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This DX7 Cartridge Does Not Exist

thisdx7cartdoesnotexist.com

81–90 of 91 posts

Re: This DX7 Cartridge Does Not Exist

#81

Very neat. I refurbish/repair DX7's as a hobby, and it is always surprising to me how much life there is still left in that synth. There is a whole eco-system around them and lots of people still want the actual thing to play on. They're also built like tanks which is one reason they are still so much in use today.

Also a ridiculous number were made, so there's a lot of them out there, despite Trent Reznor destroying many of them on stage!

Re: This DX7 Cartridge Does Not Exist

#82

Very neat. I refurbish/repair DX7's as a hobby, and it is always surprising to me how much life there is still left in that synth. There is a whole eco-system around them and lots of people still want the actual thing to play on. They're also built like tanks which is one reason they are still so much in use today.

Just curious, since you mentioned this: where do you get your up-stop felt?

Re: This DX7 Cartridge Does Not Exist

#83
post #10

Well, I have to say: (1) This looks interesting. I had no idea any of this existed. (2) For the level of awesome, this is the worst-documented ecosystem I've stepped into in a long while. I hope some random user volunteers to make really nice documentation at some point. This could go from awesome to a lot awesomer. I looked for MIDI synthesizer a while back, and never ran into dexed. I suspect I'll have a lot of fun…

For (2), yea definitely threw this all together a little too quickly. I have updated the README in https://github.com/Nintorac/NeuralDX7 to give a little explanation of the specific code used for this site. Hope that helps and feel free to get in contact info@thisdx7cartdoesnotexist.com or create an issue if I can help to make anything clearer

[deleted]

Re: This DX7 Cartridge Does Not Exist

#84
post #10

Well, I have to say: (1) This looks interesting. I had no idea any of this existed. (2) For the level of awesome, this is the worst-documented ecosystem I've stepped into in a long while. I hope some random user volunteers to make really nice documentation at some point. This could go from awesome to a lot awesomer. I looked for MIDI synthesizer a while back, and never ran into dexed. I suspect I'll have a lot of fun…

Look for "The Complete DX7" by Howard Massey. Very rare to find a printed copy, but a PDF scan of it is probably still up on Archive.org.

By far the best manual and sound design "how-to" for the DX7, or for FM synthesis in general.

Re: This DX7 Cartridge Does Not Exist

#85
post #82

Very neat. I refurbish/repair DX7's as a hobby, and it is always surprising to me how much life there is still left in that synth. There is a whole eco-system around them and lots of people still want the actual thing to play on. They're also built like tanks which is one reason they are still so much in use today.

Just curious, since you mentioned this: where do you get your up-stop felt?

Piano restauration parts supplier in Amsterdam.

Re: This DX7 Cartridge Does Not Exist

#86
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Definitely a great point. One of my favorite other examples is the Dune soundtrack[1]. This example uses the AdLib gold which uses the OPL3/YMF262, I believe.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUfGyfbzl9k

Re: This DX7 Cartridge Does Not Exist

#87
post #26
post #10

Well, I have to say: (1) This looks interesting. I had no idea any of this existed. (2) For the level of awesome, this is the worst-documented ecosystem I've stepped into in a long while. I hope some random user volunteers to make really nice documentation at some point. This could go from awesome to a lot awesomer. I looked for MIDI synthesizer a while back, and never ran into dexed. I suspect I'll have a lot of fun…

Surprised that you managed to evade the DX7 fandom with all the emulators, when looking for a synth.

I can sometimes be dumb with Google/apt-cache search/DDG like that :)

Re: This DX7 Cartridge Does Not Exist

#88

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.

This is a great question and I don't think I have a good answer. Here are some options:

- Some sibling comments have noted that you can built Dexed for Linux. If you can give that a shot and get it to build and run MIDI to it, it's one of the easiest ways you can get things going.

- If you're not partial to the OS you're using (unlikely for most people, I know), give it a shot on OSX.

- Otherwise, you might want to give KXStudio [1] a shot. It's an Ubuntu distro built by Paulo Coelho (@falkTX), who did some great work building Carla [2], which I believe is an evolution of dssi-vst [3]. dssi-vst uses the VeSTige emulator (which may be Wine based) and built a VST to DSSI adapter layer over it; I believe @falkTX forked dssi-vst, improved it over time and eventually came up with Carla. You could use Carla to run an instance of windows Dexed.

- Be aware that it's tricky to get a stable driver chain working properly with Linux (and I suppose you could say the same for Windows, too). You'll want to use a community blessed audio interface and other system components in your computer if you want the highest likelihood of stability. Results aren't guaranteed.

Personally, after multiple tries over the past ten years with a variety of hardware, a combination of bad luck and lack of time led me to give up and go back to the old reliable option, which for me is OSX. There's nothing worse than being in the middle of working on a track with your inspiration going, only to have your computer freeze and reboot losing your last half an hour of work if you forgot to save. But I'd love to be able to stay use Linux for music software.

Frankly, @falkTX's work with KXStudio is impressive, and it continues to evolve. Maybe there will come a day in the future when I can finally make the leap again.

[1] https://kx.studio/

[2] https://github.com/falkTX/Carla

[3] https://github.com/falkTX/dssi-vst

Re: This DX7 Cartridge Does Not Exist

#89

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…

>The interesting thing about Ableton is that they're actually XML files under the covers.

Are .alp files also XML? How would I go about viewing the contents of one? I had a quick go at it once but couldn't get anything not looking like binary.

The reason I ask is because the native alp files and instruments have preview sounds, and I'm curious if there's any way to add previews to your own created instruments.

Re: This DX7 Cartridge Does Not Exist

#90
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://github.com/google/music-synthesizer-for-android/tree... has an experimental port, but I'd consider it a starting point, not a polished web app. ETA: there's also https://www.webaudiomodules.org/wamsynths/webdx7/ , but sound is pretty crackly on my setup :/

Can confirm audio is very glitchy. Chromium 80.0 on reasonableish i5 laptop.

Actually works quite well in Firefox for me (sometimes notes don't quite trigger right, but if it plays the sound it sounds ok)
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