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Viewing topic "Can The Motif XS do This With Midi?"

     
Posted on: July 11, 2020 @ 10:11 PM
KaiONealMusic
Total Posts:  1
Joined  07-11-2020
status: Newcomer

I have a Yamaha MO8 right now, I’m planning on upgrading to a Yamaha Motif XS, and I saw that Yamaha uploaded a video talking about the main feature I upgraded for, but it’s demonstrated on the MoX and I don’t remember it mentioning if the Motif XS has this feature too, which it should, but I honestly have no clue by the way it’s presented. Can you do this with the Motif XS?

Yamaha MOX6/MOX8- USB Audio/MIDI Interface

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Posted on: July 12, 2020 @ 11:51 PM
🎹Lex
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Total Posts:  81
Joined  05-20-2009
status: Experienced

The XS can only do MIDI over USB, not audio.

However if the XS6 or XS7 has a mLAN16E2 or FW16E expansion board installed, it can do both MIDI and audio over a Firewire (IEEE 1394) cable. If it is an XS8 on the other hand, it already has the necessary connections built in and does not require an expansion board.

In fact, at least as far as Windows is concerned, the Yamaha Steinberg Firewire driver is actually a bit more flexible than the Yamaha Steinberg USB driver, even when it comes to the newest synths (Montage/MODX)! I don’t have enough experience with the Mac side of things to say whether the same advantages hold true there.

Unfortunately for XS6s and 7s out there which lack the expansion board, the boards seem to have become hard to find. You may be lucky in finding a used XS6 or XS7 which includes the expansion and is being sold by someone that doesn’t recognize the higher price that their particular Motif should fetch. In my limited experience looking at a few different XS6/7 for sale, none of them had the board installed.

If you do get your hands on a Motif with the proper connections, you will need a way to connect Firewire to your computer, which is much less common than USB especially nowadays.

If you have a Mac with a Thunderbolt port, you can use an adapter to connect a Firewire cable there. If it’s an older Thunderbolt port which uses the same connector as FireWire 800, then no adapter is required. If it’s an old enough Mac (pre-2012) it will likely simply have a Firewire port ready to go.

On Windows/PC, I’ve had success with this card to add Firewire connectivity:
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B006DQ0KD2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

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