Yes, I've experienced something very similar to this, as I tend to install libraries of samples from all over, and then make sounds and get a bit messy, and then push them out to Libraries, eventually. In doing that, I've often lost the connections to the samples when I thought that really shouldn't have happened. I suspect there is a list of pointers somewhere that doesn't necessarily know if the Sample is there or not, but if that list has a pointer with the right attributes it just assumes the sample is there. When it isn't, the problems arise.

Much more annoying is that pushing a user bank to a library breaks all connections with the Patterns. This problem is truly epically ridiculous and should have been fixed by now.

I knew the waveforms did not exist in User memory; However just out of curiosity I did as Bill suggested, and sure enough after importing the Performance, testing it to make sure it worked good, and then deleting the Narf Library, the Performance remained in User memory, but the custom waveforms no longer sound out & when I edit the PART in that Performance, the waveforms are completely missing...Element 1, 2, 3 that had the 3 waveforms are now 'Off' and the information for each under Bank, Number Category, Sub Category and Name (of waveform) are all blank...

I have been in touch back & forth with Francis Capistrano from Narf Sounds. He has been responding quite promptly to my emails, and has been helpful in answering questions / providing information. There is nothing out of the ordinary with regard to how he added the waveforms &/or packaged the library.

The Library Import function is immediately determining that there are no custom waveforms (despite that there actually are) and doing a Performance 'Copy' of the Performance data only, instead of a 'Library Import' with all the waveforms. When I press the 'Import (yes)' button to do the Library Import of the Performance, it takes the same amount of time that it does when I have a Preset Performance open, press Store, then [Store As New Performance], and press the 'Done' button to Save the Performance in User memory...
They are both instantaneous!

Bill, since you know their email address, and have built a one sided rapport you're happy with, and know your communications are at least somewhat working, why don't you let them know about this thread, and ask them to contact Narf (Francis) and apologise to him. Other than individual users suffering, such as Darryl is, Francis has to go through this over and over again, as does anyone else making presets and patch collections with dependency on samples.

This is beyond a mere user bug inconvenience, it's affecting third party materials that add significant value to the range.

Thanks Bill! I had actually already emailed 'synthesizers@yamaha.com' (same as the 'Contact Us' below) prior to creating this thread, and then copied & pasted most of that email, which is what you read above in my first post.

I've emailed them again with the link to this thread so they can follow the additional details on testing 😉

[quotePost id=118770]Other than individual users suffering, such as Darryl is, Francis has to go through this over and over again, as does anyone else making presets and patch collections with dependency on samples.
This is beyond a mere user bug inconvenience, it's affecting third party materials that add significant value to the range. [/quotePost]
I wouldn't go as far as to say I'm suffering lol but it is definitely a major inconvenience.
I am always a big advocate for sequencing and offloading of things to a DAW; however in this case I am one who decided not to go the John Melas software route and manage all Performances, waveforms, libraries, etc. via the built in functionality in the Montage. I was surprised to see that that the waveforms didn't get copied over to User memory after doing a Library Import of a Narf 5 library Performance, which always worked flawlessly in the past. I might not have even checked to ensure the waveform didn't come over if the Library Import didn't take a shockingly short time to complete. Anything involving waveforms usually takes a few seconds or much longer depending on the size.
Because I don't have the John Melas software, I depend on the basic built in OS functionality of the Montage to just work seamlessly as part of my workflow, so I do hope Yamaha fix this soon. The only thing I can see as a difference, as I mentioned above, is that the waveforms are not in the typical basic Categories, but even more so, they have Sub Categories set on them as well. The other thing is that the waveform Number is quite high...not sure if that would matter, but probably worth noting in case the Library Import only looks to waveforms numbers that are smaller..!? Whether it's the Number, Category, Sub Category, or all of them, the Library Import function is incorrectly determining "immediately" (& without any errors) that the Performance has no custom waveforms... IMHO that is a Bug!

The demo version of the JM Tools allow for you to read library/user files to inspect the waveform properties. If it were me, I would crack open the Narf set and look to see if there were any Waveforms with unique properties (encoding type, bit length, etc).

This doesn't necessarily guide if there is a bug or not. However, it would help possibly start to paint the picture of what about the Narf set is causing this behavior.

I think the standard corporate response would be that the Narf set isn't an "official" 3rd party release (easysounds, DCP, etc - available on shop.*.yamaha.com - what used to be yamahamusicsoft which is still redirected here) so there's some chance that it was "improperly" assembled causing some sort of incompatibility issue.

Certainly expressing the issue to the support email of the Narf set would be one iron to place in the fire. They may be aware of the issue (or need to be aware). Depending on what they are willing to share, you may learn what corrects the issue in a re-released "patched" library. And then we could add another exception rule to the unpublished documentation and possibly have some way to use tools to find libraries that share this (broken) property.

Speaking of things I would do - I would also backup my instrument (all including libraries) AND create a User file to "backup" only the user bank. Then I would remove the Narf library slot to avoid confusion. Then rename the Narf Library file (.X?L) to a user file (.X?U). As a disclaimer - this isn't really generally recommended, but as a science experiment I would still do this. Then load the user file which would attempt to place the Narf library directly into the user bank without going through the steps of loading a Library first then importing to the user bank. This doesn't solve the original issue - but may provide a way to get to a destination without leveraging 3rd party tools.

I wouldn't get in the habit of doing this -- and, truthfully, I don't know if features in recent firmware releases breaks the ability to do this successfully or not. Still, with full backups I would still feel OK about going through the science experiment.

If you can directly get the Narf library loaded into the User bank - there's still the problem of merging in your previous user bank with the Narf bank. Therefore it may be "better" to - in the first step - backup your user bank by creating a Library file instead of a User file. This way you could load your existing user bank as a library and Library import it in order to merge your previous user content with the Narf set which is directly placed in the User bank.

Thanks Jason, I didn't know that there was a demo version of JM Tools, nor that you can use it to check a library file. I think I will try it out to read the Narf library file to inspect the waveform properties as you suggested.

Hopefully I won't have to do the full Backup, create User Backup file, initialize, rename/load Narf file as a User file, etc. science experiment...

So far Francis at Narf has been helpful and providing information. Each set/library was done on the current OS at the time he made them, and so it appears that he used the OS on the Montage at the time of the Narf Covers Set 5 & has only used the JM Tools to do some cleanup on later Sets; however I am getting clarification/confirmation on the Cover Set 5 specifically regarding this.

Yamaha Support have contacted me & are requesting information, so it appears they are going to help figure out what is happening. They did say that this is most assuredly not a common issue.

The waveform editor is what you would be looking for, BTW.

Go to know, thanks!

Just a quick update on the issue with the Narf Sounds Libraries 'Import' issue.
Yamaha Support are still working on it, but it appears that this issue is being caused by the file structure of the waveforms used in the Library. The Narf Favorite Covers Set 5 library contains 83 unused waveforms and only 6 waveforms (custom) are active in the Performances. Deleting the 83 unused waveforms allowed me to do a Library Import properly.
Yamaha have forwarded this onto engineers in Japan to investigate the issue.