I was going to save this as a fm8 patch with a few tweaks but it seems patch saving is broken in FM8 now - can anyone confirm this? If I change say the amplitude envelope and then save the preset it is returning the envelope to the default position. Same with other params.

This video reminds me of the free sample lib I made for SampleTank Free awhile ago.

http://soundcloud.com/izonin/80s-bliss-demo-song

Sorry folks, but FM8 just cannot do that sound. Not even close really. It can't do the Jazz Guitar sound either. FM8 just doesn't have that bite.

There's a great alternative for folks who don't own a DX or TX synth. Try downloading DXulator and use it to create a sfz (soundfont) file for each patch you want. Then you can play these with any sfz synth, including the free one from Cakewalk. it works, and it sounds much, much more authentic than FM7 or FM8. The only issue is that DXulator doesn't always work right - I find it either produces a perfect sound, or one that's completely screwed up.

http://home.vodafonevast.nl/dxulator/

I hope one day some amazing developer with knowledge about these esoteric circuit emulation techniques would make a perfect copy of the dx7 / tx81z / etc FM synthesizers. You know, emulating the d/a converters, antialiasing filters on the outputs and all that stuff. Otherwise we're doomed with these so called emulations that don't have the bite and the balls of the real deal.
Last edited by penguinfromdeep on Fri Aug 17, 2012 2:41 am; edited 1 time in total

I spent years trying to get "that sound" - not the piano per se, but the jazz guitar and a few others that Jan Hammer used particularly. The NI FMs are great software, I adore my FM8, but they sound very, very different. Eventually, I found the DXulator. It can do a perfect Jazz Guitar. Eventually though I broke down and picked up a Yamaha TX-802 from ebay. 6 DX7s in one rack-mount. I've been selling all my hardware, with the exception of that and the Arturia Spark, which I am having a love affair with atm...

could you explain that a bit; all i can find out about the Tx-802 is that it's 8 part multitimbral with 16 voices. Hardly 6 DX7's, but if what you say is true, there's several on ebay going cheap right now, might pick one up myself.

I still have a Tx-802. Its has 8 parts, but the overall polyphony is 16 iirc, so if you use the 8 parts, it gives 2 voices polyphony per part.

The real fun thing with the Tx802 is that it has also 8 audio outputs, (one for each part ) in addition of the stereo outputs, and a kind of revolutionnary ( for that era ) round robin function ( more a circular one tbh) for the parts/separate outpouts.

This is really fun if you assign some FM percs to each part/output for example, pan them accurately, and process each of them in a different way on the mixdesk. You can get some really groovy parts.

LtZ

Worked perfectly here. I've converted the patches to .ksd format so they should work in FM8 for you:

https://sites.google.com/site/teksonik/screenshots/SIMS98-Co nverted.zip?attredirects=0&d=1

Don't listen to the hardware freaks. You can do a perfectly acceptable emulation of the Fulltines patch with FM8 and a little imagination.

I used to own a DX7 and TX7....key words there being "used" to own. They were something special back in their day but have grown rather weary over the years most likely from over use......

TX802:

"Despite its name, the TX802 FM Tone Generator is basically a rack-module version of the DX7mkII with full 8-part multi-timbral operation for sequencing and/or key mapping. It has 16-voices of polyphony and six digital FM Operators, the same as in the DX7mkII.
As if the large keyboard DX versions weren't difficult enough to program, the TX802's limited interface makes editing and programming your own sounds next to impossible without the help of external hardware or software editors"
http://www.vintagesynth.com/yamaha/tx802.php

TX816:

"The TX816 is a monster of DX and FM digital synthesis. It is a unique system in that it is a rack unit that could take up to eight TF1 modules. A TF1 module is basically a DX7 condensed down to a single circuit board with almost no front panel controls. Definitely designed for use with external hardware and software controllers the TX816 allows you to easily carry around up to eight DX7s!"
http://www.vintagesynth.com/yamaha/tx816.php

I was looking for the latest version of Hexter and it looks like it is still at 1.3 and will never be updated again because of some stupid GPL incompatibility:
http://www.filecrop.com/Hexter.html

I tried installing the DXulator here in my Win 7 64 Bit System and get an error message that "Component 'mci32.ocx' or one of its dependencies not correctly registered: a file is missing or invalid".
I also tried to download the Visual Basic 6 Runtime and installed it, but it didn't help.
Run as Administrator didn't help.
Compatibility Mode didn't help either.

The file is there once in System32 and once in the Syswow64 folder.

Any Idea what to look for? What are you guys running this on?
I'm a bit out of the loop with Visual Basic, although I learned to program with one of the first versions ...

Cheers,

Tom

If you have Reaktor, try SY66; it has a good fm ep patch.

@Tom:
Win7 x64 here too, but it installed/runs fine here

I tried to import the original ROM bank, including the E.Piano 1 patch
into FM8 a few times, but that patch was always missing....
Might be due to that . in the name, i hex-edited the sysex and then it was
inside the imported patches. If anyone likes i'll put the fm8 patch on my webspace.
BUT, dont expect it to sound sound in FM8 like in the video... i was pretty dissapointed, sounds pretty dull compared to the original.

Was the original in the video recorded dry? No reverb? No processing at all? You might have to tweak/layer FM8 to get the exact sound but in a mix I don't think it will be that important.........

Or you could just program a patch in FM8 from scratch that sounds better than any DX preset......

Thanks DirkJ. I tried a lot of stuff, checked with Dependency Walker and searched the web but to no avail, the fixes I found didn't fix it.
Not sure what the problem is but will try it on my old backup machine with XP later.

Cheers and thanks,

Tom