Talk:Yamaha DX7

message: Surprised there's nothing about these sounds. Solid/lately bass came with most of the dx's and could be heard everywhere in pop, particularly late 80's and euro dance into the 1990's. Also the Derrick May Detroit techno sound which came to be known as a 'donk' later on in rave and hard house. Both very familiar sounds in dance music then and now.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.156.68.226 (talk) 00:13, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Lately / Solid bass and 'Donk'

message: There is a DSSI plugin called Hexter, which emulates the Yamaha DX7 and can be found here: http://dssi.sourceforge.net/hexter.html. 
It can be added to "Software emulation".  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 187.4.2.164 (talk) 22:15, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Hexter

message: Shouldn't there be something here about sytrus? Its a softsynth made by Image-line, which can load dx7 patches, although it isn't an emulation, it at least deserves a mention.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.111.37.124 (talk) 06:39, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Sytrus

message: Can anyone tell me why the search for FM7 gets redirected here?
Obviously, that's a mistake and should be corrected. They are completely different instruments.
Accepted that they are completely different instruments, but the FM7 is basically a virtual recreation of the original DX7, with added modern bells and whistles. The FM7 is able to read original DX7 patches, for example. And then there's the name! Until someone writes a great FM7 article, this isn't a bad place to redirect to. Electricdruid 11:30, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: FM7

message: A lecturer informed me the other day that the FM7 actually uses Phase Modulation and not Frequency Modulation. Can anyone verify this? It would be good to note in the article. Magic Window 15:16, May 12, 2005 (UTC)
The DX7 uses what would now be called DDS oscillators (Direct Digital Synthesis). These do indeed work by keeping track of the phase of the wave rather than its value. This is done since all waveshapes have a linear relationship between phase and time, and linear relationships make the maths much simpler. The crucial part of the DDS oscillator scheme is a binary counter called the 'phase accumulator'. It is the rate of increment of this counter that determines the frequency of the oscillator. The DX7 produces frequency modulation by using the output from another DDS oscillator to modify this phase increment. Whether this is FM or PM is a subject of some discussion over at Talk:Phase modulation. Having had a look at the maths, it seems to boil down to whether the modulation is multiplied with the increment (true FM) or added to it (PM). Since the DX7 adds it, it does use PM, not strictly FM. Electricdruid 11:27, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Small point: the adding IS multiplying, it's just done in logarithmic domain because it's faster in integer arithmetic to do the scaling that way and convert to linear arithmetic for output. The real need for phase mod is for pitch stability (especially between operators in one instrument where this is critical for long term accuracy in the sound) and also to avoid accumulating a DC offset, and to allow the feedback loop to work as intended, and to get consistent level scaling due to the mod index becoming independent of frequency if phase mod is used instead of frequency mod. Crow.81.187.19.110 (talk) 09:07, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: FM or PM?

message: What gives?  The image and the thumbnail both show as a big fat nothing!  Did somebody go and peel a copyrighted image from another source and get squealed on?
2005 dec 15th
image now seems to be someone's grandad. he looks like a nice fellow though
What's going on with the image for this page? I'm new to Wikipedia but I did my degree using this synthesiser and have a decent, self-made picture I'd like to upload. There seems to already be a picture in Wikipedia Commons though. I'd like to contribute but I don't want to go messing things up. I don't think I have the skills to fix the article with the existing picture, if that's suitable! JammyB 13:42, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Image: of white space?

message: "The tone generation algorithms used were highly programmable, but it is said that 90% of all DX7 owners simply used the 32 factory default patches, and never tried to program their own patches. " This sort of statement has been said for years but it doesn't belong here. It's just a vague guess with no hard evidence. fataltourist 22:40, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Factory patches 

message: I am deleting this section.  If any of these musicians are actually known for using the DX7 or created some classic, memorable song/hook with it, then they should be mentioned. This list is more suited towards a fan site than encyclopedia.--fataltourist 14:49, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't understand your comment at all. No one makes songs with just one synthesizer, and Yamaha DX7 is surely one of the most successful synthesizers in history, so many many musicians were using it at least for some parts of some of their songs. What are you suggesting here - to make a list of 'notable' songs where a DX7 was 'actually' used? It makes little sense to me, this list would have been far longer than a previous one. --DmitryKo 01:10, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, I'll try again. I was speaking hypothetically. If there was a particular song/hook that is noted for its DX7 use than that would be worth mentioning in the article (like The Who and the ARP 2600). That's my suggestion to someone who would be upset about me deleting that list. Basically, I don't like these interminible lists that add little content and end up making the page very long. Plus it's hard to prove/disprove that any of those artists used it, though I guess with a synth as popular as the DX7 it's safe to assume that everyone in the universe has used it.--fataltourist 21:45, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notable musicians that have used the DX7 

message: The DX7 did use FM, in particular an algorithm developed by Julius Smith from CCRMA and patented. It was the Casio CZ synths that used PM (because of the patent). Yes, perhaps it was implemented in a weird way (maybe that's it could be patented, since radio stations were already using FM) but most historians (those I've read) agree that it was FM. Zyxoas (talk to me - I'll listen) 08:35, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Um, people 

message: Need an article on the Yamaha DX5, which has been used by Relâche (musical group) and Kitaro. Badagnani (talk) 09:22, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The DX5 was a dual DX7, with split/layer capability and a longer and better keyboard. The buttons were better than the membrane switches of a DX, but not by as much as is often claimed (I have had both, I used the DX5 a lot when learning to program patches for DX, for sale in 1987 and 1988). It's not sample accurate in sync between each 16-note polyphonic half, is not capable of true stereo sound, but it is very effective if programmed for a large sound while accepting that limit. Two monophonic LFO's are arguably a lot more powerful in effect than the polyphonic LFO's that all Yamaha's later synths had. They had a strong unifying effect on all that polyphony of sound. A DX7/TX7 pairing could do nearly all a DX5 could do, but the DX5 was definitely the first class way to travel. Until I made my own synth, it was my favourite, even including the SY99. Crow81.187.19.110 (talk) 07:56, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Yamaha DX5]] 

message: Perhaps there should be a mention of the WX-7 and WX-11 which were wind synths based upon the DX-7 line. http://members.aol.com/whitfiel/wx7_impr.htmhttp://www.yamaha.com/yamahavgn/CDA/ContentDetail/ModelSeriesDetail/0,,CNTID%25253D1602%252526CTID%25253D208500%252526LGFL%25253DY,00.html 66.191.19.68 (talk) 20:41, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: While it's true that the 'wind controllers' were best used with a VL1 or similar, the move started much earlier. The 'Lyricon' hadn't entirely vanished along with most of prog rock, and Akai had made the 'EWI' and people who liked Yamaha gear better wanted something like it. They got it in 1987, the WX7, and while the thin 4-operator sounds of the much cheaper FB01 and soon after, the TX81Z (not to be confused with TX816, which no-one seeign or hearing both side by side could ever do!) were nowhere close to the quality of the 6-operator DX standard, their high mod index combined with a WX7 led to some sax-like quality of sound that made them popular. The VL1 sax was vastly better, but Yamaha had to make the DX7 mark 2, then the SY99, before wind players got anything that specialised again. Arguably the first time, because the FB01 was meant to be the cheapest way into DX sounds, it was likely good fortune that it seemed to work well with the wind instrument style of performance. Crow.81.187.19.110 (talk) 08:02, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  WX-7 and WX-11 

message: This section has gotten out of control.  This is an article on the DX7 not these artists.  This section should reflect artists that are known for their use of the DX7 or iconic DX7 sounds.  It also is essentially unreferenced (the only reference mentions that the artist owns a DX7 but doesn't indicate that the artist is known for its use).  Any thoughts on what should be kept here?--RadioFan (talk) 14:23, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that it's not really down to one or two 'notables'. The DX7, as far as I know, is still the only keyboard instrument to have outsold all pianos in any given year, and it did that for several years. It changed the entire sound of the industry, far more than the samplers did, until hard disk space became cheaper with Atari Falcon and later computers. Until then you'd need a few grand for a Fairlight, and as much as a quarter of a MILLION to get a Synklavier! The DX sounds were far more influential because they were more expressive, cheaper, and more easily had, and the data storage needs were tiny. The 'Electone' organs by Yamaha were already using the technology, and the same basic method was used to make the wavetables uses in the PPG Wave, so this is not really a story of 'notable musicians' at all. It was a revolution in the making of electronic music. EVERYTHING changed. The fact that the original DX7 patch format is still the root currency for most modern synths capable of these bright, glassy sounds shows how they have established an identity every bit as emphatic as the Minimoog, but newer forms are much better at hybrid phase mod, wavetable, virtual analog, and maybe other forms I don't yet know (like formant synthesis, for one, as used in Yamaha's FS1R). Crow.81.187.19.110 (talk) 08:18, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: What about the DX1 revisited? Thats the original synth of all time for the DX series.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.95.140.176 (talk) 23:18, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Ya that's right the DX-1 is the all time DX series and still is, the DX has never been replaced since. That makes the DX-1 still the most advanced DX synth ever made today. The fact the DX7 was more affordable it was more widely used by more famous musicians so the fact of the matter is the list of the musicians should be listed. It is researched and I consur placing the long list of famous musicians on the DX-7 and DX-1. Yet for the record though I would watchout for Wolftengu and 2over0 because they have a habit of abusing the article of inverting edits for a living no matter what you contibute in good faith; some us don't get paid to edit all day long on the articles like these examples here. So if you are solely on here to benefit the article, your contributes are welcome. God only knows why they spend so much time on their computers daily reverting edits on Wikipedia, I guess thats why our unemployment is so high. I would question everytime they revert or undo an edit, question them each time. Some of us make the effort to tell the facts of the article where some just want to play games and revert the edits no matter what. The DX-7 and DX-1 needs more discription and if you can benefit and add more details please do.--Globalstatus (talk) 21:18, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: You have absolutely no right of calling anybody else here a "no life". - - Master Bigode (Talk) (Contribs) 00:06, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notable musicians that have used the DX7 revisited 

message: I wanted to mentioned that the big brother of DX7 is the Yamaha DX1. Since the DX1 is the mother of all DX series, there should be a small history on it here too.--82.212.85.183 (talk) 19:04, 28 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I saw one once. It scared me slightly. :) It was a Big Beast, I remember it had a deck like an aircraft carrier, al black and red lights all over it, digits mostly. The main impression was how HOT it was. It sat in the front of a music shop like some fast car someone had just parked there with the heat still coming out of its engine. If I could have afforded it I'd have balked, the TX816 was a far better deal (and can make a 128-note wall of sound that is hard to beat even now, whatever is used to try). The DX1's 2*16 note polyphony couldn't do any more than the DX5 anyway, and that, through heavy, was relatively efficient. I'm fairly sure the DX5 came first too, before the DX1. Crow81.187.19.110 (talk) 08:30, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  There should be a little something on DX1 also 

message: ...about the definition of what yamaha decided to refer to as 'FM'; link to the patents, the stanford/chowning one especially, & quote from them. that should be enough for the maths students here.
http://https..www.google.com/patents/US4018121
(has anybody actually read all of it? several typos, first one during his explanation of traditional analogue synthesisers, & no sign of the word 'phase'; this latter suggests that either chowning didn't understand his technique to be phase modulation- a terminological point for the semantics folks to squabble over- or he didn't know what he was doing.)
as for the rest of us- either a musician coming from a background of sound-design on analogue synths, or someone who's arrived later & has worked mostly with sampling & romplers- the section needs clearing up in the sense of what the waveforms are actually doing to each other. let's try to steer it away from trigonometric functions & fourier analysis if we can; I have a sine wave here, & an operator which is going to modulate it. in what way is this like or unlike the LFO>pitch-mod on my moog here? ignoring the frequencies for the moment.. there's a lovely little animation over on the phase modulation page, for example.
how about then building on that to explain the number of carriers, operators & algorithms the designers arrived at?
this is an article about a very specific instrument, not about FM synthesis generally- that has its own page.
what's important here, then, is to recognise that in 1983, there was *nothing* remotely like this available at the price-point, & capable of synthetic but passable emulations of real instruments, both acoustic & electric.
building on that, what was the reaction of the professional & amateur musicians who encountered the instrument?
then there's the third-party stuff- after-market mods, the jellinghaus programmer, the boom in professional synth programmers who could actually edit & even build DX7 patches without them all coming out sounding like doorbells or gongs.
culturally- there's an argument (& even a facebook page of semi-humorous hate-posts) that the DX7 was in some way damaging to the art of musical synthesis, that it ushered in an era of finding the nearest preset & using that instead of creating a sound from scratch, simply because programming the DX7 from scratch was too time-consuming to do in a studio.
I think we want to get stuff like this into the article, if it's going to be a useful historical record of what the instrument's about, instead of (or at least, as well as) these mahoosive lists of the cloth-eared idiots who actually used the things. 
a list of the derivatives, the related products, is redundant without explaining the musical & cultural effect the original turd-coloured beast had.
duncanrmi (talk) 16:17, 2 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  pointless debate... 

message: The current article states this is a Linux plugin. Whilst true, it is also a Windows VST and Apple AU/VST. The user-base for these two formats is considerably larger than Linux I wonder at the notion of it being described as Linux Disposable Soft Synth Interface with an odd passing reference to multi-platform.
The sentence is not grammatically correct and looks like a cut and paste gone wrong!!
Multi platform should be enough.  
--Papwalker (talk) 19:26, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dexed Plugin 

message: Currently, the Successors section lists that the Yamaha 2612 (OPN Type 2) is the "little brother" of the DX7. This is verifiably wrong, since the YM2612 is actually a cut down YM2608 (OPN Type A). The only "true" relative to the DX7 is the DX1, of which have very few units produced. The person in the source cited, seems to (for lack of a better phrase) not know what they're talking about.
The article claims the YM2612 came out in 1983 alongside it's supposed "older brother" Yamaha DX7. In actuality, the earliest known YM2612's appeared in 1987-1988. And before that, the other chip he cites (the YM2151) was 1985. With the YM2151 being used in many DX-series keyboards, that would make itself a closer relative to the DX7, moreso than the YM2612. The OPN-series chips also lack various things the YM2151 lacks, such as a noise generator (for the 4th operator). Additionally, if Yamaha truly wanted to make a cut down DX7 chip, they would likely follow what they did with the YM2413 (OPLL), where they simply cut down many registers to save on-chip space, often resulting in usage of preset patches. To reinstate, the author's claim that the YM2612 OPN2 is a close relative to the DX7 is verifiably false, and thus the inaccurate information should be removed.
2600:8805:B487:6000:B923:DC96:3891:C763 (talk) 20:28, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I could never follow all the main IC codes in Yamaha gear, so there's a lot that I don't know, but I can add what I do know: The TX7 service manual states that YM21280OPS and YM21290EGS exist as the main IC's, for operators and envelope generators. My DX7 service manual PDF is broken, but if it were not I'm certain that the same IC's would be listed in there too. I'm adding this detail, not to contradict what I'm replying to, but to add to it. There is only one statement in the post I'm replying to that I think may be wrong, and that's the bit about 'The only "true" relative to the DX7 is the DX1', because I think the DX5 may have been made slightly earlier than the DX1, and has the same OPS and EGS hardware in it. I have no DX5 service manual, so I can't be sure that minor IC variations did not exist with new part codes, but the DX5 is very definitely a direct relative of the DX7, TX7, and DX1, as is the TX816 with its TF1 modules. I think it's likely that every instrument listed in the previous sentence used exactly the same OPS and EGS IC's. Various 4-operator IC's co-existed, most of them appearing in the following three years or so, and I think there were more varieties of them. A new 6-operator IC did not appear till the DX7 Mark II, by which time the 4-operator synth market was all but saturated (DX9, DX21, CX5 computer, TX81Z, FB01, soundcards various...), which may be why Yamaha returned to making 6-operator instruments again.
81.187.19.110 (talk) 00:15, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  YM2612 (OPN2) Is not the "little brother" of the DX7