21–30 of 225 posts
FM synth is tough to tame, but the possibilities are endless. More so than the standard subtractive VA that most synths use. I feel that we haven't yet fully explored what FM has to offer!
Processing power prevented a lot of fun possibilities, if one day consumer CPU become power enough to do 1Mhz upsampled DSP with ease, we can brute-force a lot weirder wave shaping algorithms without too much aliasing.
> With hindsight, the DX7 and its ilk look like a weird diversion in the path of musical progress. Operator synthesis makes no logical sense. It became popular because we had the capability to do digital sound generation, but lacked the technology to do it in a comprehensible, systematic way. So the DX7 enjoyed huge popularity for a few years, before fading into obscurity. That's a weird take. I mean "Operator synthe…
Relating to it's influence on 80s music, this oft repeated claim is laughable. Tom Oberheim and the late Dave Smith had demonstrably greater influence with the OB-X* and Prophet lines reigning supreme and offering lasting sonic contributions.
About Chowning and the DX7 https://youtu.be/Mu8lHX-xuSg
Other videos about FM and contemporary applications https://youtu.be/Pl7BY4C9Cg4 and https://youtu.be/Uoiqy5mkUKE
Aboout Synclavier https://youtu.be/G5T7NBLSY0c
As a former owner and synth head, I feel the DX7 was good for poorly simulating a broad range of superior instruments. Also it wasn't merely difficult to program - it made sound design a necessarily separate activity from playing due to the notorious programming UX. Revolutionary and a nifty museum piece. Relating to it's influence on 80s music, this oft repeated claim is laughable. Tom Oberheim and the late Dave Smi…
Nothing touches FM's velocity responsiveness until physical modeling, it sounds lame when you get used to it, but the same thing is true to the romplers that replaced it.
>Relating to it's influence on 80s music
80s is quite broad, claims like this basically just showed which artists the writer prefer. Personally, it's PPG and Moog.
> The use of mathematics to produce sounds resembling real instruments quickly became obsolete once we could just go out and sample the real thing. Sampling is a boring, brute-force approach to sound synthesis, but it’s a relatively straightforward one, now we have the computing power and memory. I guess this is true, but the next thing to come along that made me leave the DX7 at home was an Ensoniq EPS-16+. https://…
I think FM is inferior at this if only because harmonics/overtones have less variability.
> With hindsight, the DX7 and its ilk look like a weird diversion in the path of musical progress. Operator synthesis makes no logical sense. It became popular because we had the capability to do digital sound generation, but lacked the technology to do it in a comprehensible, systematic way. So the DX7 enjoyed huge popularity for a few years, before fading into obscurity. That's a weird take. I mean "Operator synthe…
I’ve seen piano patches that sound REALISTIC because in 8 layers, you can model the hammer, the initial string hit, the cabinet echo, string resonance, and a whole lot of other timbres… but it takes SO MUCH EFFORT. So unless you’re a /real/ sound designer or you buy patches online, you’re better off getting a Digitone for “simpler” FM or just stick to the MODX’s excellent sampled acoustic instruments.
Yeah… the MODX/Montage UI is really bad and feels like something out of 2004.
Anthony Marinelli (film composer and synth programmer for many artists including Micheal Jackson) recently made a series of documentaries about FM Synthesis and its inventor John Chowning, the DX7 is mentioned multiple times alongside the Synclavier which used the same synthesis method but predated the DX7. About Chowning and the DX7 https://youtu.be/Mu8lHX-xuSg Other videos about FM and contemporary applications htt…
We live in that future.
My DX7 take is this: I don't think time has made any other synth less desirable to own than the original DX7's. - Keyboard velocity maxes out at 100 and the action sucks. - Membrane buttons. - Weighs way too much. - Dinky 2-line screen for controlling dozens and dozens of parameters using one slider. You can run the entire thing completely correct off of a chip the size of a fingernail these days, so there's no pract…
> And once we have sampling technology, there’s little point using computational techniques to make the once-novel sounds of earlier synthesizers: we can just sample the instruments themselves You can't tweak the parameters of a filter envelope if it's "printed" to a sample. You might sample a variety of different envelopes, but there's still fundamentally no way you can get the sound of the filter attack gradually i…