I want to save an audio track from a CD into the Motif XS7 memory, and run this in sync with a midi file, either the midi triggering the audio to start in sync, or vice versa. I can do this easily using an external sequencer such as Cakewalk, but that is all stored on my PC. I want to do the same thing inside the Motif so that I don’t have to carry a CD player or PC around with me to gigs.

I guess what this question boils down to is, does the Motif XS have sufficient RAM or a hard disk that can instantly load/play audios in sync with a midifile?

Is it possible to do what I want? I have never heard or seen anyone do it, and never read about it on any forum.

Note that I would need about 20 to 30 songs saved into the Motif to get me through a whole evenings performance. I guess this boils down to “does the Motif have RAM or a Hard disk that can instantly load audios and sync them with a midifile?

Re: Combine midi with audio in sync

Practically speaking, you might possibly load up to 20 CD songs into 1 GB of RAM on your Motif XS. The load wouldn’t be “instant”, though, it would take a few minutes to load it, and you would have to load every time you turned on your Motif.

Here’s the problem - the Motif isn’t designed to be a hard disk recorder/playback device, like a CD player. You have to load a CD track, then place it in a song mix, then trigger it to start with a MIDI event (a key press, at the beginning of the song, that lasts for the entire duration of the song). If you tried to play the song from the “middle”, after the MIDI event, you’d hear nothing.

Second, unless you know the exact tempo of the CD track, and have it “trimmed” so there’s absolutely no dead space at the beginning of the
audio, you won’t be able to sync the MIDI to the audio. Even if you determined that the tempo was 120 BPM, for example, and you set the tempo of your MIDI sequence to 120, at some point the MIDI timing and the audio will drift apart.

This is the kind of thing you have to do in a DAW like Cubase. How do people do this onstage? They use a laptop, connected to a FireWire or USB audio interface, that runs into an onstage mixer and from there to the “house” P.A. The laptop plays back the audio, from Cubase or whatever DAW you’re using. You can fast forward to the middle or end or wherever you want in the tune and still hear the audio playback.

The short answer is, it really isn’t going to work using just the XS7.