Data estimates can only be just that... You only have 16 of the 128 Songs, but there is no guarantee that you will fill all 128 Song... like string, the length of the Song can vary greatly.

How long is a Song? the answer is: How long is a piece of strings? What string? well, what Song? In short, Length of the Song and the amount of data in the Song...matters!
Songs vary in length by a wide, wide margin so your mileage will vary.

The Data Memory Full could be the data you have total in your User area. This includes Songs, Patterns, Audition Phrases (did you convert your Songs to Audition Phrases? that uses memory), User Arpeggios, etc., It is your User data that has the Memory full. Look in all of the Data Utility Folders for data that impacts your Memory.

If you take stock of all you have loaded in, you'll find your culprit.

There may be a minority of users who think it's "fun" to dig for these culprits when more descriptive error messages could help save the rest of the users' time and keep them more in creative mode and less in engineering mode.

XYZ exceeds maximum limit of ###.

Where XYZ is the culprit's identifiable label and memory region, if applicable.

There may be a minority of users who think it's "fun" to dig for these culprits when more descriptive error messages could help save the rest of the users' time and keep them more in creative mode and less in engineering mode.

XYZ exceeds maximum limit of ###.

Where XYZ is the culprit's identifiable label and memory region, if applicable.

😉

The current system has the ability to calculate the various sizes of data you have loaded into your MONTAGE. Sorry if it doesn't point out where you may have strayed over the line. (Maybe in a future version...) But if you have user data that you are assembling into the MONTAGE data memory (this includes Arpeggio, Libraries, Live Sets, Motion Sequences, Patterns, Performances, Songs, and Waveforms, you can figure out approximately how much data you have in total.

Here's what it does now:
User Arpeggios - it will report how many out of 256 you have currently in the User Bank (this is midi note/cc data)*
Library - it will report the size of each installed Library. This is the critical measurement as here is likely the most sizeable usage.
Live Set - it will report how many of the 8 User Banks of 256 you have currently in the User Bank (small data)
Motion Seq - it will report how many out of the 256 you have currently in the User Bank (small data)
Pattern - it will report how many out of the 128 you have currently in the User Bank*
Performance - how many out of the 640 you have currently in the User Bank (relatively small data)
Song - how many out of the 128 you have currently in the User Bank*
Waveform - it will list the current User Bank Waveforms and tell you how much of the total 1.8GB WaveROM is currently used

*If you want to know the exact size of each of your Arp Phrases, Pattern Scenes or Song data, the MONTAGE screen can tell you from the USB file on your connected USB stick. It is highly recommended to keep a safety of your User Arp Phrases, Song and Pattern Scene data in a Folder on your USB stick (this allows you to import it at any time when you need to add them to any previous data 'saves' you might restore). On the OVERVIEW screen tap the box "Save As .mid File" -- make a .mid safety. You can go to that folder of your MONTAGE .mid files the screen, it will report the exact size of each of your custom data and compositions. You can ballpark the general size of the data. But no, it does not count or keep count of the number of notes. Just how many songs is 520,000 notes, and how many Patterns is another 520,000 notes - I don't really know.

When you are loading a .wav file to create a MONTAGE Waveform, the screen will report the exact size of the .wav file before you load it in.

I'm not convinced that this error message is because my data area is full. I cleaned up the data area, deleting some performances, songs etc that I didn't need - I wasn't using much anyway and I still get the error. So to test this out properly, I did a back up of the montage and initialized the user area. Incidentally, initialising the user area removed my Performances etc but did not delete my existing songs or patterns. So I manually deleted them to be sure.

I simplified my pattern to just a single track with a drum beat. With a 250 measure long chain with just this drum beat, I get the error when converting to a song. If I shorten it to 200, I don't get the error. And when shortened to 200, I can write multiple songs i.e I appear to have plenty of space to write it 5 times. So it's more to do with the length of the chain I think. I know we have a limit on the total notes of all songs - but is there a limit per song too? It's a little confusing because before I initialised the user area, I was getting the error with smaller chains.

I would appreciate it if you could try my test case and see if it reproduces the issue on another Montage. I've attached a MIDI file with a 8 measure long drum beat.

To try this out, firstly load up the preset Real Drum Kit performance.

Click Play/Rec from Performance home screen

Click Edit/Job and from Overview screen, select load .mid file

Load PatternProb.mid and load to default Scene 1

Go to Chain and create a simple chain as follows

Measure Scene
001 1
250 End

Then click "Convert to Song" - see if you get the Data Area full error. Reduce the 250 to 200 and try converting again, several times.

Many thanks for any help
Sean

Here is your data - Try this....
Let us know.

BM,
Yes indeed that corrected pattern worked. I originally created the pattern on the Montage, exported as midi, took it into my DAW (Logic Pro X), fixed a few things, exported the track back and imported it to the pattern recorder again. So I guess some MIDI events got in on the way that threw this off?

Can you tell me what you did to fix it?

Thanks again
Sean

The fixed version removes aftertouch events. Not sure what else, if any, changes. There's a ton of aftertouch in the original.

A ton and a half of Aftertouch. It was really thick and heavy and was clogging the MIDI data flow. Currently, there is not an on-board way to remove it... as you were describing the issue I was fairly sure that is what was happening. Until a way appears to extract/delete or filter it, you want to be aware that it is a culprit that can unnecessarily use memory. Apparently, this was discussed at the recent anniversary celebration... so we’ll see...

I opened it in Cubase, selected Aftertouch messages and deleted them. It was the majority of data.

Thanks for the help - now that I know the issue exists, I can easily work around it by filtering the aftertouch out in Logic Pro. And hopefully Yamaha can come up with a better solution in a future update - better error messages, or filtering aftertouch, possibly during recording. It's something that needs thought, I guess.