What a headache YEM is

[overover]

Hi John,

Right now, whether we like it or not, we have to work with the YEM-based Expansion Voice technology. That means, all self-created Voices (same as Yamaha packs or third party Packs if you want to combine them) have to go to the YEM first, there is no getting around that. After installation on the keyboard, if certain rules are followed, you can also add or delete individual Expansion content without the memory being formatted (via WiFi installation or Pack Quick Installation via USB).

The Tone Generator SWP70 currently used by Yamaha (which is built into Genos, SX models, the latest CVP generation as well as Montage and MODX) is limited to the so-called "NAND Flash" memory technology for storing the Wave samples used. In order to use "Disk Streaming" for the samples in a Genos successor, Yamaha would have to use/develop a completely new Tone Generator technology.


Best regards,
Chris

[ckobu]

That's right Chris. Or in other words.

We can only play on the keyboard with samples installed in Expansion Memory. So we can use a maximum of 3GB of samples at a time.
A USB stick that is plugged into the keyboard and has 64 GB of samples prepared cannot be used for playing.

To use USB stick Pack, we need to install them in Expansion Memory. And that takes at least some time, 5 minutes, 20 ... it depends on what we want to type.

But it's not that important. It is important that Bezos and his team happily returned to safe ground. I was very scared for him. 

[JohnS (Ugawoga)]

Hi Chokbu
I get what your saying, but can you put more than 3 gig of samples on expansion USB Stick and choose from that stick what you what ??
Or, is just 3gig of packs at a time,otherwise it has to format for the next 3 gig.
I was thinking , maybe you could stack them up on usb up to 64gig which would show in the expansion and just call up what is needed.
Like you say put the install file in and you can load straight into the Genos Expansion. I was thinking that more than 3gig could then be put on a 64 gig Usb stick underneath in separate packs.

I know this is a pain but do you know what i am trying to say Hope!!
So if not only 3gig can only be put in the Expansion whatever way you do it or you would face a format situation.

All the best    The Bezos journey looked great on my screen especially granny!!
John
ps Just seen the Space station go over our house in UK heading your way. Must be gone 12pm over where you are. 11pm here.

[ckobu]

You only have 3 GB on your keyboard at a time. Samples on the USB stick will not play or be displayed on the keyboard. You must instal them in the Extension first. It takes a few minutes to half an hour, depending on what you instal (pPi or pQI) and how big the data is.

I only use 100 mb of my own sample. I know it's funny but all I need is already in the keyboard.

My advice is to make your Pack up to 3 gb in which you will put material that is not in Genos. I'm sure that's quite enough for all the exotic sounds you're used to.

My time zone is the same as England. But above my house I saw no ship. Only some cute little birds were flying. 

[JohnS (Ugawoga)]

Hi Chockbu

I get what you mean and thank you for your patience and help
I was on about the International Spacestation that circles the Earth evry 1.5 hours.
On a clear night at the right tragetory it is very bright and takes about 7 minutes from one end of the sky to the other and then outta sight!!
At the same time outside quite a few pigeons fell off their perches in the trees and a couple of magpies was in there also. Sounded like a machine gun going off. What a commotion, just as i was taking in the peaceful flaming hot night. No aliens though to report, only stupid birds that lose their balance in the darkan my 3 gig



All the best
John off to bed now.

[ckobu]

Hi John,

Flying around the Earth was certainly a wonderful experience. When I fly the first round, I will immediately make a video for my friends. 
I'm sorry the birds got hurt, but I guess that's how it has to be. What is progress for the human species is often a bad path for the nature in which they live. Maybe Yamaha didn't allow 64GB of memory for that reason. 

regards, Chockbu  (casper)

[roltec54]

hello Casper,
What beautiful images of conclusions and it is so true! Yamaha would give us 1 TB that we would demand even more!
And then, we can do a little sorting in our YEMs!
As you say, there are so many good things in the base of our Genos!
I am far from knowing all the styles, voices, multipads of my keyboard.
  musically
roltec54 (michel)

[JohnS (Ugawoga)]

Hi Michel

Do you not think with such a keyboard as the Genos that sounds ought be loaded in easy banks like you can with VST instruments and stored on several sticks if that is what you want.
Yes there are a lot of sounds on the Genos and there is a lot of great sounds from VST like better choirs, guitars, Brass and spacey stuff, evolving sounds.
For me i would cut out gimmicks like chord Looper and things like that to have a score sheet reader like Mobile sheets incorporated ,which could be sent to a monitor for a4 sheet size and controlled by air turn. That would be a £1000 off an ipad.

I do practice every day,so the rust does not creep in and chords are not that hard if you practice. It does take time to get used to take hands of keyboard and press buttons, but again lots of practice, all comes. Chord looper a waste of time IMO!
The Genos is a great instrument, but Yem is clumsy and looks like a ZX Spectrum program... "Oh Bring Me Sunshine"!!! . I need a deck Chair and a cool Budweiser now!! Hot, Hot Hot!!

All the best
John

[EileenL]

With all the great voices on Genos already how many more would you want that you would actually use on a regular basis. Many of my friends have now discarded a lot of voices that they used on earlier keyboards as they realised they did not actually use them but just kept them because they were there. 3 Gb will hold quite a lot of sound effects and voices you don't have on the keyboard. Just how many can you use at any one time.

[JohnS (Ugawoga)]

Hi Eileen
There are certain sounds that are far better than the Genos which you can sample from a VST instrument , but they come with a high megabyte count.
200mb plus for some multi-samples .
I sampled a Choir from Sample tank which is far superior that the Genos sound and it fitted when i played and made Mr Blue Sky.
In that song i needed a mix of men and women to make it sound almost authentic. The High's and lows.
I like Physchadelic sounds also as i come from the 60s /70s generation.
Today's music has all gone pepper piggy. In my view the last of the great music ended in the 80's. From then onwards all got dumbed down.
Just like Free Dumb Day 19thJuly. i am 70 now , but still like to rock
Dont get me wrong as the Genos has great sounds, but sometimes i like to have some good evolving sounds.
The saxes on Genos are 100% in my view. Nice and warm sounding, choirs are not so good on the Genos  as they sound unreal.
It is all fun though Eileen.
Just think Eileen if Yamaha made a good score reader which you could put on a 21 Inch monitor and still use the Air turn, that  would save you a £1000 on the ipad.
Oh well we can all dream.
Hope you are coping with this hot weather. I am just about  in my Tarzan outfit!!! Lol!!

All the Best
John

[pjd]

Hi John --

Back to your original question. I use Sample Robot, too. Sample Robot has many options during sampling that affect the number of samples taken, their size, and how they are looped. All three of these factors affect the total size of a voice.

Excepting pianos, Yamaha itself rarely uses more than 15 to 20 samples in a single-layer voice. They do not sample every note. Usually the top and bottom samples cover the lowest and highest notes that are generally out of range for an acoustic instrument. Samples in between typically cover four to five notes each.

The other space-saver is looping. Often there isn't a need to play a sound from beginning to end. The beginning attack is the most important. Sustains are looped. Short loops consume less space. Everything after the looped portion can be trimmed, thereby saving more space.

Hope these tips helps -- pj

[JohnS (Ugawoga)]

Hi Pj
I never thought of that ,make the loop shorter.
I just made another choir sample, more jarresque and that looped came out at 200 mb. I used 4 samples with 8.5 seconds length before looping
I will have a few experiments making shorter loops.
I was trying to work a way of saving all sample made  and i came up with the 3 gig ceilng and format for Yem and Genos
I was also trying to get a yes and no answer where maybe there is a way around that.
So i thought make a base file in Yem and then a quickstall for next file to contain samples.
Install to  Expansion memory and from there transfer them to another usb stick.
I have found out that sounds in the expansion transfered to a new stick and say put one back in the keyboard user section,  it works.
So again why not delete the sounds in the file in Yem and make some more inside same file and quick install again.
By repeating that you could build up quite a few on a usb stick and just load the ones that you want to use.
I now understand if i deleted contents in the sample folder in Yem, that when i come to reinstall to expansion , i would again be confronted by a format situation again.
Surely if that happened i still have all those files on another stick to pick from as they were already in the Expansion and installed the correct way.
It would only mean a little more pain in waitng  sort it all out and get settled.
Can you see what i am thinking, or am i going loco??. I bet Chokbu thinks i am one over the cuckoos nest . Get Nurse Ratched!! Noooo!! " I wanna play trains"!! Choo Choo!!


All the best
John   I think it is the 31 degree heat ,not used to that here in UK

[overover]

Hi Pj
I never thought of that ,make the loop shorter.
I just made another choir sample, more jarresque and that looped came out at 200 mb. I used 4 samples with 8.5 seconds length before looping
I will have a few experiments making shorter loops. ...

Hi John,

I already mentioned here that you can save sample storage space by using shorter note lengths or shorter loop lengths:

...
If you use Sample Robot and specify "best" or "good" or "original" quality, the automatically generated / looped / key mapped samples / sf2 files will probably be relatively large.

However, you could achieve a lower storage requirement by ...
- using fewer individual samples, i.e. do not sample each key individually, but use each sample for e.g. three consecutive keys and / or
- using shorter note lengths, loop lengths or, for samples that have not yet been looped at all, use a loop (and implement the sound decay via a corresponding amp envelope). ...

...
I was trying to work a way of saving all sample made  and i came up with the 3 gig ceilng and format for Yem and Genos
I was also trying to get a yes and no answer where maybe there is a way around that.
So i thought make a base file in Yem and then a quickstall for next file to contain samples.
Install to  Expansion memory and from there transfer them to another usb stick.
I have found out that sounds in the expansion transfered to a new stick and say put one back in the keyboard user section,  it works.
...

The "Expansion" folder in the User drive (which is 58GB in total on Genos) is NOT the Expansion Wave Memory (3GB, which we are talking about all the time)!

When installing an Expansion Pack, the Wave data of the Expansion voices are automatically copied into the Expansion Wave Memory. However, the user has no direct access to this memory.

The "voices" that you see in the Expansion folder are only "Voice Set" files (.vce), comparable to User Voice files that are created when you change a Preset Voice and save it again. If you copy "voices" from the Expansion folder to a USB stick, these voices only work as long as the associated Wave data is also available in the Expansion Wave memory. If these Wave data are later deleted (e.g. due to a later Pack Installation that no longer contains these voices), the copied "voices" on the USB stick will no longer work.

So there is definitely no alternative way to Pack Installation (via WiFi or Full resp. Quick Installation via USB stick) . Or in other words: Expansion Voices that you want to use must be installed. You cannot temporarily "transfer" them to a USB stick by copying the voice files in question from the Expansion folder and simply copy them back later or use them from the USB stick.


Best regards,
Chris

[JohnS (Ugawoga)]

Hi Chris
Now you have explained what i needed to know in your last paragragh
Yes,
  i was only looking at ways to get around the situation , but it seems you are always stumped by the 3 gig rule and Yem.
You get a vst like the M1 keyboard and you can load in what you want from a large banks. Same as FM8.
Would be nice if Yamaha devised a better way than this pack system. It is so out of date in my view and slow.
Thanks for your patience and Chokbu for explaining all of this .
Ok shorter files and not so many!!


All the Best
John    Ps, Why cant Yamaha sell there compression program??? " I'm sure that would sell"!! " Can't win e'm all"! "Musn't Grumble"!
Should the next Genos be a Montage which is cabable of playing styles??? " For us Baby Boomers, Rockers and 80s synth generation. (Definitely not EDM though, because all you need is a flashing light sample generator and a kids win up toy machine). (Almost forgot ,you would also need a Moaning Myrtle singer and something to get you up to or on  speed.)