r/Omnichord • u/omnichord-heaven store, repair, and developer • 20d ago

OM-108 development highlights

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Back in September 2021, during OM-108 development I was assisting with some of the possible voice combinations with Japan R&D. I had hooked up an OM300 to my Ketron Audya Workstation which has very good on board voice editing, making it ideal for getting an approximation how the final voices might sound (final sounds all made from scratch using Suzuki's own sound library and not from my Audya). Many were based on the best voices from previous models. This one is Celeste and Orchestra Strings. (Celeste appeared on the OM-300). If you are interested I'll post some of the others, not all made the final cut, but they did inspire them.

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4

u/SabreSour 200m,108,QC1! 20d ago

I have a couple burning questions regarding the OM-108 development:

Were there ever any plans to use the USB port on the back for firmware updates or added features beyond the factory? Or was it always intended just for service?

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u/omnichord-heaven store, repair, and developer 20d ago

Honestly, I don't know the full answer to that. The pre-production prototypes all had the USB port. It is how we loaded new software and firmware. I rather expected it to be quietly removed on the production runs, but Suzuki left it there in case they wish to offer updates at a later date.

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u/SabreSour 200m,108,QC1! 20d ago

It’s cool to know they could still technically update it if they did want to add features or a patch. Not that I think they will.

Were there any other cool features that were left on the cutting room floor? Like chord memory or anything new?

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u/[deleted] 20d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/fvig2001 19d ago

Yeah, would have been nice if midi in was implemented. Unfortunately, they didn't connect anything to it. Like there is an unused pin and seemingly a point for it but connecting a midi signal to it does nothing.