Hi there fellow Motif owners - I feel a bit overwhelmed with all of the driver installs, software and tweeks that are required for this beast!  Any help out there would be appreciated.

What I’ve done:  I’ve installed the FW16E card into the Motif XF and updated both the steinberg driver and the firmware and installed some kind of “extension program” - I forget the name.  I tried recording a midi track via Garage band though the FW16E and that worked.  I am also interested in recording the actual audio coming from the motif itself - what I am not sure about is do I need to physically patch the out of the motif into its 1/4” in jack or is there some setting that I need to change?  I tried doing this in GB (with a real instrument setting) and it did not work.  I also noticed that in the Audio/Midi setup app on my Mac, all of the sliders for all the channels are grayed out.  I read somewhere on this forum about routing the audio but I don’t know how to do that.  I have an iMac 27” running Lion.

btw - I also have Logic (in case I can’t do what I want in GB) but have not yet “graduated to this level LOL.

Thanks,
Al

When it comes to the XF, firewire, and a Digital Audio Workstation (or DAW, such as Garage Band, Logic, Cubase, Sonar, Pro Tools, and the like), there is the concept of “digital” vs. “analog”.

Connecting physical 1/4” TS or TRS cables to the Main or Assignable outputs of the XF is considered “analog” because you’re transferring signal down patch cables usually destined for an amp (like a keyboard amp), a mixer, or perhaps straight into powered speakers for a PA system.

Firewire, on the other hand, would be considered “digital” because the signals are going down the firewire cable straight into your DAW of choice and onto a Track (actually...to a .wav file being stored on the hard drive which is then “tied” to the Track in, say, Garage Band).

Soooo...when you say:
>> I am also interested in recording the actual audio coming from the motif itself - what I am not sure about is do I need to physically patch the out of the motif into its 1/4” in jack or is there some setting that I need to change?

I’m a little confused as to why you would want to do this?  The various firewire “tracks” are many and include the “Main outs” (Left and Right) which basically capture a stereo .wav file of whichever tracks on the XF are being routed to the Main outs.  It’s ALLLLL about signal routing.  In other words, you could be in Song mode on the XF and have all 16 MIDI tracks routing their audio to the Main L/R outs.  You could do all your mixing and effects within the XF and then simply create a new stereo track in Garage Band and configure it to “receive” audio from the Main L/R outputs coming down firewire from the XF.  The stereo track within Garage Band (let’s just call it Track 1) would basically be receiving a perfect digital signal of the same audio that would be going out the back of the XF via simple 1/4” patch cables to a mixer, keyboard amp, or powered speakers.  But the key difference is that you’re getting that signal digitally via firewire and Garage Band is faithfully laying down that audio to a .wav file on the hard drive.

Boom.  You’re done.

Now...that said, of course there are firewire “channels” (1 through 14) that allow you to send individual tracks to Garage Band INDEPENDENTLY from each other.  In other words, if you route, say, Track 5 (piano) from the XF in Song mode to firewire channel 5 and you have a track 5 in Garage Band configured to “receive” audio on firewire channel 5 (and no other tracks on the XF are configured to “send” their audio down firewire channel 5), then the ONLY audio you will receive on Track 5 within Garage Band will be the piano sound. 

What I used to do with firewire when creating and recording (within, say, Cubase) multi-tracked “backing tracks” to later perform against was to leave the Drum track (1) on the XF going out Main L/R.  I then would configure all other tracks to send their audio down individual firewire tracks and capture it all in Cubase or Sonar.  When done, I had all tracks individually captured within Cubase/Sonar and I could then mix down my “backing track” any way I liked **AND** I could come back to the project (in Cubase/Sonar) later on down the road and RE-mix anything that needed to be “fixed”.  The reason I left the Drum track going through Main L/R is because I could then make use of the built in System reverb on the XF in which the drum “kit” was perfectly configured to sound like the kit was sitting in a particular room.  I didn’t want to have to recreate that in the DAW.  All the other instruments going down the other firewire channels CANNOT make use of the System reverb/chorus but must instead use any of the Insert effects if needed.  Finally...after I did this for awhile, I realized I could probably get just as good a mixdown ALL on the XF and simply send ALL tracks in Song mode out the Main L/R straight to a simple stereo track in Sonar and be done.  That is what I THINK you’re trying to do (forgive me if I didn’t understand you).

Here’s an article on Motifator that shows how firewire works with Cubase (a daw similar to Garage Band): http://www.motifator.com/index.php/support/view/motif_xf_ysfw_setup_mac_with_cubase/

Hope that helps!  Having the ability to send individual tracks out separate individual firewire channels is EXTREMELY powerful...however...at times and in some cases you might think (as I did) that it’s overkill for the particular “job at hand”.  Use the features appropriate to the job.

Sincerely,

Kevin B. Selby
http://kevinselby.com <-- Peaceful Music