Hacker News Reader

Comment by ed-209 | Hacker News Reader

As a former owner and synth head, I feel the DX7 was good for poorly simulating a broad range of superior instruments. Also it wasn't merely difficult to program - it made sound design a necessarily separate activity from playing due to the notorious programming UX. Revolutionary and a nifty museum piece.

Relating to it's influence on 80s music, this oft repeated claim is laughable. Tom Oberheim and the late Dave Smith had demonstrably greater influence with the OB-X* and Prophet lines reigning supreme and offering lasting sonic contributions.

View on HN

>poorly simulating a broad range of superior instruments

Nothing touches FM's velocity responsiveness until physical modeling, it sounds lame when you get used to it, but the same thing is true to the romplers that replaced it.

>Relating to it's influence on 80s music

80s is quite broad, claims like this basically just showed which artists the writer prefer. Personally, it's PPG and Moog.

> Nothing touches FM's velocity responsiveness

??? You can make any synthesis velocity responsive. Oberheim had it, there were Rolands in the DCO era. Vangelis mastered it on the CS80.

The DX7 simply made velocity sensitive keys widely available, and critically Yamaha baked velocity sensitivity into every patch.

Not forgetting aftertouch.

The FM trick is that the available parameters that can be modulated through velocity result in a wider range of tonal variation, where traditional subtractive synthesis is usually simpler, and velocity changes affect parameters that don't result in wide changes to the tone, such as volume or filter envelopes.

With FM, modifying an operator envelope can result in a completely different sound. A well-crafted patch that takes advantage of this, played by a good keyboardist, will feel alive, in a way traditional synths of that time couldn't achieve.

I get it, you’re an FM fan, and I think that’s admirable.

To the analog fans it’s VCOs that feel alive, whereas the DX7 is cold and sterile. It’s all a matter of what timbres you enjoy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com