# Yamaha DX7

The Yamaha DX7 is a synthesizer manufactured by Yamaha Corporation from 1983 to 1989. It was the first successful digital synthesizer and is one of the best-selling synthesizers in history, selling more than 200,000 units.
In the early 1980s, the synthesizer market was dominated by analog synthesizers. FM synthesis, a means of generating sounds via frequency modulation, was developed by John Chowning at Stanford University, California. FM synthesis created brighter, glassier sounds, and could better imitate acoustic sounds such as brass and bells. Yamaha licensed the technology to create the DX7, combining it with very-large-scale integration chips to lower manufacturing costs.
With its complex menus and lack of conventional controls, few learned to program the DX7 in depth. However, its preset sounds became staples of 1980s pop music; in 1986, it was used in 40% of the number-one singles on the US Billboard Hot 100. Its electric piano sound was particularly widely used, especially in power ballads. The English producer Brian Eno was proficient at programming his own sounds, and it was instrumental to his work in ambient music. Chips based on the DX7 sound chip, such as the YM2612, were used in technologies such as the Sega Genesis game console.
The DX7 was succeeded by FM synthesizers including the DX1, DX21, DX27 and DX100. In later years, the DX7 sounds came to be seen as dated or clichéd and its use declined.

## Quotes about the Yamaha DX7

* Pretty much every self respecting producer, studio and composer had one.
** Oli Freke of Mixmag (April 26, 2021)
* After over a decade of nothing but analogue, musicians were looking for that Next Big Thing, and a mega-corporation just happened to have been working on exactly that. It was dubbed the DX7 and it shook the entire music world upon its release in 1983. Offering a then-staggering 16 voices of polyphony, a full-sized, velocity and aftertouch capable keyboard, the DX7 was different on the outside as well as under the hood.
** Scot Solida of MusicRadar (May 26, 2022)
* The DX7 excelled at convincing electric piano tones, xylophones, marimbas, organs, brass and many other sounds previously hard to do with analogue. Being brighter and richer in the upper harmonics it immediately became a staple in pop music production providing the 80s with it's first really glossy and shiny synth tones.
** Oli Freke of Mixmag (April 26, 2021)
* The DX7 was the first mass-produced instrument to make use of FM synthesis, a technique devised by John Chowning at Stanford and licensed by Yamaha.
** Scot Solida of MusicRadar (May 26, 2022)
* Analogue was king... Until the first commercially successful digital synthesizer appeared on the scene – the Yamaha DX7. It used a technology called Frequency Modulation (FM) and it [initially] appeared to solve all of the problems of analogue synthesizers: it stayed in tune where analogue was notoriously unreliable; it had eight notes of affordable polyphony where most analogues were still monophonic; it was 8 note polyphonic whereas truly polyphonic synths were much more expensive and even more unreliable; it had 32 recallable presets where analogue synths rarely had that capability. But most of all, it had a whole new range of sounds that were [nearly] impossible to make using analogue technology.
** Oli Freke of Mixmag (April 26, 2021)
* The release of the Yamaha DX7 in 1983 would prove a watershed moment for music production, as the affordable, versatile device launched an electronic revolution that we are still very much living today. [...] Its “Tubular Bells” preset was essentially the weapon of choice for scores of new age musicians, used most notably on Enya's debut album. And Brian Eno used the synth all over his '80s work, even playing it on U2's “Where the Streets Have No Name.”
** Jay Laughton of Reverb.com (March 02, 2016)