This is probably a very silly question but I must ask it. I’m not quite understanding the whole sampling arena so I offer my apologies.

I want to do some solo performances with my Motif XF in the very near future so my end goal is to record some harmonies on a handful of songs with the Motif environment.

I presently have 2 “sets” worth of material (approx. 10 songs a set maybe 4 minutes in length each). I have these “sets” stored on a USB Flash Drive currently.

I’ve read that the Motif XF is capable of handling 6 minutes and 20 seconds (380sec)of sample time?  I hope I worded that correctly. The question is, does that mean 6 minutes and 20 seconds of total memory or is that 6 min/20sec per song?  So say I want to record 6 minutes of background vocals on Song A, will I only have 20 sec of sample time remaining on Song A or 20 sec remaining within the entire Motif sampling environment. I hope I worded this correctly and that this is not to dumb of a question.

Thanks in advance to all,

Fingers

The 6:20 refers to the maximum sample length. Whether mono or stereo a single sample cannot be longer than six minutes and twenty seconds. That translates to 32MB for a mono sample and 64MB for a stereo sample.

The XF has 128MB of RAM total for storing samples, to store more samples at one time you need flash memory boards installed.

To answer your exact question, if you record six minutes of backing vocals (in stereo) you will have only 6:40 of space left in RAM for other samples.

However, my guess is your vocals don’t run continuously for six minutes. Chop up the single vocal performance into sections and trigger each inside the song.

Does this answer your question?

Still confused…

The XF has 128MB of RAM total for storing samples, to store more samples at one time you need flash memory boards installed.

So what you’re saying is that I can’t record 6 minutes and 20 seconds of vocals on Song A, save it to a USB, turn off my Motif, turn back on the Motif, load Song A (w/the vocals that were saved previously) and record different vocals on Song B b/c I already used 6 min 20 sec already?? If that’s the case, how is the flash memory different than the USB besides allowing samples to stay in memory even if the Motif is turned off??

Thanks for your reply,

F

You’re still confused.

6:20 is just the longest a single sample can be. Samples can be a lot shorter...1 second, for instance...just never any longer than 6:20. OK?

128MB holds 12:40 seconds if all samples are stereo.

128MB holds 25:20 if all samples are mono.

That time is shared for all user samples in RAM...ones used in songs, patterns or user voices.

If you need more sample time than that, you must have flash memory installed with some of your samples stored there rather than all of them in RAM. With 2GB of flash you can store over 3 hours of stereo samples.

First, thanks for help!

In my current setup I have folders on my USB titled set 1,set 2, etc. to spread the memory out so I don’t run into issues of running out of sequencer space.  Thanks BM for that tip works great BTW!  Some sets have more songs in it while others have fewer but use more sequencer memory due to its complexity. 

When I create a new Song within set 1, I save it to the USB.  If set 1’s memory is at it’s limit, I would then would load set 2 which has more memory and create another Song. I assume the sampling memory works the same way, correct? 

If I were to max out the sampling memory on set 1, then I would need to either delete a Song if I desperately needed that sample on Song A which resides in set 1, or load Song A that needs the sample on set 2 which I have not used up all of my sample memory yet? 

I hope I’m almost there…

jsfingers - 02 February 2012 11:55 AM

When I create a new Song within set 1, I save it to the USB.  If set 1’s memory is at it’s limit, I would then would load set 2 which has more memory and create another Song. I assume the sampling memory works the same way, correct? 

That’s more or less it.

When you load your new set it will clear out the sample memory used by the previous set.

Thanks again !