driver Utility (ysfutility.exe) helped a little bit: I set ‘Medium’ IEEE 1394 Buffer Size setting. But it didn’t resolve the problem entirely. Gaps and scratches are still in place from time to time. So here is the question: Do I need second FireWire controller for my PC and connect MOTIF XF with this controller? Because now I’m using ‘Daisy chain’ connection.

The second problem is that I thought that I can route Main L/R FireWire output from MOTIF XF8 to MR816csx with ‘WDM Audio Routing’ setting in YAMAHA Steinberg FW driver. Seems like I was wrong and I can’t achieve this. Is it possible? Well I’ve connected my MOTIF XF with MR816csx with coaxial S/PDIF again. And I have only 44kHz sound quality wich is pretty good but I want to test 96kHz wich is available via YAMAHA FW16e. Of course thanks to Bad Mister I know that internal sample rate of MOTIF XF is 44kHz. Just want to test it. BTW interesting thing that I noticed while was playing with ‘Sample Rate’ setting on Steinberg MR816csx sound card (using coaxial S/PDIF):

- The best sound quality from Synth is at 44kHz setting.
- All sample rates with higher values (i.e. 48, 88.2, 96) are ‘noisy’ at high frequencies. Why is this happening? Because of secondary re-sampling in sound card? Moreover when I had previous configuration (with Scarlett 6i6 external sound card) it couldn’t be possible to change sound card’s Sample Rate from 44kHz to any other value while Word Clock Master was set to MOTIF XF and Clock Source to External. Now (with Steinberg MR816csx) I can set any combination and it somehow works…

You might ask me: Why am I not using MOTIF XF as a sound card? Well that’s because I use PC not only for making of music. My audio monitors are connected to Steinberg MR816csx sound card. My phones are also connected to sound card. So when I want to play music I just need to power on MOTIF XF, wait a bit and start to play. But without coaxial S/PDIF connection it will be impossible to hear anything from MOTIF XF.

As for Cubase I want to ask you about my equipment. Are YAMAHA MOTIF XF and Steinberg MR816csx still supported by Cubase 10? In the past there was a special version ‘Cubase AI’ (AI stands for Advanced Integration) wich was used for these devices. I use Cakewalk but I plan to migrate on Cubase or at least try it.

Thanks a lot!

Hi, I had this scratching/drop-outs problem with my firewire connection until I did some research into how to tune Windows for Audio.  I would recommend that as a starting place:
Optimising-your-PC-for-Audio