I realize it may be slightly off topic, but we talk about it enough here, the Motif ES.. as if it's a quasi arranger of sorts ( it isn't.. believe me ) ...

Weeks of programming work is gone "just like that" because the board apparently did an overwrite to my AN150 plug in user patches when I errantly loaded or changed an all voice file or something to that effect. Nothing stays in rom memory on this board.. nothing..

Terry is right. This thing by far has the most unintuituve OS of anything I've ever seen or dreamed of. OK, admittedly I may not be the brightest guy on the planet, but in the past I've been able to figure out most any function and file storage systems on any other piece of hardware or software I've worked with.

Yet after well over a year and change of working with the OS of the ES and it's "classic" counterpart, I still don't get it... The flash rom voices that I saved load fine into the ES, but the end result, the user voices themselves, are gone. The way you have to load the user voices form the exsternal editor takes so many steps that it is hardly worth it. I'd try to explain it, but it takes Yamaha a 4 page PDf manual just to explain how to do this one thing, that should have been a lot simpler, except that the file formats are different from the external editor to the board, so several steps are needed to convert and save user voices..

It's SO much easier to edit and store patches in my software analog modeled synths, by comparison, that it's almost ridiculous to even bother on the Motif. Basically, I have a nice hardware board with excellent sounds and editing / sampling / sequencing functions that just aren't worth trying to use at all. I could have gotten that lot cheaper with kontakt or gigasttudio and a midi controller.

Breathe controller or not, I've about had it.... I want something different... and yes I still want a hardware rompler. Sigh.. I hope the fantom X is released before Yamaha replaces the ES with a new model, so that at least I'll get some resale value.

AJ