I noticed the other day that there are now some duplicate waveforms on my 512 MB flash board which is in FL1, and I have no idea how they got there. The only thing I put on FL1 was Inspiration in a Flash. The duplicates weren’t there when I loaded Inspiration to FL1, and I haven’t loaded anything to FL1 since. The only things I’ve done are that I’ve made some new voices using the FL1 waveforms, I’ve changed the user locations for some of the Inspiration voices to make room for other user voices, and I’ve overwritten some of the voices I didn’t want. Could this have had something to do with the duplicate waveforms? How do I prevent this from happening in the future on either of my flash boards? Is this a known bug? Thanks.

Josh

Hey Joshy, I am going to guess this is not a bug, because it is so common and easy to inadvertently duplicate WAVEFORMS in the SAVE-->LOAD process.

See This recent thread, and note the reference by 5pinDIN to a support article and specifically the quote he highlights.

Without careful directions in routine SAVE and LOAD operations, various WAVEFORMS can be duplicated easily.

Speaking as a recent victim of this “feature,” it would be good if the Motif xf software was modified to make it more difficult to do this.

Actually probably not. If you have a clear understanding of the structure. It has to allow you load data without overwriting what is already installed on your Flash Board.

So if you tell it to LOAD to FL1 it will install the audio on your Flash Board and create a Waveform on the LIST. if you tell it to LOAD without Sample, it will simply add the Waveform data to the LIST, if you do not want to make any changes to your Flash Board, then set the option to “NONE”.

NONE literally will not change the Samples on the Flash Board nor will it add Waveforms to your Waveform List.

what you may not appreciate is the LOAD “WITHOUT SAMPLE” option particularly if you always use the same Motif XF. Why have an option that simply adds the WAVEFORM data to the WAVEFORM LIST, without installing samples?

Here’s where that is essential.... You are on tour and have specified a Motif XF from backline, they deliver a fresh Motif XF, you have your two Flash Boards which you put into the rental unit…

You don’t need to load SAMPLES (that would take forever), that’s why you brought along your FLASH BOARDS, you put the Boards into the fresh unit, and you press UTILITY > [F6] FLASH and the WAVEFORM LIST is blank, of course, You pull out your trusty USB stick, load your ALL data archive FILE with the LOAD OPTIONS set:
USR > USR
FL1 > without sample
FL2 > without sample

WITHOUT SAMPLE quickly loads just the WAVEFORM data. This will teach this Motif XF what is on your Boards and where to find it. Without that option you’d be in trouble.

A SAMPLE is actual audio data - which can be HUGE in size… Chick Corea’s Rhodes is like 400MB by itself
A WAVEFORM is simply the parameters that organize/collect the audio into musical groupings. They are small in size by comparison - just a few KB worth of data. Never much more than that.

Think money ... It helps get a perspective on size. Kilobytes - say you have a gig that pays $2,000;
Megabytes - the following week you have a gig that pays $400,000,000

Get it? Where I think the problem arises is when you don’t appreciate the role of the Samples versus the role of the Waveform… If you use the terms interchangeably you probably don’t have it clear in your mind.

If you work with the same XF all the time, you may never need this option, but as you see it has to exist.

JUST remember this: Ask yourself, does the file I’m getting ready to load require new data? Do I need to install new Samples, do I need to teach my XF where to find its data?

Mostly no, you probably are loading Songs, Patterns, Voices, Performances, that require no change to your Samples nor the Waveforms that organize them… And that is NONE

The number of changes required to make this data I’m loading play as concerns the FL1 or FL2 = NONE

I recommend you leave it set to NONE and only change it when (on the rare occassion) you are doing and installation session.

When you load individual Voices from the same file, the XF is smart enough to realize that a Waveform with the exact same name is coming from that same file and it will automatcially skip duplicating. It just loads rhe Voice data and does not duplicate anything. Cool! But what if you load a new File that you just purchased, and by happenstance there is a Waveform with the same name as one you already have loaded… Well, the XF doesn’t/can’t possibly know if it is the same or not. So it adds it to the end of the list… You can then, using your ears tell if it is the same or not… Then using the Integrated Sampling JOB, you can have the XF tell you about Duplicate Waveforms and what Voices the data is used in..

Hope that helps.

Thanks, Bad_Mister.

I’m a “civilian.” One Motif xf is more than enough for me.

There’s always more to learn…

“One thing leads to another”.

Having given it some more thought, I think there might be a way to accommodate the needs both of professional musicians as described by Bad_Mister, and folks like me who play recreationally and don’t often go on tour with rented machines.

What if the machine popped up a warning when you were about to create multiple waveforms with the same name? And then it would let you either go ahead or cancel the operation.

In the situation of the professional musician, my understanding is that they wouldn’t even see the warning.

And I would have been warned, and would not have ended up with 10 copies of every waveform from Inspiration in a Flash on my machine.

Another suggestion: the “Delete Same Name Waveforms” sampling job could provide an option that would delete all of them instead of limiting the operation to one waveform number. I looked into using that job to fix my problem, but I would have had to go one by one through around 1500 different numbers.

Thanks guies for the replies. The problem is that I haven’t loaded anything to my XF since I loaded Inspiration in a Flash. Here’s an example of how I moved a user voice that used a waveform on FL1 to another user slot. I’m thinking that this may have been what created the duplicates

First, I selected the Power Grand voice from Inspiration in a Flash. I wanted to put it into User 1 C15 instead of the User 2 slot it was in when I loaded it. I pressed Store, entered User 1 C15, pressed Enter and confirmed. The voice is now in User 1 C15, leaving a slot open in User 2. I did this with all the Inspiration voices I wanted to keep, and I overwrote the User 1 voices I didn’t want.

Could moving the voices in this way have caused the duplicate waveforms to appear? Please remember that I haven’t loaded any files since I loaded Inspiration in a Flash. I’ve been using the waveforms in the internal ROM and on FL1 to make new user voices.

Could moving the voices in this way have caused the duplicate waveforms to appear?

No, not at all.

Joshy - 19 June 2013 05:23 PM

[...] I’ve been using the waveforms in the internal ROM and on FL1 to make new user voices.

Did you edit any of the Waveforms to use in your new Voices?

Joshy - 17 June 2013 04:54 PM

I noticed the other day that there are now some duplicate waveforms on my 512 MB flash board which is in FL1, and I have no idea how they got there. The only thing I put on FL1 was Inspiration in a Flash. The duplicates weren’t there when I loaded Inspiration to FL1 [...]

How many is “some”?

Since I’m always curious about situations that aren’t easily accounted for, I deleted all the waveforms from an FL512M and installed Inspiration in a Flash. I then immediately checked for duplicates, and found ten. That means, of course, that IiaF actually includes five pairs of Waveforms with the same name. I didn’t bother checking whether those Waveform pairs are identical.

5pinDIN - 20 June 2013 06:22 AM

Since I’m always curious about situations that aren’t easily accounted for, I deleted all the waveforms from an FL512M and installed Inspiration in a Flash. I then immediately checked for duplicates, and found ten. That means, of course, that IiaF actually includes five pairs of Waveforms with the same name. I didn’t bother checking whether those Waveform pairs are identical.

Hmmmmm…

As part of fixing my “big file” problem, I deleted all of the duplicate waveforms from my FL1.

Did I do some damage to my IIAF voices? Or did I just get rid of extra data that was actually unnecessary?

Michael Trigoboff - 20 June 2013 09:56 AM

Hmmmmm…

As part of fixing my “big file” problem, I deleted all of the duplicate waveforms from my FL1.

Did I do some damage to my IIAF voices? Or did I just get rid of extra data that was actually unnecessary?

An excellent pair of questions, to which I don’t know the answer without investigating further. I don’t have the time right now to do that, but if I get a chance later, I’ll post what I find.

Somehow, I found the time. :-)

I copied the duplicate pairs from flash into RAM, and compared the two Waveforms of each pair. All appear to be exact duplicates, so apparently there’s no worry if they’re deleted.

If anyone is interested, the duplicate Waveforms are:
020/139 SweetPanFl
149/153 02-D-kap.wav
150/160 08-G#-tek-2.wav
151/155 04-E-tek-2.wav
227/338 HipHop HH Open1

The Waveform numbers are those when IiaF is first loaded to an otherwise empty flash module and the User Waveform YTS_05.wav is directed to flash - otherwise the numbers will each be lower by 1. The duplicates only take up about 466 kB (roughly 0.1% of an FL512M), so deleting them might not be a high priority unless someone needed every last “bit” of space on a flash module.

5pinDIN - 21 June 2013 03:14 AM

Somehow, I found the time. :-)

Thanks!

I think I’ll leave it alone out of sheer paranoia, and the application of the rule “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.”

My machine was acting very strange yesterday (Performances were not playing correctly), so I formatted my flash module, loaded the “all, with samples” file I created right after I downloaded IIAF a long time ago, and then loaded a recent backup file (from before my problems with duplicate waveforms) with FL1 and FL2 set to “None.”

It’s all working correctly now, so I think I won’t mess with it…

Duplicate waveforms can be removed in several ways. Of course, the number of Duplicates will determine the method you will choose to use to “fix” it.

Once you begin to become familiar with the whole FLASH BOARD routine, you will not fall prey to this peril any longer. Trust me, its like a rite of passage in the Flash world… loading an ALL data file without checking and verifying whether the “FL1 > NONE” and “FL2 > NONE” options were set properly when you simply want to load Voice data, Songs/Patterns etc. If you don’t tell the XF you don’t want to add any new Samples and Waveforms by setting them to “NONE”. You wind up duplicating the WAVEFORMS.

If it is but a dozen Waveforms, no big deal. But what if you just duplicated a couple of hundred Waveforms. There come a point where it is simply easier to FORMAT the Board and redo (as stated above). We have all been there, trust me! :-)

The thing is, the stove is hot, you only have to touch it, as a curious kid, a few times before you stop playing around with it. So once you have loaded an ALL data file you should know to review all of the LOAD OPTIONS before you proceed. If you assume the “default” setting is what you need, you do so at your own peril.

Before you LOAD, check all the LOAD Options - before you owned a FLASH BOARD you could be unconcerned. Now that you own and have data on your Flash Boards, check those LOAD OPTIONS every time - learn what they mean. That is my recommendation.

Once you do, the strange appearance of Duplicates happens. And yes there are Duplicates in the Inspiration In A Flash, I’m sure in the reconfiguring of the data that might have been overlooked.

The on-board function for finding DUPLICATE WAVEFORMS is found in [INTEGRATED SAMPLING] > [JOB] > OTHER

When it finds a Duplicate Waveform it will alert you. You never have to worry about a VOICE not having its data, when you remove the ‘duplicates’ to the trash the XF will automatically “repoint” all VOICES that used the discarded duplicate to the Waveform at the top of the screen (the one you are keeping).