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Our church purchased a Modx8+ about a month ago. I'm the main player and like to use layered sounds, depending on the type of song being played. I created two patches using "single" sounds. One patch has a grand piano, an analog pad, background strings, and an 80s keyboard. The other patch has a grand piano, synth pad, and a bright, stabby horns section.
During the second service, I experienced the first sound cut off. It was incredibly frustrating and threw me off trying to play while it was going on.
Sweetwater was awesome. They sent a new keyboard after attempting some troubleshooting, which included stripping out all the effects and anything extra that could overload the polyphony. We also attempted a hard reset, but that didn't fix the issue.
The first weekend with the new keyboard went better. I didn't notice any cut-offs and was happy that the issue seemed resolved. Last night, however, the same thing began to happen. It began while I was playing with my layered sound, but it really began acting up when someone else was playing a single grand piano sound.
I've used several keyboards with layered sounds in the past and I've never had this kind of issue. Most recently I had a Kurzweil SP6 which worked flawlessly with layered sounds and effects. Unfortunately, it stopped working flawlessly after someone played it while I was gone and spilled their drink on the keys.
Has anyone else had this issue with the Modx+?
Posted : 05/05/2025 6:28 pm
Effects on or off have no impact to polyphony.
Each element (sample based sounds like the piano) takes up polyphony from one pool and each operator (FM based sounds like likely the 80s keyboard) has its own pool separate from the elements.
How you are layering may be an issue. If your layering potentially has all elements activated at once even when you don't want to simultaneously hear those elements then you may be "eating" more polyphony than intended.
Certainly when you layer all sounds together and want them all to sound (and it is a true layer not isolated by a split) then you may start to run into issues. With ten fingers and no clusters you can get 10 notes at a time and each note can have 8 elements per Part (of which you can play 8 Parts at one with the keyboard keys). So you could, theoretically (without clusters) attempt to play 640 elements at once which is over the limit. Chances are each of your Parts is not fully stacked with 8 elements that will play at once. But there is certainly a way to reach the limit and it would be good to do some analysis to breakdown what's going on.
If you use the sustain pedal than anything you play while holding down the sustain pedal will add up. With 88 keys if you hold down the sustain pedal then maybe 50ish white keys will be played with the sustain pedal held down and then each key can only have 2 elements per note before at the end of your 50 note run notes will cut off.
So sustain can be a polyphony killer.
If this is a polyphony problem (and not an issue switching from one Performance to another or an issue using scenes) then you'll need to become comfortable doing some analysis on your Performance and how polyphony is utilizes when playing your music.
There are likely modifications that can be made to your playing and/or programming that will fix the behavior to match what you would prefer.
Current Yamaha Synthesizers: Montage Classic 7, Motif XF6, S90XS, MO6, EX5R
Posted : 14/05/2025 4:05 pm
What 'single grand piano sound' causes the issue? Can you create/provide a reproducible test case? A test case using a preset is easiest for someone to try to reproduce the problem.
Can you be more specific about just WHAT was being played when the problem occurs? Were both hands being used? How many notes together? What a performance or scene change involved? Are you using arpeggios or motion sequences?
As mentioned basic 'cut off' issues can be caused when:
1. polyphony (# of simultaneous notes) is exceeded
2. scene switching is done
3. arpeggios or motion sequencers get activated
Playing certain types of gospel music has been known to be complicit because it often requires playing many notes with both hands and each note can consume a lot of polyphony.
The more detail you provide the easier it will be for someone to help. The Modx+ relies on at least three key facilities to produce sound:
1. its programming - the specific performance being used and the way that performance is configured
2. the number and types of controllers being used - sustain pedal, motion sequences, arpeggios, super knob, etc
3. the manner in which it is played - number of simultaneous keys being pressed, legato versus staccato
In the simplest case pressing a single key causes only a single element to generate an envelope that produces a sound until the entire envelope has been executed. As mentioned, the sustain pedal can suspend the envelope execution even indefinitely in some cases.
Active arpeggios can also produce one, or more, simultaneous notes that each use polyphony.
If you can produce the problem using a preset we can examine the preset to see just what it is doing.
Posted : 14/05/2025 5:13 pm
