Yamaha URX44

Yamaha’s new audio interface is not quite like anything else on the market.

It’s now more than 20 years since Yamaha purchased Steinberg from Pinnacle Systems. This not only gave them ownership of popular software products such as Cubase, Nuendo and WaveLab; it also delivered expertise in hardware design. Starting with the highly successful MR816 in 2008, jointly developed USB interfaces and controllers have previously appeared under the Steinberg brand.

Steinberg will now focus exclusively on software, with the parent company [Yamaha] being responsible for audio interfaces, controllers and other hardware.

Last year, however, the Japanese mega‑corporation announced a change of direction. Steinberg will now focus exclusively on software, with the parent company [Yamaha] being responsible for audio interfaces, controllers and other hardware. Existing products have been rebranded, so for example the Steinberg UR22C and UR44C audio interfaces are reborn as the Yamaha URX22C and URX44C. Meanwhile, Yamaha have introduced a separate range of three desktop USB audio interfaces dubbed the URX22, URX44 and URX44V.

Given that these names are almost identical to those of the former Steinberg models, you might expect the products to be minor variations on the same theme. This is not so. The new range is radically different — not only from existing Yamaha interfaces but from practically everything else that’s out there.

The new range is radically different — not only from existing Yamaha interfaces but from practically everything else that’s out there.

Desk Jobs

All three new URX models share the same wedge‑shaped case design and are available in white or black. With the exception of the Avid MBox Studio, the URX44 is bigger than all of the other desktop interfaces I’ve tested, measuring 22 x 18cm (9 x 7 inches) and standing 8cm high. It weighs almost 2kg (4lbs).

Whereas the MBox Studio’s real estate is fully populated with controls, meters and sockets, however, the URX’s desktop case is quite Spartan. The top panel is home to a colour touchscreen, five rotary controls and a power button. To the front, you’ll find two conventional headphone outputs on quarter‑inch jacks, plus three mini‑jacks. Two of these are intended for connecting a headset and associated microphone, while the third is labelled Aux and offers an unbalanced stereo input for keyboards, phones and other devices. The headset mic supplants input 1 if used, but the stereo Aux input is separate.

Round the back we find three USB‑C ports, a microSD card slot, four combi XLR/jack socket audio inputs and four quarter‑inch audio outputs.

Rear‑panel I/O depends on the model, with the URX44 and URX44V each having four main audio inputs and outputs. The inputs are on combi XLR/jacks, with inputs 3 and 4 offering a high‑impedance mode for DI guitar recording. You’ll also find two USB Type‑C sockets, one for attaching your computer and another for a secondary device, while the 44 and 44V feature a microSD card socket for a built‑in recorder. The URX44V adds HDMI in and thru sockets, catering for a variety of video streaming and vlogging scenarios. However, none of the URX desktop interfaces provides conventional digital audio I/O such as ADAT Lightpipe or S/PDIF.

The V’s video functionality is evidently quite power‑hungry, as that unit draws over 38W and requires a dedicated 16V DC supply. By contrast, the URX22 and URX44 are theoretically capable of being bus‑powered, but even they draw 15W, which is more than many laptops can supply, including mine! A third Type‑C socket therefore allows the connection of an external USB mains supply or power bank. I found it necessary to choose my USB power cable carefully, otherwise small movements would cause the entire unit to power cycle.

Tool Tips

To get started, you need to install a driver package and a suite of tools. The latter includes some bundled effects plug‑ins that you can use in your DAW of choice, as well as a utility that can update the URX firmware. This is, to say the least, a pretty leisurely process. Once up and running, you’ll see no fewer than four audio devices labelled Yamaha URX44 A, B, C and DAW, plus a mass storage device containing nothing but a link to a Getting Started guide. This can be mildly annoying, because unless you remember to eject it, powering the URX down generates a warning that it wasn’t ejected properly. And, perversely, although the URX44 has a microSD card socket, SD cards are not mounted as mass storage devices on the attached computer, and can’t be read.

Yamaha provide a lengthy online manual, which is a model of good HTML design, but unfortunately omits to explain the basic use case behind many of their design choices. For example, there’s no explanation as to why a USB interface with only six inputs and four outputs needs to appear to your computer as four separate audio devices. I also initially struggled to locate the promised block diagram of signal flow, which would have been very helpful in getting to grips with it.

It thus took me a while to figure out that Yamaha’s own description of the URX44 as a USB audio interface is only part of the story. It’s actually a compact digital mixer — but one that is designed to work with USB audio sources as well as analogue signals. Consequently, although it has nothing in common with the URX44C and other ex‑Steinberg products, it does inherit quite a few design conventions from Yamaha’s digital mixer range, and really needs to be viewed in this context to make sense. The point of it appearing as four USB audio devices, for example, is to allow audio from multiple applications running on the same computer to be mixed and routed outside the computer. The A,...