Good morning,

Just about ready to jump on tour with 3 Yamaha XF8s and my MacPro.  Yesterday, I tried adding the third XF to the FW network.  It showed up in my Audio Midi window but it was greyed out.  I read in the FW installation manual that you can connect up to 3 devices.  For example: XS8, Motif rack and a mixer.  Is it possible to connect three keyboards over the FW network??

Warmest Regards,

Mark LeVang

I’ll preface this by saying that I’m not a “Mac guy”, nor have I ever tried to interconnect three XFs via FireWire.

Apparently the YSFW driver will support simultaneous operation of up to three compatible devices. It’s unlikely that daisy chaining three XFs would in itself be a problem, as long as the interconnecting cables aren’t extremely long.

Two Utility Mode settings you might check - details on page 228 of the XF Reference Manual (http://download.yamaha.com/file/48531)…
See (4) MIDI In/Out, make sure each XF is set to FW.
See (3) Device Number. The default setting for Device Number is “all”. I’m not sure if setting the three XFs to different numbers (such as 1,2,3) will make a difference.

Of course, the problem might be related to Mac configuration, or something I haven’t thought of, so if another member has other suggestions, please let us know.

Update - I looked further into the multiple FW device situation…

EDIT: See the “Using Multiple Devices...” section of the PDF Installation Guide (page 10 of the one for Windows) that comes with the YSFW driver download. It details the specific method of configuring things for two or three devices. It relates to how they are connected, resetting of Device Number in the YSFW driver Control Panel, and the required powering up procedure (one at a time) for proper recognition of all devices.