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Comment by cubano | Hacker News Reader

I played with several keyboardists back during my cover band days in the 80's, and they all extolled the virtues of the venerable DX7...it was pretty much the only keyboard allowed onstage that added a decent layer to our hair metal shenanigans and allowed us to play Whitesnake at the bars.

Well, maybe that isn't something to highlight too much :)

Saftware-only VSTi's like sylenth and Massive are popular modern day equivalents to the DX7 that take sound design to new levels, so thanks to all the pioneers that allow us today to explore such wonderfully deep musical frontiers in electronica.

[edits for being a dufus]

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> VSTi's like sylenth and Massive are direct descendants of the DX7 and take FM modulation to incredible levels

Not to be that guy, but neither of those are FM synthesizers. Sylenth is a basic subtractive synthesizer, and Massive is a wavetable synthesizer.

If you want a modern FM VST, you want to look towards the likes of Native Instruments' FM8 or Ableton's Operator.

Thank you for being that guy.

My misinformation on the subject was in great need of your help, and I sincerely thank you for the facts.

No wonder I had to keep ignoring the nagging feeling that I should double-check my info about those synths.

The confusion is somewhat reasonable given that many synthesizers (including straightforwardly subtractive ones) have an FM knob somewhere. It can produce some really great metallic and/or bell-like sounds.

A synthesizer in which FM is the main way of making sounds, though, is extremely difficult to work with, since you're basically just modulating sine waves with one another. Even some very famous electronic musicians will admit to not quite understanding how to work with them in a predictable manner. The DX7, certainly, left plenty of musicians totally flummoxed.

Not to be that guy, but Massive does FM via the modulation oscillator, though it's only 2 operator FM. Also to continue being that guy, it doesn't actually do FM at all, but Phase Modulation, which is what the DX7 (and later emulations like FM8) also use.

The portable app Caustic has a great FM Synth in it. There's a free version for Windows and OS X.

Wow...very cool...thanks for the info!

I can't believe I didn't know about this suite...

There's also a version for iOS, Android and Blackberry if you're interested. The author has some really nice tutorials on youtube explaining how to use each machine (synth).

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