The Fight for FM

[aMUSEd]

We know - it's been discussed many times.

Sadly so expensive these days I'd love one.

[tony tony chopper]

, if you have any insights on how to become a better FM programmer, I'd be very appreciative

No, programming FM presets is much harder than programming the synth itself.

If someone can play with more than 3-op algo's & still know what he's doing, it's probably a lot of practice.

[MaliceX]

OK I'm not even a plebe here but six pages of FM discussion, hardware and software and not even a mention of Yamaha's final FM foray?

Let me introduce you to my leetle friend, the almighty FS1r.

Eight operators, plus formants, full DX compatibility, etc., etc.

Lookee, lookee: http://www.vintagesynth.com/yamaha/fs1r.shtml

Speaking of 8-operator...if only someone could make a VST out of htsfms (FM MIDI player) latest version's data set file (it's just a huge text file with FM params for everything, GM-compatible AND percussion; referring to std.dat when opened in notepad), it would be a dream!

http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA024632/

(note: v096 has no GUI but 8-op sounds. v070 has GUI but 6-op sounds IIRC. I believe it's already been attempted to map the FM algo in this thing to hardware)

Let me know if anyone wants sound examples to believe. I still have yet to hear pure FM sounding like this in the VST world.

[tony tony chopper]

For those who remember this game, one of the best purely FM music ever:


(can't find a vid with the best music of the game, though)

[lococarlos]

For those who remember this game, one of the best purely FM music ever:


(can't find a vid with the best music of the game, though)

I loved that game!!! I'd almost forgotten about it... and yeah, wow, great music

[KeithAdv]

OK I'm not even a plebe here but six pages of FM discussion, hardware and software and not even a mention of Yamaha's final FM foray?

Let me introduce you to my leetle friend, the almighty FS1r.

Eight operators, plus formants, full DX compatibility, etc., etc.

Lookee, lookee: http://www.vintagesynth.com/yamaha/fs1r.shtml

I almost did, but decided it would be like rubbing salt in the wound! What Yamaha did with this unit was an absolute crime (designing a brilliant unit, not producing any useful documentation, discontinuing almost immediately). I got mine on discount after they discontinued them. I do a lot in the box these days, but I still can't imagine selling off that one. Yamaha marketing people are idiots.

[foosnark]

For those who remember this game, one of the best purely FM music ever:


(can't find a vid with the best music of the game, though)

In the arcades, Marble Madness had awesome FM music. Actually just about everything from Atari for the next couple years used Yamaha YM2151's and sounded great, but MM was the best of them I think.

[Vectorman]

After a little more time demoing them, I'm impressed as heck with both FM8 and Toxic Biohazard. They're like two somewhat different shades of the same color. FM8 is better for the really complex stuff with overlapping rhythmic envelopes but Toxic sounds great to me in its own right. The character of several Toxic presets almost puts me in mind of a cross between an FM synth and an '80s digital wave synth like a PPG or ESQ-1.

It's a fairly obvious thing, but there are some hidden gems of nice, playable patches in some of the FM8 arp patches when you turn the arp off. I turned off the arp on the FM8 "Stabby" patch, ditched the effects, and messed a bit with operator frequencies and the filter contours, and ended up with a pretty good Minimoog-style octave bass patch. Just from stepping through FM8's bass-categorized presets, I wouldn't have figured it could do a decent job of that kind of bass sound at all, simply because there isn't much in the way of factory "bass" patches that go that way. But when you dig in and start tweaking, there it is. Now I just have to remember how I got it after I buy the thing, since I couldn't save it in the demo, LOL.

[foosnark]

It took me a while to figure that out about FM8's arp presets as well. I'm rarely fond of arps that I haven't programmed myself.

[DrWashington]

>>I find this with all virtual synths though

Really? Have you tried Sylenth1? It's not an FM synth, but GAWD, does it ever sound pure. And, this coming from a Virus owner (it's dead now, though...)

To my ears, VOPM sounds INCREDIBLY good. If only it had portamento and MIDI learn among other things, I'd be in heaven. I LOVE the FM sound. I suppose it's because I grew up playing the Sega Genesis 23/24 hours a day... but, still, to my ears, there is no other synthesis method that can as easily create waveforms with as much bite and character as FM, without any filtering or other manipulation. Seriously, somebody oughtta hunt down "Sam" and pay him lots of money to 'complete' VOPM. Or, at least, buy the guts of it off of him and transform it into an FM8-trouncing monster.

I have NI Komplete 5, and, to be perfectly candid, outside of Kontakt 3, I'm really not very impressed. They ruined Battery for me by allowing no way to preview samples you are about to load into a cell via rt. click, and everything else just has that classic softsynth problem: nasty, digital weediness in the high end.

Zebra 2 and Sylenth1 sound fantastic, though. I use both a lot, but they can't do everything. My kingdom for a truly professional-grade FM synth with full automation capabilities, no cheesy FX, and absolutely aliasing free osc's. VOPM just sounds magical, but it's really not very playable in the sense that a Virus is.

Somebody needs to change that.

[DrWashington]

After a little more time demoing them, I'm impressed as heck with both FM8 and Toxic Biohazard. They're like two somewhat different shades of the same color. FM8 is better for the really complex stuff with overlapping rhythmic envelopes but Toxic sounds great to me in its own right. The character of several Toxic presets almost puts me in mind of a cross between an FM synth and an '80s digital wave synth like a PPG or ESQ-1.

It's a fairly obvious thing, but there are some hidden gems of nice, playable patches in some of the FM8 arp patches when you turn the arp off. I turned off the arp on the FM8 "Stabby" patch, ditched the effects, and messed a bit with operator frequencies and the filter contours, and ended up with a pretty good Minimoog-style octave bass patch. Just from stepping through FM8's bass-categorized presets, I wouldn't have figured it could do a decent job of that kind of bass sound at all, simply because there isn't much in the way of factory "bass" patches that go that way. But when you dig in and start tweaking, there it is. Now I just have to remember how I got it after I buy the thing, since I couldn't save it in the demo, LOL.

Really? I wasn't too impressed with either. They both sound like VSTi's... in other words, there's just something not quite right in the high end, like it becomes digital fluff, full of aliasing and other annoying crap. I mean, I used to use FM7 quite a bit, and I think it can sound great, but the filter is crap, and if you drive the operators into distortion, there's just a mess of aliasing that I don't really hear if I do the same thing on VOPM. I mean, it SHOULD be a mess, but a pretty sounding one... if that makes any sense.

[Muzik 4 Machines]

for a cheap 4 op FM, get a TX81z, like 50$

[DavidRadi2]

Toxic Biohazard

[DrWashington]

if you ask the software synth to do 'much tighter bass', it will.

So you could argue that maybe the DX7 was easier to get good sounds with, but I seriously doubt it would be even half as easy to make a preset with a DX7 than with today's software synths.

Look, we had these discussions time after time here. The point is, there's not a single sound coming out of any plugin FM synth that has the qualities of most sounds coming out of the hardware. It's obvious when playing, and it's obvious listening to recorded stuff. It gets very obvious when mixing. It's very much like the quality difference between a plugin compressor or EQ and good outboard. The mind boggling thing with FM is that it SHOULDn't be different. But it is.

OK, then, would you care to explain VOPM? I think it sounds gorgeous. I'm using Mackie HR824s, Sennheiser HD650s, and/or Sony MDR-7509s, through an RME multiface. FM8 and Toxic don't even come close... what IS it about this little free synth that sounds so TOUGH? It sounds like hardware to my ears. Of course, you have to send it through some FX to get anything truly useful, but still... anyone else care to comment? Why VOPM and not the big guys?

[DrWashington]

What's VOPM?

download


manual (kind of)

Cheers!

Now this one is fun! It's not the greatest synth in the world, but it sounds as I remember the old OPM chips. In fact better, the old sound cards had worse converters than what I got now. Finally a plugin with really quick envelopes and a well-balanced sound without the usual veil over it. Now if those guys would make a DX7 emulation...

Yep, yep...

Thou mayest consider thineownself a convert, now... welcome to the First Church of "Sam".... how did he do this? How can we find him?

Does he realize he has started what could have become a classic? Like, I consider Sylenth1 to be an instant classic for what it does... a complete, MIDI'd out VOPM would be mindblowing. An 8-op version? Heaven.