Yamaha SEQTRAK Mobile Music Ideastation, Orange – For Sale – Price

6 reviews for Yamaha SEQTRAK Mobile Music Ideastation, Orange – For Sale – Price

1. 

   Mo – 19 February 2025

   Early review
   ((I ordered the Yamaha Seqtrak through Amazon but USPS gave the package away. This item required a signature upon delivery. I only say this to warn everyone of thieves. There is no fault to Amazon or the seller. Use the Amazon Locker if you can))I bought another Seqtrak at Guitar Center. It sounds great and the parameters for sound design are lovely. I like the Android app more than I thought I would. You can’t play samples chromatically but you can change the pitch. Drums sequence on the step sequencer and the live sequencer records synth, DX and samples and that works great. My complaint is that the step keys don’t double as playing pads. You’ve got 2,000 beautiful preset sounds but only 7 keys to play them with. Yamaha could change this with an update. That would be fantastic! You will need a midi controller with channel access to really utilize the sounds. Each track is assigned a midi channel 1-11 and it doesn’t change. There are 11 tracks so if you want to play on any track other that track 1 you’ll need to manually switch the channel on the controller. My controller doesn’t do that so I’m getting a new one. Over all I’d buy this again and I’ll write a 6 month review then.

2. 

   Kenneth Zhao – 19 February 2025

   Returned in less than 5 min after opening
   Dude, for a $400 product, the build quality is atrocious! I don’t want to complain about the plastic feel, but one of the synth keys requires much more pressure than others to trigger. All my excitement and the desire to learn about this thing is gone.

3. 

   Mark Gordon – 19 February 2025

   This is pure fun
   Brings new meaning to the words play music. This is the best kind of synth, a toy that instantly brings out the kid in me. It sounds beautiful and has a huge palate, but the joy it brings is in how simple it is to get what you want from it and how it invites you to ‘play’ music.Reminds me of my Casio PT1 but with the ability to bring into reality any kind of sound or music I can think of.

4. 

   Mr Todd – 19 February 2025

   Just For Fun…Too Many User Experience Issues
   I wanted to like this but it has too many issues.In 2024, nobody should release a WIFI equipped device that only supports the 2.4 GHz band. I’m not going to dumb down my network for a casual use device. It’s short sighted. A couple bucks invested would’ve gotten Yamaha a better WIFI chip. Pass the cost to the consumer.You’ll need a tablet or a good memory to navigate the SeqTrak because the interface isn’t as intuitive as it seems and the buttons around the edges are tiny and the print indicating what the buttons do is small.The built-in audio interface is buggy connecting to anything other than Apple devices.No Blutooth audio to bypass the weak speakers. You’ll need a 1/8 cable to bring the audio out since the 2 in, 2 out audio interface is buggy.Yamaha support seems dumbfounded and barely knowledgeable on what a SeqTrak is so good luck if you have problems.The “keys” are a low quality affair that aren’t even worthy of the low price.The MIDI ports using the break out cable is unpowered making less than friendly to all devices. The defacto standard in digital musical instruments is the MIDI Out port is powered. Maybe it would be so bad if the USB MIDI was more reliable connect to other USB instruments.The good news is it sounds better than what the little speakers elude to. The sequencer is relatively easy to use on the first page. The device is feature packed but not terribly easy to navigate. Something like this needs a display to be useful for more than playful excursions.I wouldn’t buy again. The fun factor isn’t worth the complications.

5. 

   Michael C. Jackson – 19 February 2025

   One of the most cursed music creation devices of this era
   I have a lot of experience with music hardware, from low end to high end. This is in a special place, and I don’t mean that as a compliment.I really don’t know who this box is made for. If you are new to hardware, you will be overwhelmed with trying to navigate this. If you are experienced with hardware, you will be frustrated by trying to navigate this. It has a battery, but that doesn’t mean it’s actually a good portable device, as it really wants its clunky bloated app (that needs a high end phone at minimum) in order to run.To elaborate – When it comes to music hardware, the interface is _everything._ That’s what differentiates using hardware from using software on your phone, your tablet, a laptop… How you interact with it. To be effective, music hardware should, at minimum, be an improvement from using software, and it should be something that you can work with quickly and effectively for your use cases.Given that – I just do not see how any of that is in any way applicable here. If all you are doing is percussive stuff, then this box is a bit easier to navigate, but why would you do that when there are so many other capable boxes in a similar price range for that? Sample handling is mediocre at best – it’s very clunky, not very flexible.But if you are looking at this, then the synth engines are probably part of the draw, yes? Well.. you have exactly one octave of input ever at any given time. By default, the 4×2 grid of keys on the right is your melodic input, limited to a given key/mode. Octave switching is only in one direction – up – via a single key at the rear of the box. If you are working within one single octave of C, then you can use the “larger” keyboard entry which turns the step sequencer into more of a proper keyboard, but that doesn’t fix the clunky octave shifting, and you still have the completely separate 4×2 grid of keys as above live at the same time, playing the exact same scale it was set to. It’s the single worst melodic entry I’ve used outside of using a single knob/slider (and even that may span octaves faster) and it’s hard to explain just how bad that aspect of it is.On top of this, the keys feel bad – they are very spongy, with no real feedback as to if they have been actuated or not.All four sides of the box are used for key input as well – There’s absolutely no way to hold this that has easy access to everything you need,. and there are some interesting decisions as to what ended up where.Outside of being in general categories, synth presets are laid out in absolutely no logical sense, which wouldn’t be so bad if there weren’t TONS of them, and if you weren’t working blind.Put simply, from a user interface point of view – this thing is a complete nightmare. This is an impossible device to use without consulting a manual, and it will take constant reference of the manual to learn and use, and at the end of the day, I don’t know if that’s worth it.There are some novel things going on here with the independent tracks per channel and maybe there’s some fun to be had there in a performance context, and there’s a reasonable amount of FX, and it’s reasonably quick to switch from track to track and enable/disable steps but – that isn’t enough to justify going through the hell that is actually making music with this.I’m not going to say that this box isn’t capable of making good things, but I am going to say that it takes a heroic effort to do so – You don’t do so because it’s fast or because it’s fun, you do it because you want to spit in the face of god and prove that you can make something good when everything is actively working against doing so.TLDR – I don’t think there’s a great reason for this box to exist, even if you just really like the Yamaha FM sound.On the low end — If you like that 6op FM sound, even a volca FM is a better choice, and I say that with a lot of dislike for the Volca FM. If you want something battery powered, the controversial OP-Z is about the same price and is, IMO, laid out in a much more sane and capable way. The Sonicware boxes are their own form of UI nightmare, but are much more approachable. TR-6s would make a lot more sense for percussive stuff and some sample work, be a bit more compact over all, and a hell of a lot easier to use. I’d argue that even a volca sample would be easier to write a complete track on (one at a time only, with the pattern room available there).If you want a more capable box than any of these, you will _have_ to spend more. Very much a “you get what you pay for” sort of thing.And if you are looking for a cheaper op-z/op-1/op-xy whatever, this is SO not any of those things. At all.I really really tried to like this box, and I’ve spent some time with it. There are not many things I can objectively say most people should avoid, as so much of music is “what works for you” vs. anything being better than anything else, but this is absolutely something that you should avoid. And if you disagree, then seriously – ask yourself why you want this and think VERY hard about anything else that could meet your wants. There’s a chance that maybe you are the magical right user for this, but I promise you that this is a line of thinking not too different from “I can fix them”I hate that this is my conclusion from this, because I legitimately like a lot of what Yamaha does, and I really do like to see more portable and capable devices in general, but this is a pretty hard miss. At the same time, Yamaha does have a bit of a reputation for some of the most cursed interfaces of all time (DX7 programming holds a special place in my heart), so in many ways, this is a continuation of tradition.(I find it funny that right beneath this, I’m being asked questions in order to “help customers find the right toy” – maybe that says all you need to know about this device.)

6. 

   Gerardo – 19 February 2025

   la calidad del sonido está genial. No vas a creer todo el potencial que tiene el aparato. A mí gusto las funciones son mejores que el OP1. Porque además puedes visualizarlo desde el celular o la PC, me agradaría que el botón de power, no fuera también el de play, quizá usar el de grabar (por ejemplo) ya que el botón de play es el mismo que el encendido y tendra mucho estrés. Ojalá Yamaha considere eso para alguna actualización.. es realmente muy buena la calidad. Lo compare con varios. Por ejemplo el MVs1 y las electribe de Korg. Y Yamaha tiene mejor calidad el sonido. Ojalá en futuras GrooveBox Yamaha aumente su calidad de construccion, pues quiero que me duren más, así como la RMX1, Rs7000 y demás..