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This DX7 Cartridge Does Not Exist

thisdx7cartdoesnotexist.com

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Re: This DX7 Cartridge Does Not Exist

#71

Post by motogpjimbo »

StavrosK wrote: post #67
yowlingcat wrote: post #20

First of all, fantastic tool. Second of all, to folks that are trying to figure out how to give this a go: Open up your favorite DAW (try out Reaper[1] if you don't have one yet), download an install the fantastic open source DX7 emulator plugin Dexed VST plugin [2] and have fun. In my opinion, FM synthesis is one of the finest things in life I've ever experienced. I never understood the whole culture around an emoti…

Any instructions for Linux? Dexed won't run there.

It's possible to build it for Linux from source:

https://github.com/asb2m10/dexed/wiki/Linux-Builds

Re: This DX7 Cartridge Does Not Exist

#72

Post by parenthesis »

I really want to like Dexed (I love FM synthesis). But (I'm using it on a Mac, if that makes any difference):

• After clicking on a knob, I should then be able to use the up and down arrow keys to move the value up and down.

• I should be able to type in the numeric value I want a selected parameter to be.

If the interface had these two features, it would be perfect. Without them, for me, it is unusable for programming sounds.

Re: This DX7 Cartridge Does Not Exist

#74

Post by leonfedden »

raphlinus wrote: post #38
Rodeoclash wrote: post #13

This is very cool, well done! I wonder how far we are away from the following: 1. Being able to use a GAN to be able to give a synth an input sound (i.e. a reece sound from a dnb track) and have it generate a patch that matches it. 2. Being able to do 1 but apply it to a whole Ableton project. The interesting thing about Ableton is that they're actually XML files under the covers. Even if you couldn't get close, it w…

There is a long tradition of using AI and AI-ish techniques to try to generate FM synthesis patches, for example [1] genetic algorithms (1993) to [2] neural networks (2017). See the "previous work" section in the latter paper for more references. Disclosure: I wrote the original sound engine in Dexed. I love seeing stuff like this! [1]: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3680541?seq=1 [2]: http://research.gold.ac.uk/22516/…

Hey dexed is awesome! I was the coauthor for [2], it for was my 3rd year undergraduate dissertation. A lot of the work went into creating a Python VST host capable of generating huge datasets of random patches.

I'm looking at some of the fancy new ML tricks that have come out since that paper was wrote and have been thinking there would be significant improvements over the LSTM we used.

Re: This DX7 Cartridge Does Not Exist

#75

Post by teilo »

nobleach wrote: post #47
teilo wrote: post #45

I have KQ Dixie on this iPad Pro that I'm presently on. The sysex files generated by this website opened up directly into it, and it worked brilliantly. This is so cool. There's a lot of duds, but it also generates some very usable patches. I actually have a DX7 sitting on my desk at work, although I only use it as a MIDI keyboard because I love the keybed. Dexed or Arturia is so much easier to program, and 100% the…

I've owned multiple DX-7s (only first gen... I've always wanted to buy a DX-7IIfd). While I liked the feel of the keys, I couldn't get passed the MIDI implementation not sending the full 0-127 velocity. (Yamaha implemented a 0 to 100 range because the MIDI spec wasn't complete at the time of production). When I'm actually using it as just a keyboard to play, it doesn't seem to matter... it's only when I'm using a dif…

I fixed this with MidiFire on Mac. I created a map that scales 0-100 to 0-127. I also added a control to shift octaves. The only real annoying thing is the fact that it doesn't send aftertouch unless the current patch has it enabled.

Re: This DX7 Cartridge Does Not Exist

#76

Post by ttctciyf »

StavrosK wrote: post #67
yowlingcat wrote: post #20

First of all, fantastic tool. Second of all, to folks that are trying to figure out how to give this a go: Open up your favorite DAW (try out Reaper[1] if you don't have one yet), download an install the fantastic open source DX7 emulator plugin Dexed VST plugin [2] and have fun. In my opinion, FM synthesis is one of the finest things in life I've ever experienced. I never understood the whole culture around an emoti…

Any instructions for Linux? Dexed won't run there.

If you have an ubuntu based distro, you can probably install dexed (or hexter, another DX7 softsynth) from the kxstudio repos ( https://kx.studio/Repositories )

Re: This DX7 Cartridge Does Not Exist

#77

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

tomduncalf wrote: post #61
Rodeoclash wrote: post #13

This is very cool, well done! I wonder how far we are away from the following: 1. Being able to use a GAN to be able to give a synth an input sound (i.e. a reece sound from a dnb track) and have it generate a patch that matches it. 2. Being able to do 1 but apply it to a whole Ableton project. The interesting thing about Ableton is that they're actually XML files under the covers. Even if you couldn't get close, it w…

I am not an ML expert so not sure of the details on how it works, but I believe Google’s DDSP work is similar to 1: https://magenta.tensorflow.org/ddsp As I understand it, their system can take an audio input and “learn” how to control the parameters of a synth to reproduce that sound. I had the pleasure of seeing a demo of it from someone who worked on it and thought it was impressive! Synths have existed for a whil…

It's AI/ML if you capture sounds at different levels/frequencies, run them all through FFTs, and then use AI/ML to model how the FFTs change with level/frequency.

The Neuron used to work like this - but it's not a cheap way to synthesise sounds, and it never sounded all that awesome.

This works in the DX7's parameter space and tries to find sweet spots within that space - which are hard to discover, even if you know what you're doing.

I'm not convinced it's much more successful than a plain old constrained parameter randomiser. But it is much easier to use.

Re: This DX7 Cartridge Does Not Exist

#78

Post by parenthesis »

inetsee wrote: post #46

Years ago I had a TX81Z synthesizer unit. It was a rack mount unit (not a keyboard synthesizer; you had to use it with a midi keyboard). It was also an FM synthesizer with a fundamental difference; the DX7 used sine waves modulating each other to produce the sounds, and the TX81Z let you do the frequency modulation with sine waves, or triangle waves, or square waves, or pulse waves. You basically had an order of magn…

The TX81Z only has 4 operators, versus 6 on the DX7, but, on the other hand, yes, not just sine waves.

Also, it had the "LatelyBass" preset, used on a huge number of records in the 80s and 90s.

Re: This DX7 Cartridge Does Not Exist

#79

Post by raphlinus »

leonfedden wrote: post #74
raphlinus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a long tradition of using AI and AI-ish techniques to try to generate FM synthesis patches, for example [1] genetic algorithms (1993) to [2] neural networks (2017). See the "previous work" section in the latter paper for more references. Disclosure: I wrote the original sound engine in Dexed. I love seeing stuff like this! [1]: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3680541?seq=1 [2]: http://research.gold.ac.uk/22516/…

Hey dexed is awesome! I was the coauthor for [2], it for was my 3rd year undergraduate dissertation. A lot of the work went into creating a Python VST host capable of generating huge datasets of random patches. I'm looking at some of the fancy new ML tricks that have come out since that paper was wrote and have been thinking there would be significant improvements over the LSTM we used.

Nice! I imagine with the advances in ML it would be possible to do really impressive things. I hope you or someone else takes this up.

Also, this is really a reason to love Hacker News. Sometimes I question why I spend so much time here, this is not one of those times :)

Re: This DX7 Cartridge Does Not Exist

#80

Post by disease »

yowlingcat wrote: post #49
yowlingcat wrote: post #20

First of all, fantastic tool. Second of all, to folks that are trying to figure out how to give this a go: Open up your favorite DAW (try out Reaper[1] if you don't have one yet), download an install the fantastic open source DX7 emulator plugin Dexed VST plugin [2] and have fun. In my opinion, FM synthesis is one of the finest things in life I've ever experienced. I never understood the whole culture around an emoti…

Other things I like about FM that I was just thinking about: - It's super CPU efficient on modern hardware, so you can use as many instances as you like. - You can use it to do reasonably convincing physical modeling of many real instruments (or at least the start of it) - There is little phase smearing or analog noise. - Even for percussive instruments, you can tune and shape harmonic boundaries so that your instrum…

Even today, in 2020, I'm amazed at how good the music sounds in those 80s and 90s arcade games that used FM chips like the YM2151. Marble Madness, 720, Pack Rat in particular. Not just a testament to FM synthesis, but to the composers and sound programmers of the day!
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