Your question is really about operating a Motif XF8. If you want to manage individual Voices and Programs on the Motif XF you can do so via System Exclusive.
On your Motif XF call up the Voice, Performance, Master, or Mixing program you want to save individually.
Press [JOB]
Press [F4] BULK
the XF will be readied to bulk out that individual Program

If you are in Voice mode, the individual Voice program is output as Sysex data.

The others are slightly different:
If you are in Performance, the pointers to the locations of the selected Parts is output as Sysex data
If you are in Master, the pointers to the locations of selected mode is output as Sysex data
If you are in a Song/Pattern Mixing, the pointers to the location of the selected Parts is output as Sysex data.

This means, unlike the BULK dump of a single Voice where the actual Voice's information is contained in the data, the single Performance, the single Master, and the single Mixing program is dependent on the current data occupying the location.

The BULK information can be captured by a generic Sysex manager program. Or by the Yamaha Motif XF Editor Standalone/VST or most elegantly by the Steinberg Media Bay. Media Bay is a utility inside of Cubase that scans your entire computer and then automatically catalogues every type of media you might encounter in Music Production... From audio clips (.wav, MP3, etc), video clips, etc., even VSTi programs including every Voice program you could possible load into the Motif XF. (Please see the Motif XF article here on YamahaSynth about Saving your individual Voices as VST Presets.)

The portion of the MediaBay that deals with your synth sounds is called the "SOUND BROWSER". It lets you capture each VOICE as an individual program, or as a part of a 16 Part Mixing program. (It does not deal with Master programs or Performances, however). Even if your Voices references custom Waveforms and Samples on a FL1 or FL2 board, it can be recalled by the Sound Browser in 2-3 seconds... No waiting for anything to load! Very elegant and not "Stone Age" at all. 🙂

We highly recommend, that you explore how to manage your single programs in the Motif XF. Study how the XF was designed to manage single programs. If you were referring to saving single Voices to a USB drive... Well, that sounds like a good idea until you realize that you will quickly have an unmanageable situation because of the number of potential individual programs.

Here's what I mean - the Motif XF can have 512 individual single Voices per library. Saving one at a time is inefficient. Imagine having all these individual Voices listed on your USB stick. You would quickly/eventually exceed the filing structure. By saving ALL, (including all 512 Voices in a folder) then allowing one to select a single to load from with the folder is more efficient.

The last synth we had that allowed single Voice save was back in the late 20th century when maximum number of user programs was still like 64 programs. With the potential of 512 it's just inefficient to store by single files per Voice.

As to the other programs: Performances, Masters, Mixings, these are dependent on 'location' relationships. Loading a single Performance in the Motif XF requires the Voice locations contain the same exact data as when the file was stored. If not, the program will replace the slot with whatever data occupies the specified location.

The Montage is totally different. It has tons of internal memory to keep Programs on board. Over 1900 Performance - each Performance contains a unique set of 16 Parts. First, there is no Voice mode (so no locations to point to), and management of data is not determined by the program's location. The workflow is completely / entirely different. Each Performance is autonomous. In future articles we will try to give specifics about how the Montage will manage programs. In the meantime, look into how to manage individual programs on your Motif XF.

Hope that helps.

Thank you so much for your reply!!! I needed this information badly.Many times happened that I needed custom performances,voices with samples (I use lots of samples on stage life) to load to another save,to another band setlist for example.Everytime I had to make that performances and record the samples again to be able to save them with the other one.

"By saving ALL, (including all 512 Voices in a folder) then allowing one to select a single to load from with the folder is more efficient."

That really depends on the use case. Here's mine.

Let's say that I have two third-party voice libraries, A and B. Just voice data, no waveforms.

One day I loaded A.X0V. I played around a bit, created a couple of voices. I wanted to keep them somehow, so I saved the file as A-mine.X0V with them in it, so that they are not overwritten once I wanted to play with B.
The following week I loaded B.X0V. I player around a bit, created a couple of voices. I wanted to keep them somehow, so I saved the file as B-mine.X0V with them in it.

In my case this is not efficient, because I now need to remember (or write down) which of my own voices are contained in A-mine.X0V, which in B-mine.X0V and under which of the 1024 program locations (so that I can load them separately, as described above). This is also a waste of disk capacity, because over 1000 programs are duplicates of what was already of A.X0V and B.X0V. During the course of 8 years of my ownership of XS I definitely lost (i.e. forgot about) a couple of great voices because of this. I know about bulk dumps, but that is pretty inconvenient, because I need an external device to both save and load them.

I hope the ability to save single performances might be introduced in a future OS update in the Montage to make this easier.