Hello guys,

I recently purchased an used XF8 and I found many voices (both Presets and User) don’t produce any sound, They have their name, but no sound at all. At first I thought they were vocoder patches, but they’re not. I didn’t noticed that at the moment of purchase cause, of course, I didn’t check all the 1000+ voices.

I have restored the factory settings, but it didn’t help.

Am I missing something?

Please provide a few examples of Voices which are silent - give Voice bank, number, and name.

It’s actually many voices, belonging to different banks (several PRE and USER, from USER 6 up). It’s a random thing. I’ll give you some example as I go back in the studio. Thank you.

When the XF is new, or after a factory reset, User Voice locations (except for USER 1) are filled with copies of Preset Voices, and it would be expected that any such User Voices would behave the same. Those Voices aren’t in the same User bank locations as they are in the Preset banks, so what’s happening might appear to be more random than it really is. Knowing which Voices are affected will hopefully help to determine what the cause is.

Hi SpinDIN,

here are bank, sub bank and number of the silent voices. User 3 and 4 have just few muted voices and drum banks seem to be in order. It looks totally random to me, I pray is not a hardware problem.
Hope is enough to make a diagnosis. Thanks.

PRESETS
—————————

PRE 2
A01; B15; C14

PRE3
H11 to 16

PRE4
E03

PRE5
H02; H03

PRE6
D09; G08 to 15; H02 to 16

PRE7
A01 to 06; B02; B03; B05; C02; C09; C10; C11; D05; D06; D10; F09; F10; H04; H06 TO 16

PRE8
A01 to 09; A11; A12; A13; B02 to 10; D08 to 16; E ALL; G ALL; H01 to 14

USER
————

USR1
C14; C15; C16; E09; E10; F03; F05 to 16; G01; G03 to 16; H01; H03; H06; H09 to 16

USR2
A02; A04; A06; A07; A09; A10; A11; B02; B03; B06; B09; B11; C02; C08; C09; C10; C16; D02; D07; D09; D12; D14; E02; E05; E09; E12; F02; F07; F08; F09; G01; G02; G10; H02; H03; H08; H12; H15; H16

It’s not random.

You may notice that when a silent Voice is selected, the [ARPEGGIO ON/OFF] button is lit (Arps on), and that with Voices which produce sound when the keyboard is played that button is not lit (Arps off). The arpeggiator won’t play unless it gets proper MIDI clock signals.

The likely fix:
Press [UTILITY] > [F5]Control > [SF2]MIDI
Make sure MIDI Sync is set to ”internal”
Press [STORE] to retain changes.

If the MIDI Sync setting was other than internal, the factory reset wasn’t done properly - or a file was loaded that changed the System/Utility settings afterward, or a Quick SEQ SETUP other than 1 was selected. See page 18 of the XF Owner’s Manual for resetting to factory conditions.

I hope that resolves things for you. Let us know.

By the way…
The first character in my screen name is a 5(five), as in 5-pin-DIN, the MIDI connector.  :-)

Hi5pinDIN,

big thanks for your reply, sorry for mistaking your name, it looks like I need an oculist!

I’m not sure every silent patch had the Arpeggio on, but I’ll check it as soon as I go back in the studio. If so, that will fix the problem. I’ll let you know. Thank you.

Hi 5pinDIN,

you were right, big thanks.

MIDI Sync was indeed set to MIDI, since I mostly use the XF as a multi-timbral module driven by Cubase (along with its keyboard of course). My main mode is therefore “Song”.

Talking about the song mode, it looks like I can’t assign a Drum Voice to a track but Track 10. Yes I mean track, not MIDI Ch.

My basic Song has 5 active parts respectively channeled from 1 to 4 plus a fifth part set on ch 10 for drums. It happens that I hear no sound unless the mixing button is on. If the channel number goes over the track number I have no sound. 

Not a big issue, I’ll set my drum track on Ch. 5 (and/or I’ll use the Mixing button). Just wondering why…

Thank you again.

m-tagg - 19 January 2020 07:18 AM

Hi 5pinDIN,

you were right, big thanks.

MIDI Sync was indeed set to MIDI, since I mostly use the XF as a multi-timbral module driven by Cubase (along with its keyboard of course). My main mode is therefore “Song”.

You’re welcome - I’m glad that resolved the problem.

By the way, for your purposes you might be able to set MIDI Sync to “auto”. That way clock can be sourced from either the XF or externally. However, with that setting tempo can’t be changed on the XF. See ”auto” under (5) MIDI Sync on page 228 of the XF Reference Manual.

 

m-tagg -

Talking about the song mode, it looks like I can’t assign a Drum Voice to a track but Track 10. Yes I mean track, not MIDI Ch.

Sorry, what you’re saying isn’t clear to me - the XF doesn’t dictate which Track a Drum Kit is on. See XF Song Demo 4, “Someday” - Drum Kits are on Tracks 2, 3, and 10.

 

m-tagg -

My basic Song has 5 active parts respectively channeled from 1 to 4 plus a fifth part set on ch 10 for drums. It happens that I hear no sound unless the mixing button is on. If the channel number goes over the track number I have no sound. 

Not a big issue, I’ll set my drum track on Ch. 5 (and/or I’ll use the Mixing button). Just wondering why…

Parts determine the MIDI Receive Channel. Tracks determine the Transmit Channel. By default, the Receive Channel number matches the Part number, and the Transmit Channel number matches the Track number.

Depending on how you’re configuring Parts and Tracks, you may have to reassign the Track Transmit Channel. From the XF’s Song Play screen you can press [F3]Track > [SF1]Out and set the TxCh (Transmit Channel).

Since I don’t use Cubase, I can’t address any problems which might relate to the way it’s been set up.

Thanks for your reply. “Auto” sync is just perfect!

As far as the “Song” problem, yes, I talked about tracks and parts as if they were the same thing, which is not, and I think that’s the problem: what I tried to do was editing the parts’ Rx Channels, which doesn’t seem possible.