DrSynth

Marinelli's channel is great. Nick Batt and Alex Ball are top of the top as well:

Hubba Hubba... or is that Giggity Giggity?!? Looks like I won't have to wait for a Matrix 12 reissue

So many great mentions -- the original white Oberheim 8 Voice & pinstripe OB-Xa; the DX1, PPG's & 3rd Wave, MatrixBrute, JP8, GX1, Chroma, Synclavier, C-15. The 2500 will always be a gold-standard icon. And I've always liked the sleek look of the Akai AX80 w/ the fluorescent bar graph displays (an underrated synth overall) Manny

Jim, I totally agree, it's the first thing I noticed with the PolyBrute (and my MatrixBrute as well)-- it's weirdly 'klunky' with shallow depth of travel especially of the white keys. I'm a 'pounder' with little technique and find it fatiguing compared to all my Yamaha keybeds. And god forbid I play the Arturias immediately after playing the Osmose

Not that this makes it easier -- they hit the threshold for all the CV ins/out as well, so now you need to think how versatile the Omega will be as a controller in addition to the sound engine. Manny

Just DO it... I've still got an Osmose coming (...eventually...) and at this 30% off for 16 note PAT advanced digital synth it's a no brainer ! I also have the Iridium, no real overlap. GAS doesn't require logic! Manny

That is correct. The crossfading through the frames emulated having realtime control of those aspects of the 24 harmonics. A cool thing in the Regen -- now there is the capability to set the Phase independently for each Harmonic in the Additive engine. Can allow for some cool spacial 'binaural' tricks in 2 Partial patches, but more importantly this is a really big deal for doing FM. Shifting the phase of certain harmonics in your Modulator and/or Carrier shapes the timbre in a completely different way than Ratio/Index

Nubile Augmented Modified Models ?

Noisy Artist Mashup Mishaps Normal Annual Musical Madness No Artists Making Money Nerds Associate Midst Musicians

Drew, Congrats and welcome! Manny

Matt, Welcome, what you've acquired is a good start ! Manny

Love mine. Huge timbre palatte, fantastic controllability, It is one of the best purchases I've made. So much so I have both version (KB and DT). The flavors of phase modulation in the various mutants have some unique implementation/versatilities that even the Quantum/Iridium can't do (BTW the KB is a great controller for the Iridium). I don't find any issues with it's 'sound' per se, though you do have to explore balancing the gain staging and filter overdrive to massage the sonic character at times (not unlike the MoogOne so I'm told) My particular reason for getting is was Wavetable - Wavetable FM, and the way you can set up the individual sequences of waves and dynamically modulate them interactively from so may controllers giving ever changing Modulator-Carrier waveform interactions makes it a textural pad monster (really enhanced with the poly AT) Two thumbs (way) up! Manny

If you"re already looking at it anyway, the MODX is the best solution. If want a true rack option, the TX802 is the straightforward, most economical way. Manny

Well Doc, back into the FM weeds for a bit. If you look at algorithm 2 on a DX-7, you"ll notice that it isn"t just one sine wave modulating another sine wave. Modulating operator 4 is being modulated by operator 5, which is being modulated by operator six. Each layer of modulation added more upper harmonics to the result. The operator 1 and 2 pair isn"t enough by itself. But the feedback on operator 2 makes up for the lack of additional modulators that you find in the 3, 4, 5, 6 stack. And my hearing is just fine. It had the silky smoothness that my Oberheim had. Now if you are talking about buzzy sounds like on the song Jump, then you aren"t talking about typical string patches that had some low pass filtering to take the edge off. And I assure you, my DX-7 patch had plenty of upper harmonics for a good analog string patch. And if was good for many octaves. The highest octave had some aliasing in it, but how many people play analog string sounds in the highest octave? The trick that gave it some analog randomness was using fixed frequently on the carrier operators anyway. And the DX-7 was strictly speaking phase modulation, instead of true frequency modulation, so maybe that had something to do with it. Radagast, Apologies, no intent to come across as 'that guy' on the internet to troll/diss your perspectives. Trying to be helpful in outlining the characteristics of FM/PM and differences/advantages in various implementations, like MOD7. Thought I'd used emoji's in a way to indicate some tongue and cheek, and was trying to poke light fun at your friend's hearing not yours. Anyway, yes the DX7 is capable of very nice string sounds, done many of them my self . Nice as they are, given my experience with the DX7 --'silky smooth' and Oberheim-esque is just not what comes to mind in describing the timbre space of that version of Yamaha's FM implementation, IMHO. Manny

I had a DX-7 for many years and I found the secret to making analog sounds. I had a string patch that my diehard Oberheim friends couldn"t distinguish from a string patch on my Oberheim Xpander, which was based on the Matrix 12. It does individual string instruments reasonably well because it captures the rosin/bow attack (one of the reasons Cello was a factory patch). But it wasn't good at the lush strings like the OB or SC subtractive ala Lyle Mays. I'd love to hear how you did yours if you could show the algorithm and settings or still have audio you could post. I used algorithm #2. All operators were tuned to a 1 to 1 ratio. Operator 2 had feedback turned up. So it was close to 2 sawtooth waves. Then I switched the two carriers (operators 1 and 3) to fixed frequency of zero (or 1). I had to tweak it a bit. Playing with it some more I came up with sound like the growling synth sound on Tom Sawyer. I may have used the pitch envelope for that. It was switching the carriers to fixed frequency that did it. Quick hijack of the thread into the FM weeds... it's Bessel functions, not Fourier coefficients, that creates the behavior quirks many find hard to internalize. And DX7 sine wave FM, even with the the tricks Radagast mentions, won't yield string sounds anywhere near the Oberheim timbres. Your ears will be somewhat fooled say for maybe 12-18 notes worth of range maybe an octave, octave and a half above middle C. But the low notes are nowhere close, harmonically, as you can easily hear the 'gaps' in upper harmonics that your ears can't hear are missing in the upper registers. I'm guessing if your Oberheim centric friends were fooled, they've likely spent way too much time in front of loud Marshall stacks There's adding on chorus and reverb that helps; a DX7II can get a bit better; a TX816 could get to 'reasonably close but noticeably different' if you know what to do, but in the end there's no way to really get the type of high order harmonic density of those awesome Oberheim saw waves in that original sine wave only FM implementation. So, back on topic -- MOD7 in the Kronos is an exceptionally well implemented FM/PM engine. It has a deeper implementation of what Yamaha did in the SY77/99 -- complex waveforms, phase control, patchable feedbacks, filtering etc. which allow you to overcome the harmonic density issues of sine wave only FM. You have to use the computer based editor to get down and dirty into those nuts and bolts. And then learning how multiple feedbacks and phase offesets interact with everything is a whole 'nother ball of wax, definitely quite 'timey wimey" type stuff. So, to your point, how many are aware of the capabilites and utilized it ?!? 0.1% might be extremely generous I've always fancied a dedicated "MOD7 in a box" and was hopefull with the Opsix. But nice as it is, they cut the parameter set a bit too much (no Op phase control !) So if they do ever 'blow them out' I could easily see picking up a Kronos61 just for MOD7 Manny