The only guy I reply upon for all things Yamaha is you.... That's why I hope you can help me confirm that I bought a fully functioning DX board. I went back thru all my setting from the beginning and was able to do the following. In pattern mode, assign PLG DX preset 17 to Track 1, Channel 1, Part 1, I was then able to record to Track 1 using this PLG voice. All good so far. Attached is the screenshot of the channel setting change I made.

Hmm! You lost me right out of the gate. It should be impossible to assign PLGPRE1 #17 to Part 1.

I’m going to take it you mean you assign TRACK 1, CHANNEL 1 and that PLG3 is to Receive on Channel 1. That’s what the screen shot shows me. A PLG150 Board can never be in Part 1.

P3 Silence- Voice 1, MSB 127 LSB 40, What is this?

That is a sound location that causes the PLG Board currently in slot #3 to deliver silence. That is not a name, it is the current status. The PLG150 series Board in slot 3 does not have any Voices in that location

Change the MSB to 63
Change the LSB to 76
Change the PC to 17 Jazz Guitar

MSB 63/LSB 76 is the PLG PRE 1 Bank for a PLG150 series Board in slot #3

As you might imagine with 912 Board Voices on the PLG150-DX, there are many Banks that include sounds. In XG (Extended General MIDI) there are scores of different Banks. Each Bank is defined by an MSB, and an LSB. In MIDI there are 16,384 (128x128) possible Banks.

Check your Channel 1 Track data, it might contain a Program Change message on Channel 1 that reads 127-040-000.

Go to the main Pattern screen, select TRACK [1]
Press [EDIT]
You will be looking at the Event List. The left column is the Measure:Beat:Clock location... and each event is listed.

Using the “View Filter” ask it to show you just Program Changes On Track 1
Find this Event, it will be listed as “PC”
DELETE it.

What do you think, bad board?

The Board is behaving fine, every issue you’ve described is a function of the host.

Thanks for the screen shots they help. But you can describe a screen like the one that says THRU four times, that doesn’t really tell me anything. Since I don’t know what screen that is... you “noticed” it, but that could be absolutely fine... why were you going to that screen, what were you looking for? You’ve confused me with that screenshot.

I’m more interested in what else is connected to your ES? via MIDI, via USB, or any other way? And I’m particularly interested in what sent it the Bank Select and Program Change to go to Bank MSB/LSB 127-40. I cannot do this without a Bank Select and Program Change command being sent to it.

There is likely nothing wrong with the Board, it is passive (as far as we’ve seen thus far). If your Board is making decisions on its own, the value of it just went up a thousand fold, you have the first self aware circuit board. Unlikely anything is wrong with the board.

The sluggish behavior rings a bell... let me research that. This could be MIDI messages sent to and from an external device while some kind of “Loop” is happening. Once confused, the communication between the host computer, theMotif ES, and the board can become strangely labored. Are there system exclusive messages in the MIDI Sequence data? What else is connected?

When you say you exited Pattern Mode to play the Board in Voice mode, that screen I would like to see.
When it comes the PLG150 series boards what PORT NUMBER are they set to... this has repercussions about communicating with the Board. For example, if you placed the PLG150-DX on Port 2, you can address it from the Sequencer mode by setting the OUTPUT CH setting to match the Port and channel number.

Returning to Voice Mode, would mean setting the Ports back to either OFF or 1
You don’t respond when I’ve posted a reply so I don’t know what Port you are using at the moment. Everything in Voice Mode is about Port 1 or OFF.
When in the Sequencer the Port and Out Channel assignments just needs to match what the PLG PART is Set to Receive.

Sorry, of course PLG are not part of (no pun intended) of the 16 internal parts. Right now it is all working normal at the default channel settings. I will have to try to put it back to sleep to answer questions about about what various screens show during the sound outage. In the meantime, let me answer some of your other questions.

Thanks for the screen shots they help. But you can describe a screen like the one that says THRU four times, that doesn’t really tell me anything. Since I don’t know what screen that is... you “noticed” it, but that could be absolutely fine... why were you going to that screen, what were you looking for? You’ve confused me with that screenshot.

I sent you this to show you that 1) the silence is not limited to PATTERN mode. The board remains silent even when I try to play a DX voice in VOICE mode. I was curious to see what would happen when I tried to address the board thru VOICE mode EDIT, NATIVE... I have never seen a THRU screen like this and wanted to point out the the board was unresponsive to my attempts to inc decr from any of these THRU messages.

I’m more interested in what else is connected to your ES? via MIDI, via USB, or any other way? And I’m particularly interested in what sent it the Bank Select and Program Change to go to Bank MSB/LSB 127-40. I cannot do this without a Bank Select and Program Change command being sent to it.

My laptop is connected to the USB Host input but it remained off during all these sessions. The MIDI inputs are connected to my Steinberg AI but its coinnected to my laptop, which, as I said remained off during all these sessions.

The sluggish behavior rings a bell... let me research that.

That sluggish behavior was the first sign of trouble. It all started after I reassigned the channel from 3 to 1. To the extent is relevent, remember I have a VH effects board in slot 1 which I understand is the only slot where that board can be installed. Even though that's only any effects board, and as far as I can see, doesn't have a channel assignment, could it still possibly create a conflict to the extent that PLG boards generally retain default rights to a matching channel?

When you say you exited Pattern Mode to play the Board in Voice mode, that screen I would like to see.

That's the THRU, THRU, THRU, THRU screenshot I sent you. The main VOICE screen looked normal, but once I navigated to edit NATIVE and expected to see the Carrier, Modulator, parameters, Instead, I saw a stuck readout with all these THRUs...

Hope this helps. I can try again to change channels then change voices while on the new channel see if it again the DX board becomes sluggish (long lag) then silent. If so, I will try to send you more screens showing the MIDI control events inside the seq after it went silent. Keep in mind that 1) board goes silent even before I record a thing to the SEQ and 2) Even though whatever causes the sound off occurs in PATTERN mode, all DX sounds remain silent even when I change to VOICE mode and 3) once it goes silent, I can't edit anything on the board and 4) just no way to bring the board back to life without powering off /on the keyboard.

That sluggish behavior was the first sign of trouble. It all started after I reassigned the channel from 3 to 1. To the extent is relevent, remember I have a VH effects board in slot 1 which I understand is the only slot where that board can be installed. Even though that's only any effects board, and as far as I can see, doesn't have a channel assignment, could it still possibly create a conflict to the extent that PLG boards generally retain default rights to a matching channel?

No, not at all. The Synth Boards use MIDI Channels the PLG100-VH is an effect processor board, and must be in slot 1 because of the audio routing connection necessary to make it work.

Board going silent, is a matter of MSB/LSB and PC. I don’t want to scare you but MIDI has 16,384 MSB/LSB Banks each with 128 Program Change locations... that’s like 2 million some odd possibilities.

The PLG150-DX has 912 programs plus the 64 PLG PRE, and 64 PLG USER programs... the rest of them are “Silence”.
So Silence is a big part of the MSB/LSB/PC field!!!

It does not mean anything but you have selected one of the many, many Silent locations.
Do you have access to the PLG150-DX Owner’s Manual? It has the Data List with all the MSB/LSB and PC for the board

I do have and have read through the PLG150-DX manual and see that the majority of the programs are Silence but why does simply choicing a named voice, as opposed to scrolling through MSB/LSB combinations, put the board into Silence? Besides sluggish movement after channel reassignment which I mentioned earlier, once it goes silent, I have found no setting that I can reach from the Motif ES to turn it back on. The board continues to sluggishly respond to voice assignments and these voice changes are reflected on the LED screen, but still no sound. I am thinking that something triggered a system "No sound" message (if there is such a thing) vs just a Silence voice program location and I have no way the change it other than powering off/on the keyboard. I don't have a working DX Simulator so I can't get to all the necessary system parameters to explore this further. Regardless, as long as the board isn't bad, I will keep it. I can live and enjoy it through its default assigned channel.

I’d bet dollars against donuts your issue is a MIDI related routing issue. What Port are your PLG150-series boards set to?
I mentioned somewhere before and I'll do so again, only DX sounds can be accessed through the PLG Slot containing the DX board. Attempting, for example to access an PLG150-AN sound through the slot containing the DX Board will not be a good thing.

I don’t understand what you mean. What MSB/LSB combinations? You see, it matters.
“Silence” simply denotes the PLG150-DX does not have a sound for Bank and Program you are selecting.

Phil, I never changed the MIDI routing. Here is a screenshot of how is its set now (on startup)

Apologize if I mislead you talking about MSB and LSB. My only point to convey was that I never choose a bank and program that was "Silence." In fact, I don't think the fact that the board stopped making sound was a result connected to any voice selection I made, but rather, it talked sounding along the way . What I mean is that it went silent while I was scrolling from one voice to another voice; first the board slowed down with long lag, meaning I was turning the scroll wheel but changes took a second or two before they appeared on the screen. Then, seemingly before the screen finally read out the voice I was navigating to, it went silent.

Hello, looks like I have exactly the same issue on my Motif ES8 and PLG150DX board (just purchased on eBay). This problem was a bit elusive at first but now I think to have narrowed down the cause: the rotary dial, if turned too much fast CW and CCW for a certain number of times causes a sort of overflow in the communication between the Motif and the PLG board resulting in complete muting of ALL the voices (including the preset ones) and a blanking of the voice names over all the selectable PLG banks, the attached photo explain well what happens.
No action from control panel is effective in bringing the PLG voices back to life, only an OFF/ON cycle of the Motif works.
The interesting thing is that if I do the Bank selection of PLG board using the DEC/NO and INC/YES buttons this issue does not occour even if i keep the button pressed continuosly while if I start to using the Dial selector, (turning it very quickly) it happens within few seconds, more often going from high to lower Bank numbers.
Only the PLG voices are affected, if I do the same with the internal Motif voices the dial selection does not show this issue at all.
It would be interesting to know if other Motif ES + PLG150DX users around may be able to reproduce this problem also on their setup.

You have a PLG100-VH board in slot one - it is an effect processor and is fixed to Port number 1 (along with the 16 Motif ES Parts).
Slot 2 and 3 show the Port Number = Off which is the same as leaving at Port Number 1.

This is why your PLG150-series boards layer with the internal Motif ES sound on the same channel. A Port has 16 Channels. If your PLG150-series boards aren’t on the same Port Number as the internal Parts, they will layer. You can put your PLG150-series boards on Port Number 2. Each will occupy a single channel of the 16 that are available.

If you place your PLG150-DX board on Port 2, then to address the PLG150-DX board you would need to set the Track to transmit Out on Port 2. Port 2 has 16 Channels that are totally discreet from the 16 on Port 1.

You can set the MIDI “OUT CH” and “PORT” for each Track from the main Song/Pattern screen press [F3] OUTPUT

https://yamahasynth.com/ask-a-question?controller=attachment&task=download&tmpl=component&id=2197

Phil,

Was just reviewing this old thread about my PLG150-DX board going silent. I didn't earlier see Andrea's response / explanation when and why her board also goes silent. Sounds like she has the same issue. For me, however, problem occurs using either the scroll wheel OR the INC / DEC buttons. Any scrolling movement to different voices will silence the board. The only way I avoid the problem is select and change PLG voices using the Section buttons A-D, then select the corresponding voice I want. i.e. audition & register voices hitting the record button first. It seems like scrolling to the board creates an overflow stack which freezes and silences everything on the board. I only seem to have this sluggish then silence problem with the DX board not the AN or VL boards.