Monthly Archives: December 2024

NAMM 2025: Little things

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Last year we were excited to see a lot of pre-NAMM, post-pandemic product announcements. This year, not so much.

Here’s a few little things that you might have missed. NAMM 2025 is only four weeks away (January 21-25, 2025).

Behringer GO MIDI HOST

Behringer have rolled out a boatload of new products in the last few weeks:

  • WAVE 8-voice multi-timbral hybrid synthesizer (wavetable), 49 full-size keys, thank you!
  • LM Drum hybrid sampling drum machine à la Roger
  • JT Mini Analog Polyphonic Synthesis (3 voice, 3 VCOs) inspired by Jupiter
  • Phara-O Mini Analog Polyphonic Synthesizer (3 voice, 3 VCOs)

And more. Behringer are gunning for the Korg Volcas with those Minis.

Behringer GO MIDI HOST

You might have missed the smallest announcement of them all: Behringer GO MIDI HOST. Behringer joins the ranks of Kenton, DoReMIDI, CME, and other. This sucker is tiny:

  • 5-pin MIDI IN and OUT
  • Class compliant Type C Host and Power
  • Dedicated USB C power socket
  • 500 mA maximum current draw
  • 34.34 x 40.01 x 56.20mm (1.35H x 1.58W x 2.21″D)
  • 43.2 g (1.52 oz)

MIDI IN and MIDI OUT DIN connectors are on the front panel. USB HOST, POWER and RESET button are on the rear panel.

Street price is $29 USD and is available for pre-order. I will definitely be ordering one of these!

Oaktone Oakboard Mini 2 MIDI Controller

Oaktone is not a name that readily springs to mind when discussing MIDI controllers.

Oaktone Mini 2 rugged MIDI controller

The Oakboard Mini 2 is a small six button controller for playback control, e.g., launching music cues and other playback chores:

  • Launch music cues
  • Works with Ableton Live
  • Die-cast, aluminum case
  • Backlit silicone buttons, tactile feel
  • Play button can blink in sync with MIDI clock
  • USB-C data and power port on the rear panel
  • Includes Taz Lite cue-launching plug-in for Live
  • 0.9″H x 4.7″W x 3.7″D L (23 x 119 x 94mm)
  • 9.3oz (236g)

The keyword here is “rugged.” Oaktone emphasize dependability.

The Oaktone Oakboard Mini 2 is $229 MSRP.

Copyright © 2024 Paul J. Drongowski

Yamaha NAMM 2025 pre-show announcements

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Christmas time is near! That means pulling together a boatload of music for Christmas services and — NAMM 2025 anticipation (Anaheim Convention Center, January 23-25, 2025). Can you think of a better season than Advent for anticipation?

Yamaha have made two pre-show announcements via PR Newswire. It’s the usual puff-speak and the usual quote or two from a Yamaha exec. Here’s the actual information.

Yamaha will have an array of breakthrough products across categories like guitars, drums and percussion, and keyboards on display at this year’s show — including featured products such as the newly-launched TAG3 C TransAcoustic Guitar, YEV Pro Electric Violin, and SEQTRAK designed for composing and performing electronic music from anywhere.

The event will feature live performances from Jack White at the TEC Awards, Jacob Collier at NAMM’s Grand Rally for Music Education and an appearance from Peter Frampton at the NAMM Global Media Day.

Singer, songwriter, guitarist and producer Jack White will headline the NAMM TEC Awards, where he will receive NAMM’s TEC Innovation Award. TEC stands for “Technical Excellence and Creativity.” TEC Awards recognize the people, companies and technical innovations behind recordings, live performances, films, television, video games and multimedia. Peter Frampton, BTW, is also a TEC Award recipient.

With the spotlight on Jack White and Peter Frampton, I smell a guitar-centered NAMM 2025 from Yamaha.

On the professional front, I’m taking the time to listen to our group during live services. Our church has a few acoustic challenges and I’m hoping to make our mix and congregational singing better. I made a quick recording a few Sundays ago which was quite revealing. Unlike some modern “warehouse” church halls with zingy acoustics, our church is carpeted and the pews are upholstered — dead, dead, dead. Here, I’ve been cutting back reverb on my patches when more reverb might be helpful! All of the cloth is killing high end frequencies and accentuating the kick drum. Oh, my.

Copyright © 2024 Paul J. Drongowski

Want vs. need: Yamaha Seqtrak

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It doesn’t cost anything to window shop!

With the holiday selling season in full swing, I took another look at Yamaha Seqtrak. Ya never know when a bargain might present itself, so it’s good to be ready. 🙂

Seqtrak is Yamaha’s low cost alternative to the all-in-one Teenage Engineering OP-1 — a battery-powered synthesizer, sampler and sequencer. The price is much sweeter, $399 USD (MAP/street), than Teenage Engineering.

I’ve been hesitant to chomp on Seqtrak because I don’t really need a groove box. Yeah, it might provide fun occasionally, but it doesn’t really fulfill a need for what I play live (mainly keyboard emulation of acoustic instruments).

A few postings on Yamaha Musicians Forum motivated me to investigate further, however. Seqtrak implements two forms of synthesis: AWM2 and FM. At first, the AWM2 support sounds like a yawner. Guess what? The AWM2 sound set is pretty much the Motif XF (MOXF) factory sounds! That ain’t chopped liver.

The Seqtrak DX FM implementation is the same as the Reface DX. Even though it’s a four-OP implementation, feedback is supported on any OP, yielding a harmonically richer sound than four-OP of yesteryear. Both DX FM and AWM2 synths can be routed into a robust collection of DSP effects, including rotary speaker, VCM effects and HD reverb.

I wish the Seqtrak DX FM editor supported the Reface DX. It is one nice editor.

Thus, $399 buys a three channel (two synth, one DX FM) battery-powered MIDI module supporting DX FM and Motif XF synthesis. That’s quite a bargain when Reface DX alone costs $400 or so on a typical day.

As an expander, my main quibble is usage model. Seqtrak does not have a display showing the currently selected voice. I can’t tolerate that level of uncertainty during a live performance. The Seqtrak app controls all, but it means schlepping another piece (iPad) to the gig and making everything work live.

Still, it’s enticing. A case of want over need.

Seqtrak inside

What’s inside that tiny box? Thanks to a brave soul on LoopyPro, we get the picture.

Seqtrak consists of three printed circuit boards (PCB): a front panel board which runs most of the length of the chassis, a large digital electronics board mounted in parallel with the front panel board, and a small analog electronics board near the battery and speaker. The analog electronics board has connectors for USB-C, PHONES, AUDIO IN and MIDI.

SeqTrak printed circuit boards

The main event is the digital electronics board, usually called “DM” in Yamaha-speak. In this picture, we are looking at the bottom of the board. The top of the board — sometimes called the “component side” — is obviously out of view. The three large rectangular integrated circuits (IC) are SDRAM (e.g., Winbond W9825G6KH-6 256Mbit Parallel 166 MHz, typically organized as 32MBytes). The specially labelled IC is (likely) a Winbond 256Mbit (32MByte) NOR flash ROM containing the Seqtrak code.

The memory ICs surround the foil pattern for a Yamaha proprietary SWX processor. I’m guessing SWX09 or SWX10. SWX combines an ARM core with AWM2 tone generation and DSP effect processors. Seqtrak implements DX FM because only SWP70 implements FM-X. Low cost devices like Seqtrak usually employ a single, highly integrated SWX and do not include a separate SWP70 tone generator.

There may be additional memory devices on the component side of the DM board. The battery is a 3.6V 2100mAh Li-ion battery.

Copyright © 2024 Paul J. Drongowski