Free FM Synthesizer Dexed (VST Windows and Mac)

[papwalker]

it's /rant not /runt although runt may have been what you meant.
You were told the reason for the filter.

You were also told the reason why a graphical display wont work. You clearly have no idea of the DX EG system or you would likely be cursing the Yamaha designers - not Dexed.

Anyway minority or not, Dexed is not going to change so I suggest you use FM8 and stop giving gratuitous advice or trolling.

[fmr]

guys.

no, just no.

we HAVE non linear envelopes in 2018 already, they are called "logarithmic" everyone understands that. no other synth uses Dexed's sort of interface in 2018. Especially not a Commercial FM synth (because no one would buy it.) An XY grid was not possible in 1979 otherwise Yamaha would have made a graphical envelope then. Why am I harping on the FM synth envelope Controls? because FM synths are some of the most complicated synths to program as it is, so why not make it simpler? Why hold on to these knobs? First of all, it is very difficult to visually reference what shape the darn envelope is by looking at 8 knobs. Does that make a shred of sense? Come on maaaan!

FM8 can do Everything Dexed can do and more. Why didn't Native Instruments opt to use 8 rotary knobs for the envelopes? Because no one would buy that.

reminder for the "fork it yourself" purists: DX7 does not have a filter. let that sink in a bit.

I am very well versed on all the Yamaha FM synths, having owned most of the important ones already, if you missed that.

the extreme few of you who are happy with 8 knobs instead of a graphical envelope are in the extreme minority guys. why not just admit you may be wrong instead of being a stick in the mud?

/runt

If you really want an FM synth with nowadays interface and features, and superior quality, you have Arturia DX7 V. No need to insist on this. This is a free synth, and the author has been very slow incorporating things much more important than your requests.

[papwalker]

and superior quality, you have Arturia DX7 V

Well, perhaps not the Arturia plugin


I tried the Arturia, high hopes; but oh the disappointment.
Dexed takes 12 MB disc space - Arturia takes over 400 MB
Dexed loads 8 times faster
Dexed takes 18 MB process memory - Arturia takes 280 MB
Dexed is around 26 files including carts Arturia 13,868 files!!!!

LOL Not even the dexed source is that bloated. Imagine trying to use that on a live gig.
Dexed can do proper DX 7 ratios and sounds more like DX7 than Arturia ever could.
I mean I tried setting Operator / Modulator ratios .995 and 1.01, 1.02 etc and it just couldn't be done. Even the scrollwheel doesn't work.
I can do it in dexed and on my hardware. Maybe Arturia is really a preset thing but in any event there is no getting around the massive bloat.
14k files? For God's sake. I just don't understand that.

About the only thing I can think of for easing my programming would be small tooltips near the control showing the changing values while I'm tweaking them.
However the value window works good enough and Paul is flat out with serious issues like the MIDI clock and a few other issues and he's not my personal slave despite what some entitled knobs in this forum think.

[EvilDragon]

I think a lot of that space that Arturia uses is for the multiple GUI size graphics assets they have. And every little thing is an individual picture (i.e. knob states). And all the presets being individual files rather than banks of x presets...

[mcbpete]

Yeah I still don't know why they do that - Why have a slider/button/dial rendered in *every* position at *every* GUI size rather than animating and scaling it in code ?

[BlackWinny]

When something is given to me, I begin by thanking the person who does that gift, especially if he has spent months and months to make it... and even worse : when he has spent several years to make it !

Then I don't complaint if the gift isn't perfectly as I would have liked it to be. I use it or I don't use it. If I use it I can propose sometimes a suggestion, but never with a complaining tone, and never expressed as a negative critic about the work which has been done. That work has costed nights and nights of labor... to make eventually a gift! And if I don't use it I remain respectful enough to not discourage the other persons who received the same gift, and I don't even tell the person who made patiently this gift that he could have made some parts another way.

Freewares are like this : you like it or you leave it. That's all. Especially when the developer has spent several years to make it.

Whether you like it or not... a freeware is a gift ! And to complain about a gift is a poor and disrespectful attitude. A request is a cool suggestion, and it remains expressed in a cool attitude and with a kind tone as long as it needs to be explained, and if it requires a lot of work it is extremely wrong, rude and impolite to insist. A complaint begins to be an exigence. It's not at all the same thing as a simple suggestion.

Dexed is so much a gift that it is even an open source product. If there are parts that you don't like at all, you are perfectly free to do your own fork !

[fmr]

and superior quality, you have Arturia DX7 V

Well, perhaps not the Arturia plugin


I tried the Arturia, high hopes; but oh the disappointment.
Dexed takes 12 MB disc space - Arturia takes over 400 MB
Dexed loads 8 times faster
Dexed takes 18 MB process memory - Arturia takes 280 MB
Dexed is around 26 files including carts Arturia 13,868 files!!!!

LOL Not even the dexed source is that bloated. Imagine trying to use that on a live gig.
Dexed can do proper DX 7 ratios and sounds more like DX7 than Arturia ever could.
I mean I tried setting Operator / Modulator ratios .995 and 1.01, 1.02 etc and it just couldn't be done. Even the scrollwheel doesn't work.
I can do it in dexed and on my hardware. Maybe Arturia is really a preset thing but in any event there is no getting around the massive bloat.
14k files? For God's sake. I just don't understand that.

About the only thing I can think of for easing my programming would be small tooltips near the control showing the changing values while I'm tweaking them.
However the value window works good enough and Paul is flat out with serious issues like the MIDI clock and a few other issues and he's not my personal slave despite what some entitled knobs in this forum think.

You really should know better, try better and listen better before you bash. "Dexed can do proper DX 7 ratios and sounds more like DX7 than Arturia ever could."... Really? Care to show some real demonstration of your statement?

Regarding the pretense "bloating", as Mario pointed, DX7 V has lost of individual picture files for the deifferent GUI resolutions. These aren't even called for the instrument to work. And all the presets are individual files, not banks, so for every preset bank that is a single file in DeXed, you will have 32 files in DX7 V (just an example).

DX7 V takes more memory because it is a modern instrument, and does a lot more than DeXed, and with higher precision. It also takes more time to load, because it cheks authorization each time you load it for the first time (like basically any commercial product does).

Regarding the precision editing, DX7 V has a much more precise engine than the old DX7. You can even detune the wave independently of the ratio. And the ratio moves in 0.025 intervals, which, from my experience has enough precision. A change of 0.025 (which in pratice is much less because it is 0.025 of the index on the left) produces basically inaudible results (and you can still detune the waveform, which adds even more subtlety - Not to mention the modulation matrix). I may be misunderstanding you, but I think it's you who is misunderstanding DX7 V. You should read the manual and study it more, before bashing and saying these things are not possible to do.

On one hand you are claiming for the introduction of changes in DeXed that are not present in the original, but when in the presence of a modern instrument that goes way beyond the original, you fail to understand the changes

[fmr]

Yeah I still don't know why they do that - Why have a slider/button/dial rendered in *every* position at *every* GUI size rather than animating and scaling it in code ?

Maybe because that's more efficient?

And it's not likely that 330 Mb (which is the space taken by the DX7 V files here) will kill your HD, is it?

[ENV1]

I think a lot of that space that Arturia uses is for the multiple GUI size graphics assets they have.

Yep.

Its the thousands and thousands of individual image files that are mainly responsible for the bloat.

I really couldnt believe my eyes when they released the new versions and i saw this...i mean its good to have multiple sizes for all sorts of screen resolutions but the way they went about it is absolute madness.

(Because its not only the insane number of files, its also the fact that a lot of them are so small that they dont even fill an entire sector, (which is typically 4KB), i.e. a lot of diskspace that could be used for other things is being rendered unusable, which of course sucks especially with SSDs. Just compare the actual combined size of the images versus their 'Size on disk' and it will tell the whole story, for the DX-7 its 154MB actual size versus 181MB 'on disk' for more than 13,200 files, and thats only 1 plugin, so you can image what it will look like if you have the entire collection installed. Of all the options they had at their disposal they sure chose the worst possible.)

[papwalker]

@EvilDragon
You're probably right. I wasn't about to go through every one of the hundreds of folders. It was bigger than two or three of my complete DAWs combined.


Maybe they should hire Paul or Gunnar Ekornås, Björn Arlt, Ian Webster or Jo Langie et al.

Fortunately there is enough people producing tight, well written, great sounding and reliable stuff that still runs great on old XP boxes (LOL) let alone the latest monsters.
I feel they deserve my support (and money)
Cheers

[papwalker]

On one hand you are claiming for the introduction of changes in DeXed that are not present in the original, but when in the presence of a modern instrument that goes way beyond the original, you fail to understand the changes

Claiming???? Clamoring? I'm not clamoring or claiming or whatever the hell your saying, for anything. What are you on about? What original five years ago or the actual DX7? The only thing I'm asking and working on is the clock sync issue.
If I wanted a modern FM plugin I certainly wouldn't be bound to something with DX7 in the name.
Do you work for Arturia?

Anyway, I don't care. I'm not thrilled with the emperors new clothes. My prerogative.

[papwalker]

@ENV1

(Because its not only the insane number of files, its also the fact that a lot of them are so small that they dont even fill an entire sector, (which is typically 4KB), i.e. a lot of diskspace that could be used for other things is being rendered unusable, which of course sucks especially with SSDs. Just compare the actual combined size of the images versus their 'Size on disk' and it will tell the whole story, for the DX-7 its 154MB actual size versus 181MB 'on disk' for more than 13,200 files, and thats only 1 plugin, so you can image what it will look like if you have the entire collection installed. Of all the options they had at their disposal they sure chose the worst possible.)

Sound like the Mac version is somewhat larger again.

I get annoyed when you have people basically saying that Pascal and the other guys who put so much of themselves into this are 'old fashioned', 'inefficient', 'low quality' 'so last year' and what other epithets can be inferred from these trollish comments.

Like those soulless hipsters that turn up at classic car shows piping on about how the latest Tesla is sooo much better than these old clunkers.
It's not the point.

[fmr]

On one hand you are claiming for the introduction of changes in DeXed that are not present in the original, but when in the presence of a modern instrument that goes way beyond the original, you fail to understand the changes

Claiming???? Clamoring? I'm not clamoring or claiming or whatever the hell your saying, for anything. What are you on about? What original five years ago or the actual DX7? The only thing I'm asking and working on is the clock sync issue.
If I wanted a modern FM plugin I certainly wouldn't be bound to something with DX7 in the name.
Do you work for Arturia?

No, I don't work for Arturia. I just do beta testing for them (as I do for others too). OTOH you seem to have some severe understanding problems (or some prejudice against Arturia, which is something not uncommon over here). For example, WTF are you talking about with the "original five years ago"? I was talking about the original DX7 (which is certainly much older than that).

The only thing I'm asking and working on is the clock sync issue.

EDIT: Sorry, I was referring about the poster which was talking about completely rewriting the envelopes, for example. I checked, and it wasn't you. So, again sorry about that.

Anyway, I don't care. I'm not thrilled with the emperors new clothes. My prerogative.

It's certainly your prerogative, and I will not object to that.

[hermetica]

My 2 cents: I've tried DX7V again and again, and each time got to the same conclusion : it sounds like mud compared to Dexed - just plain ugly. There's something immediately harmonious, round and clean about Dexed, that makes it sound like "not an emulation" compared to all it's competitors. I don't know anything about the real DX7 but really love that cristalline, musical fullness. One thing it lacks a lot though is bass. I'm very tempted to get a Volca FM as i understand it has much more powerful basses.

[BlackWinny]

My 2 cents: I've tried DX7V again and again, and each time got to the same conclusion : it sounds like mud compared to Dexed - just plain ugly. There's something immediately harmonious, round and clean about Dexed, that makes it sound like "not an emulation" compared to all it's competitors. I don't know anything about the real DX7 but really love that cristalline, musical fullness. One thing it lacks a lot though is bass. I'm very tempted to get a Volca FM as i understand it has much more powerful basses.

Beware: is the velocity range of your DX7V set to "DX7" (meaning "100") or to "Full" (meaning "127") ? You set the correct velocity range at the bottom line of the GUI.

That said, Dexed remains my preferred DX7 emulation, but when the velocity of the DX7V is correctly set, it is really very good too, very close to the real hardware, at the point that it is sometimes very difficult to affirm if we hear the DX7V, the Dexed, or the true DX7.