Tag Archives: Korg Volca sample

Review: Yamaha Seqtrak

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Yamaha Seqtrak went on sale last month — at the fantastically low price of $250 USD. OK, that got me. 🙂

By now, there are a mess o’ Seqtrak videos on-line. You’ve probably watched and heard the demonstrations and tutorials. Therefore, I will concentrate on my personal experience and reactions. It will be hard to avoid comparisons to Teenage Engineering EP-40 Riddim and Korg Volca Sample 2. I’ll save comparisons for another day.

Gotta say up front, I am not a beat maker. My beats sound like a 1960s home organ and I ain’t proud of them. That’s why I waited so song to get a Seqtrak. It’s primary advertised use-case is beat making, so I decided to wait until the price fell to impulse level.

The Seqtrak has four very high quality noise making sections; five, if you count the excellent effects. You get:

  • Seven parts (channels) for AWM2 drums/percussion,
  • Two parts for AWM2 synth voices,
  • One part for 4-op FM (a la Reface DX)
  • One part for sampler playback.

If you have the latest updates installed, the seven drum parts can be reassigned to either AWM2 synth or drum kit. That means you can turn Seqtrak into a 9 channel AWM2 sound module with a channel of DX FM.

The factory AWM2 sound set is no slouch. I compared the Seqtrak waveforms against the Motif XS and XF. I would call the Seqtrak an “XS+” — some desirable additions from the XF, but minus Megavoices (like the MX) and the S6 acoustic piano. Seqtrak also gets some of the later digital effects like HD reverb, guitar amp simulators (REAL DISTORTION), compression (UNICOMP), and EDM, hippity-hop sound bashers.

250 bucks is roughly the cost of a mid-range software synth. You would be very hard pressed to find a MIDI sound module with Seqtrak’s capabilities for $250. Forget the General MIDI module crap out of China. Buy a Seqtrak. [Seqtrak is manufactured in Malaysia.] You give up a few channels and you need to live within the Seqtrak’s channel structure. Read the manual.

Seqtrak has a frightening amount of connectivity: USB C, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, MIDI. The MIDI dongle is very weird. Its 3.5mm plug has five (5) contacts; good luck finding one of these things. The dongle works fine and I had Seqtrak working with my Arturia Keylab Essential in nothing flat. Should work fine with the Novation Launchkey, too. Using the Seqtrak app, I programmed nine AWM2 channels and DX with my favorite voices. I then selected among the faves by changing the MIDI send channel on the Keylab Essential.

Another approach is to tag sounds as favorites through the app. Then use the SOUND knob to scroll through your favorite sounds.

Seqtrak as a sound module — check!

The Seqtrak app is a brilliant piece of work. It provides basic AWM2 “quick edits” and full access to effects and effect parameters. The app also has a beautiful FM editor. I intend to build a translation app in order to use the Seqtrak app as an editor for Reface DX. The SysEx is similar between both units.

As I mentioned, I am not a beat maker. That is Seqtrak’s intended market, however. Yamaha shot for a Teenage Engineering aesthetic and hit the mark. On the other hand, the rather sparse appearance of the front panel and buttons left me uninspired and lost. The unit is super-light, which is great until you press those side buttons and Seqtrak slides away. I quickly learned to steady the unit with my thumb, second hand, whatever. Also, I never got into multi-button combinations — why I never played Street Fighter…

This is where the app is not only brilliant, but essential. I spent the last two weeks converting a few DJX-II patterns to Seqtrak and I cannot imagine working without the app. The latest updates (now v2.0) make Seqtrak what it should have been on day one. With only eight project slots, back-up and project management is an absolute necessity.

A few app features got a heavy work-out when converting patterns: MIDI import, mixer, sound assignment, effects editing. The Seqtrak app is very well integrated with the hardware and you can move between on-screen controls and hardware controls without thinking about it. Kudos. As Yamaha recommend, start working with the app and you will eventually learn how to use Seqtrak stand-alone.

My biggest niggle is the same as Teenage Engineering’s Riddim software — font size and contrast. I work on a 4K monitor on Windows 11. By default, Windows wants to display everything at native resolution. Yeah, you can change the scale factor, but that changes the scale factor for all applications. Like TE’s software, I’m reading text with a magnifying glass. Software developers, have your grandmother use your app. If she can’t read the text, fix your app!

Seqtrak is a lot of tech for not very much money. If Seqtrak fits your work-flow and use cases, go for it.

Copyright © 2026 Paul J. Drongowski

Korg Volca Sample riddim?

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Teenage Engineering wisely got out ahead of everyone and released the EP-40 Riddim and Ting combo just before the holidays (and January 2026 NAMM).

I went absolutely berzerk when I heard the EP-40 and quickly pulled out the Korg Volca Sample 2 to see what I could do. There’s a lot to love about the Sample 2. Its USB port and the Korg Volca Sample Librarian make sample management a snap. The step programmable sample parameters supply a lot of dynamic messin’ along with the tempo and swing knobs. The controls may be small, but I love their immediate accessibility.

The analogue isolator controls are a kick, too. You can dynamically kill or boost the low and high ends. Korg provide similar capabilities in their Volca Mix. That and the compression and stereo field effects are the reason why I keep the Volca Mix in the toolbox.

I wanted to create long-loop grooves as though I was working in Ableton Live. One of my favorite entertainments is to launch Live and drop in a few samples and hear what comes out. The Sample 2 workflow is not as smooth as Live since everything needs to go through the Volca Sample Librarian. Oh, well.

Other issues arise when using long samples (e.g., two or more bars). Lack of sample space is a major issue. The Sample 2 has only 8 megabytes — yes, 8 megabytes — of sample space. The Sample 2 operates at a 31.25kHz sampling rate and it’s not clear if down-sampling saves any space. (The Librarian does sample rate conversion.) An old trick to save space is to “pitch up” incoming samples and then slow them down during playback (returning the sound to its original pitch). This technique adds yet another prep step and buzzkill.

The Sample 2 comes with great factory samples. That’s both good and bad. The factory samples occupy roughly 80% of sample memory leaving you with 20% free. That’s roughly 26 seconds of available user sample time. Sure, you can wipe the factory samples, but really?

I smacked into limited memory capacity immediately. I trimmed several dub loops into 2 to 4 bar loops. None the less, drum, bass, skank and fill loops hit 100% right quick.

Loops longer than two bars trip another issue. Longer loops continue to play after hitting the stop button. This is known behavior and it is annoying. Next, if you want to play a two bar loop, you need to adjust the tempo down to half. That way, one can trick the Sample’s sequencer into thinking it’s a two-bar sequencer. Of course, this spreads the 16 sequencer steps across two bars thereby cutting your time resolution in half (eighth notes). Go for four bars and the resolution is cut to four quarter notes per bar.

Overall, I think Korg conceptualized the Sample 2 (and its predecessor) as a digital beat box to which a user can add short one-shots. In that regard, Volca Sample is quite successful, especially at its price point. It’s not designed for long samples.

I always like to give the gear I have (Sample 2) first shot and buy if necessary. As to EP-40 Riddim and Ting, I’ll have more to say after UPS gets here. 🙂

Teenage Engineering, by the way, are showing Field System Black in time for NAMM 2026. If you want to hear more about TE’s development process, I strongly recommend WVFRM’s interview with David Eriksson, co-founder and lead engineer of TE. If I were teaching today, it would be required for class.

Copyright © 2026 Paul J. Drongowski