Just found a nice DX7 the other day and had a little fun hooking it up with Logic Pro. I was actually shocked to kinds of sounds I was able to get out of it.

IMHO, the difference between a Real DX7 and those Synth Clones like Dexed, Arturia, and FM8, is the character. The VST clones just can't compare to the real thing! The reason is simple, Most VST Plugins just have no real Soul!

Let's take for example here an original Yamaha DX7 FM Synth; A staple synth found in most the Top 40-1980's Pop songs. Why? It just had a certain sound to it that cuts into a mix. Some say it was due to the complexity of how the FM synth was designed. To me, it was the soul of the machine that defined the era, dirty Low-Fi 12 bit sounds, with a mean-ass low-end, that is a character! Some say this is due to the original power supply and ROM chip!

Hell NO! The real reason... There's a F'n monster that lives insides my DX7 and is waiting to be released! Just wait for it, just wait for it! You will hear it! LOL! Just with some cool FX tricks, I was able to get something really cool. I can only imagine when I start getting into the real thick of the things when I start designing my own DX7 sounds in my genres like Industrial Metal, Psytrance and maybe some Dubstep. This thing is a beast!

I'm using 'Dexed' as my Sysex MIDI Editor and Librarian with Logic Pro X, 10.3.

My Logic Pro X FX Chain:
Orginal Yamaha DX7 - Mono out, duplicated to two Audio Channels, hard panned Left and Right. Both Channels have a Pitch shifter enabled for each to eliminate phase cancelation. This creates a very nice FX Harmonizer effect. Then both channels are thrown into a summing bus. On the master summing bus; I have, Modulation Delay, Bit Crusher, and Distortion, and I bus from that a separate aux channel for ghostly sounding reverb. Gnarly Nasty Sounds!

 

There one in my garage I've not played in years.... its covered in cobwebs..... I'd be nervous to switch it on...
Bloody weighs a ton, used to have to lug that around...

 

This is what we would like to believe when we pay for hardware, but the cruel truth is that ...........: just a placebo effect

 

OK, Let's pretend I agree with you... if buying a real synth gives me the extra charge in energy, "Placebo" or not, to create something and bump me out of a dry spell, then Hell Yes it's worth it! I do hear a real difference with the character of its 12-bit Low-fi sounds and its power supply humming in a distinct flavor of pops and cracks, like a an old record.

A VST Clone will always have the cookie cutter flavor from its original programming, which is always too clean and harsh. Don't get me wrong, there are some synth clones I love and find inspiration from. U-He's Zebra & Hive, Spectrasonics Omnisphere, Xfer's Serum. Heck, I'll find some sounds in reFX's Nessus that inspire me too.

However, I have to ask, was it a real synth sampled in that over-priced Rompler or a Clone that makes it sound os great?

 

Please Release The Monster, It does not want to be caged in a garage! ;-) Try bringing it to life with a series of Guitar FX pedals. You will be supprised!

 

Welcome to the eighties. I've aged 30yrs since then. DX7 VST is much easier io take to a gig.

 

Last edited: Mar 18, 2018

True, If I had to gig, The real DX7 would be left at home. Give a test on the difference between a real one vs a VST to a regular Joe off the street, they won't be able to tell or care about it. Does it really matter, probably not, but hey at least it makes great discussion? ;-)

 

But you neither can put an ashtray on it, nor a sixpack of beer.

 

To be honest I have, a DX-7 in the garage, a Nordlead 2 in the hall cupboard, a Alesis Ion, Yamaha FB-01, Cheetah MS-6, Roland SH-101, Akia S1000 and several drum machines, inc. TR series in the loft, DAT machines, FX units and over 30 years of other kit stuffed in various corners. I just don't have the room to stack all this kit and considering I spend most of my time looking at a computer monitor I find the convenience of sticking a soft synth through guitar rig much simpler and practical than explaining to the wife why my room looks like an explosion in a spaghetti factory. I also have room on my desk for a 6 pack of beer.
I currently have one "real" synth on my desk and that's the Moog Sub 37, then there's a NI Komplete Kontrol 61 Mk2 and a Machine MK3, Machine Jam. 2 X Rack FX by TC and Lexicon and a Kaoss Pad all wired into a 6 core PC running Cubase and a shit load of soft. Finally a digital field recorder, and a couple of good mics.
I remember the days I would spend hunched over a patch book manually inputting patches on the DX, or recovering from the hernia I gave myself setting it all up and quite frankly I don't miss it.
At this point I have to confess that having all this "ready made" stuff can make you sound a bit generic, and you have to be a bit more experimental with your sources to avoid that, but if you bear that in mind, I wish I was 25 years younger and had access to all the kit you do now.

 

its not analogic technology, what are you talking about ? Soul .....
Is FM technology fun to toy with ? Yes.
Does it have soul ? Come on, its digital, like a vst plug in

Excited with his new toy, we get it

 

Yeh, sorry m8, having my own rant. I'm please for you its a real bit of history and they don't build em like that anymore....
Look, select Coarse Frequency on the main operator and jiggle that single encoder about like crazy, in the 80s people though you where weird when you did that, now for some reason they think your a god.....!

 

Welcome to the real world of FM synthesis.
Have fun man !
I am still enjoying mine after 32 years

 

Memories, memories...

 

Of course, everything is ok to optimize the comfort and the desire to create, absolutely ALL!
There was even a discussion about the skins, some guys said it's stupid to download these bullshit, but a lot of people said that a skin is like a studio set and that changes a lot in the feeling, especially when you spend hours on the DAW.
So yes, with hardware, we can talk about "feeling" different and even better, we can talk about the desire to create and not to postpone more (because of the difficulty of saving the session with all the parameters) we can talk about dynamism related to parameterization (because of the proximity of the physical knobs).
But to say that the sound Hardware is different or better sound Software, it's completely wrong, it's even the opposite (some soft emulation provides a correction and improvement to the sound hardware, but not the opposite !).
We have already proved several times that it is IMPOSSIBLE, even for an expert to differentiate a sound coming from a synth hardware, and the one from his software or VST.

 

Nothing can touch my original and ancient Korg MS-20, it sounds different depending on the weather! Haha.

 

I was very keen on everything vst until about 2012 or so when I first bought an M-Audio Venom, which was a total (but cheap) failure, and a few years later a Roland Jd-Xi, just to have a small kbd with its own sound engine. With emphasis on "small", cause I still had (and have) my Casio FZ-1 metal tank sampler sleeping on the shelf. That Venom/JD-Xi pair grew, with the years, to about 20 then old and new Synths and Drum machines. The second old Kbd from the 80s I had, Poly 800, still awaits maintenance to be revived. I began as a teen with MS-20 and TR-808 and Sielorchestra when they were released, and which are long gone (sold).
Maybe I bought some of the gear I mentioned just to have a feeling like Captain Kirk on the bridge. Funny little lights, red, green, yellow.
When I begin to make music with the DAW and the ca. 1000 free/magware vst I have in use, i find always something that I like. But, there are distracting things, like buffer sizes, crackles, updates, compatibility issues, exclusivity of ASIO audio over browser audio (I like to surf the net when I am exhausted), a big screen with much information…you name it. Of/c one can tell of the many problems you can also have with hardware. Mixer levels, cables for audio and midi, boot times (M3...), re-finding the correct patch for that masterpiece one improvised yesterday before nearly falling from the chair from pure fatigue...Or just saving sound banks on many different machines.
But using hardware is often more spontaneous, more relieving, more satisfying. I have not much time, so I rarely create my own sounds, instead I take a preset and tamper with it until I like it. I do that with vst also, but it is more fun on the h/w synth.
The real story is this: This year I bought a Modx and hated it from the beginning. Every day I imagined it to pack it up and send it back. For months, while I always found something creative to do with it. I still hate that piece of UI-garbage, an 8-Op-FM-Synth that is as badly to program as a DX-7 (believe it or not), though it has a touch-screen...10000 Arpeggios you don't want to use... No aftertouch... It is so modern and doesn't remember the last Combi I used... Very forgettable reverb FX... But it is still the most inspiring tool I had to date (except my CX-5M in the 80s...). And I still do not know why. So I gave up to solve that riddle and be just happy to empty my wallet for all the follow-up cost that hardware demands.

 

I have had more fun with the silly little Moog Grandmother than any other kb I have ever had/still have. It's exactly opposite of anything described above. I did not immediately dive into the thing when I got it, and now I feel like a moron about the delay. Oh well. I have had many synths like those, and also technical annoyances who are too particular about who they play nice with.

I was checking out a cheap dx9 the other day and idk. I know it was somewhat of a "toy" compared to the 7, scaled down and so on. Anyone used one in 2022? Just for lo-fi sampling and so on.

 

Last edited: Nov 7, 2022

thankfully all of those things can be ironed out before-hand in one way or another, but not every artist also has an engineering mindset or the experience with computers to troubleshoot into a seamless experience, before-hand or otherwise. Not that it's all that difficult or expensive, the scarlet solo I paid 70ish dollars for handles sub 10ms latency without needing exclusive control of the audio device, the way something like asio4all does. Hell, I even route all of my PC audio through my daw, for complete control of monitoring fx, ability to quickly sample/record from things I'm watching/listening to, and to have a greater degree of familiarity with my audio production chain so I can trust what I hear completely. all of that in one instance of reaper while I'm working flawlessly in a second. but of course with all that greater complexity comes a need for greater understanding, and not everyone wants or is able to get to that level of understanding.

 

I was just wondering about Dexed and how it works for you with the DX. For most of us without the synth, it's always just been a FM synth plugin. If you care to elaborate, or maybe compare it with a love-hate relationship called MidiQuest v.any ?

@trutzburg How is PC so far for you? Cmon dude. The whole problem you have is called Windows Drivers.

 

Last edited: Nov 9, 2022

Yes, you can:

There may be some insignificant difference, for which little more than no one will care.

I don't smoke, and I fear that beers could fall.

I'm curious too, in the meanwhile see above, it's a great test.

Not to me.
Actually, when I bought the SY99 (an over beefed DX7), I was eager to create/edit sounds, but after few weeks I got tired, it's a nail in the ass and damn difficult compared to subtractive/addictive synthesis so I basically used it like a preset synth.
One more thing: while the keyboard quality is (very) good in both DX7 and SY99 (I think the last is a bit better), the controls you have in real time are just the few you see: a pair of wheels and a slider and AT.
So, you can't think to play them like a violin with all its nuances.
But you can do this with a Seaboard now.

 

Last edited: Nov 9, 2022