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They don't make them like that any more: the Yamaha DX7 keyboard

kevinboone.me

91–100 of 225 posts

Re: They don't make them like that any more: the Yamaha DX7 keyboard

#91
But they still make great stuff like Korg Volca FM or Dirtywave M8 and many, many other beautiful synths!

Apart from that, with music equipment, it's completely different than with computers. In our case, great hardware becomes outdated and goes out of use. You could say it disappears forever because its time has passed. With music equipment, it's entirely different. There, everything remains compatible, almost nothing "goes out of use" and it cannot become obsolete.

Re: They don't make them like that any more: the Yamaha DX7 keyboard

#92
post #18

> 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'd argue the opposite, the DX7 worked great because it came with good presets and you could expand it with those cartriges, although programming your own was annoying as heck. But most people cared about getting the newest sounds and at max tweaking them slightly, which was a pain. But the FM engine was/is immensly powerful and the sounds are to that day extremely iconic.

Just as a visualization for the parameters that DX7 hides from its users behind that interface, Matrixsynth made thebDT7 which puts all parameters on knobs and it looks like this: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj...

Re: They don't make them like that any more: the Yamaha DX7 keyboard

#93
post #48
post #18

> 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…

They also didn't get why FM synthesis was so appealing, in spite of being difficult to understand for the common musician. It's in the tone . Acoustic instruments respond in a complex way to the variation in strength of input: when you strike the key in the piano faster, pluck a string harder, or blow air info the saxophone stronger, you don't merely get a louder sound: the harmonic content , the timbre of the sound…

>the speakers are not loud

Well, let's be clear: the speakers are just for noodling.

Nobody who performs would use the built-in speakers of such a keyboard, not even street performers.

- the only exception is the big-ass speakers in digital home pianos, and still those are only for home use.

Re: They don't make them like that any more: the Yamaha DX7 keyboard

#94
post #84
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also didn't get why FM synthesis was so appealing, in spite of being difficult to understand for the common musician. It's in the tone . Acoustic instruments respond in a complex way to the variation in strength of input: when you strike the key in the piano faster, pluck a string harder, or blow air info the saxophone stronger, you don't merely get a louder sound: the harmonic content , the timbre of the sound…

Could you recommend a patch set for the reface? I bought mine off someone who had some great presets and I loved it, but one day I accidentally factory reset it and there's only a few factory defaults that are really musical as you say.

You could make your own set, mix and matching from various patches available (including the built-in).

There are some patch editors and librarians to help you: https://ctrlr.martintarenskeen.nl/

Re: They don't make them like that any more: the Yamaha DX7 keyboard

#95
post #65
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also didn't get why FM synthesis was so appealing, in spite of being difficult to understand for the common musician. It's in the tone . Acoustic instruments respond in a complex way to the variation in strength of input: when you strike the key in the piano faster, pluck a string harder, or blow air info the saxophone stronger, you don't merely get a louder sound: the harmonic content , the timbre of the sound…

Very nice. The DX7 is a musical instrument in its own right. Samplers are emulators of something else.

Well, samplers are also musical instruments in their own right.

Nobody said samplers are confined to playing emulations of acoustic instruments. There are tons of creative users to make patches, and after the initial sample is added (which could be anything), most samplers have a full blown set of filtering, envelope, modulation, fx, audio manipulation etc options.

Re: They don't make them like that any more: the Yamaha DX7 keyboard

#96
post #18

> 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…

FM/PM synthesis makes no "logical sense"... until you spend the twenty minutes required to understand it.

Really people gave up on the DX7 because of the limited interface, somehow FM got the blame. A subtractive synth with a knob for each function is a fantastically intuitive thing, but when it's three buttons and a line of abbrv txt it's not very nice either.

Re: They don't make them like that any more: the Yamaha DX7 keyboard

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And of course even vintage DX7s go for a quite high price in second+ hand market... Everytime I read about some cool old synth, I check how much they cost and they are always hundreds or thousands of dollars, I think DX7s are like $500+.

The DX7 might be the best selling synth of all time. There's a lot of them out there.

> The DX7 might be the best selling synth of all time

They were, for a long time, but the figure I've seen is something like 100k for the original model. The market is so much bigger now I don't really believe it's true anymore.

Re: They don't make them like that any more: the Yamaha DX7 keyboard

#98
Brian Eno, of course, insisted that the problem with the DX7 was entirely the fault of the UI. He had a custom controller made, although I can’t find a photo of it. These days, the DT-7 attempts to emulate it.

Edit: It wasn't a custom controller, image in reply.

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