Free FM Synthesizer Dexed (VST Windows and Mac)

[arkmabat]

It's common knowledge in perception psychology that black text on white is much easier to read than white on a black background.

Perhaps negative text could be made an option. As for myself, I hate negative text on a screen or on a printed page.

/Joachim

It has nothing to do with the psychological perception here. We are talking about eye impairments !

Perhaps that you hate... but it would be nice to think that for other persons it's not a question to like or to hate... but to be able to use!

To never think of the impairments of the other persons, and simply say "I hate"... is pure egoism, a personal point without any thought to the simple useability for others who have even not to say "I like" or "I hate" but simply say "I would like to have your excellent eyes to use it like you"!

The majority of the developers as well as the majority of users piss on the impaired persons who can't even use their products.

If the very wide majority have excellent eyesight and can say "I love" or "I hate" among 100% of the products... there are other musicians who can use at the great maximum 10 or 15% of these products when it's not yet less!

White on black looks better and potentially saves power

[BlackWinny]

Label it a dx7 collection.

Yes. Because it is focused exclusively on a sysex collection for the 6 operators family based starting from the DX7 and its posterior declinations.

Probably that later I'll do a similar collection for the 4 operators family based on the DX9 and its posterior declinations. I really want to see the 6-op and the 4-op families remain each one totally independent from the other. They have never been made to be used in a same synth.

Hence, this collection is focused on 6-OP sysex, based on the DX7, to provide the best quality with the less flaws possible. And I'll create later a DX9 collection.

[FrettedSynth]

Thank you for this wonderful synth, very generous of you to share.

[BlackWinny]

Thank you for this wonderful synth, very generous of you to share.

Fretted Synth... the author of all my preferred tube amps and effects for my guitar?

[FrettedSynth]

Thank you for this wonderful synth, very generous of you to share.

Fretted Synth... the author of all my preferred tube amps and effects for my guitar?

FreeAmp was a very fun time of my life, hope someday I can put that much time and effort into making more guitar plugins?

[sfd]

It would be nice if the browser in te CART menu of Dexed had a better contrast and a bit larger text. It's difficult for a person like me who is visually handicaped to see anyting in there.

A white - or bright - text that is a bit larger on a black background would not only make it easier for me. But for everyone . Even for those who see perfectly well.

[TheNickC]

Almost all the webdesigners have understood that the white (or very, very pale) letters on black (or very, very dark) background is physiologically the best for the sight on digital screens. And it is even now in the recommendations from many teachers and many professional books about the use of modern screens, whatever they are.

We must point out that we don't talk about the paper, but actually of the use of screen applications. The best readability is very pale letters on very dark backgrounds.

Look at all the browsers of Native Instruments, all the browsers of U-He, the browser of Alchemy, the browser of Bitwig, and so many others... They have understood the problem. And few years ago they have totally changed their position to match the real adequation of digital screen browser colors for the eye.

This philosophy has been around forever too, I remember maddox wrote an article about why he uses black background and white text and you know that was years and years and years ago because I'm talking about a maddox article

It's true, dark backgrounds cause less eye strain for EVERYONE. It's just a good design principle, unless you're creating a product to be sold on it's aesthetics. Like some people call the FL background ugly but it's comfortable to look at for hours and hours at a time, the "modern appleized" trend is pretty much a scourge to usability

[BlackWinny]

Almost all the webdesigners have understood that the white (or very, very pale) letters on black (or very, very dark) background is physiologically the best for the sight on digital screens. And it is even now in the recommendations from many teachers and many professional books about the use of modern screens, whatever they are.

We must point out that we don't talk about the paper, but actually of the use of screen applications. The best readability is very pale letters on very dark backgrounds.

Look at all the browsers of Native Instruments, all the browsers of U-He, the browser of Alchemy, the browser of Bitwig, and so many others... They have understood the problem. And few years ago they have totally changed their position to match the real adequation of digital screen browser colors for the eye.

This philosophy has been around forever too, I remember maddox wrote an article about why he uses black background and white text and you know that was years and years and years ago because I'm talking about a maddox article

It's true, dark backgrounds cause less eye strain for EVERYONE. It's just a good design principle, unless you're creating a product to be sold on it's aesthetics. Like some people call the FL background ugly but it's comfortable to look at for hours and hours at a time, the "modern appleized" trend is pretty much a scourge to usability

Precisely. And it is also one of the things which have made me love Mulab immediately when I tried it, even not talking about its engine. The total comfort for the eyes by a dark background and the very great readability by a very well chosen font, all that letting the ability to work on it for hours without any fatigue for the eyes and for the brain and the mind.

For me the choice of an excellent GUI has now become a criteria of first importance to make me keep or leave a product, as well as the sound abilities of the product. Because if 80% of the persons have no odd issue with their eyes so of course don't care of it, it is crippling and prohibitive for me and for all the persons having an eyesight too poor to use it. It's not even a question of comfort... it is straight out a question of ability to use it or not.

[sfd]

I believe that white backgrounds and black or dark blue text gives a sense of reliability.

Have a look of the colors of any bank's website. I have not yet seen any ban website that has a black background and red letters.

Small text also, by some reason, gives an impression of being more "serous" then large text.

I guess one way of giving an impression of quality to a VST is ( not only to make it expensive - since we are expected to think that a high price is equal to high quality) to make a GUI that looks "reliable" - like a bank's website.

I often have this feeling that many GUI makers considers and views GUIs as images rather then as working tools.

If such people where the designers of the displays in an aircraft. I would truly be afraid of flying.

When a developer makes a really cool looking GUI that is everything but user friendly. I wonder if they do it for the art gallery or for music workers - to speak Kraftwerkish.

[asb2m10]

I'm trying to make a huge collection of sysex for Dexed... but I must tell you that sometimes I'm very close to abandon, only because of the problems I have related, despite the huge quality of the engine of the synth.

Please don't abandon the sysex compilation, it is a great help to the community and of the dexed lovers

Don't worry, Bernd, I shall not abandon. I'm too much passionate... and it is certainly very very useful for many Dexed and DX lovers. It's a real pain for my eyes, but I shall not abandon.

Please don't abandon this sysex compilation. And don't worry either, I'll add a contrast variable in the new UI (i.e. 0.8 ) and configurable from the settings file. Everybody is happy.

[arkmabat]

DOS was white text on black.

[subterfuge]

Soo... Dexed will get OPL3 / sum of log sine lookup mode in the next version. All of this switchable between the new and the older engine.

Thanks for the 0.7a update. Seems to play fine on my x64 win 8.1 setup. I tried to decipher the sound differences between the different engine resolutions offered in this version. To me Modern and Mark I sound the same but OPL Series has more snap/spike in the attack. Depends on sounds used how apparent this is, with slower envelopes I couldn't make much of a difference there either.

Have to thank also BlackWinny for his huge compilation work. Getting rid of unnecessary repetition and having actually just the fully working sets is a great bonus for this synth. I did some collection cleanup some time ago for my personal use, but mainly with the factory patches. We seem to have divided the DX7 FDII patches a bit differently, maybe I'll post a question considering it straight to you at some point if it's ok?

Since we don't yet have the new GUI, I won't comment about the readability of the Cart list more than say it's not a big problem here. I do have another question about the main Cart list though. As I see it, the User part is good and the Dexed 01 (factory) bank belongs there as it would with any synth where users can easily bring back the original sounds at any time. However, rest of the main tree with all the SynprezFM banks is just a distraction for me. There might be many useful sounds in there, but with no easy way to identify them from the bank names, I don't even want to go thru them...I'd rather go sideways into my cart where I can have everything categorized and named like I want them. Now would it be a sacrilege to suggest having all these SynprezFM banks in a sub-directory of their own rather than always showing in the main tree?

[overhishead]

Why does dexed take ages to load in vsthost?

[asb2m10]

Thanks for the 0.7a update. Seems to play fine on my x64 win 8.1 setup. I tried to decipher the sound differences between the different engine resolutions offered in this version. To me Modern and Mark I sound the same but OPL Series has more snap/spike in the attack. Depends on sounds used how apparent this is, with slower envelopes I couldn't make much of a difference there either.

Thanks for the feedback. The difference between Modern and Mark I is bit depth. It doesn't change the sound that much; it even add an artificial DSP artifact that wasn't there in the original synth. But, it does implement Algo 4 and Algo 6 more accurately, so you could see the difference with those algo.

OPL Series envelopes will needs tuning. But the digital artifacts that I hear are commonly present in the DX7 and DX100. The next step is to move those (OPL 8-bit) to the supposed DX7 resolution: 10-bit. Or 12-bit. And this will be the real 'Mark I' implementation.

Since we don't yet have the new GUI, I won't comment about the readability of the Cart list more than say it's not a big problem here. I do have another question about the main Cart list though. As I see it, the User part is good and the Dexed 01 (factory) bank belongs there as it would with any synth where users can easily bring back the original sounds at any time. However, rest of the main tree with all the SynprezFM banks is just a distraction for me. There might be many useful sounds in there, but with no easy way to identify them from the bank names, I don't even want to go thru them...I'd rather go sideways into my cart where I can have everything categorized and named like I want them. Now would it be a sacrilege to suggest having all these SynprezFM banks in a sub-directory of their own rather than always showing in the main tree?

Yes, the next version will have the [CART] button in the bottom; so the "Synprez" collection will take too much place. I will add a specific Synprez 'submenu' for this.

[syntheticillusion]

asb2m10 can you have a button to add carts from imported syx files, and a save to syx file option,
everytime i use any syx files from dx7/tx7 and make preset sounds with the factory roms i can't save
to syx file properly, is there a way to do this already, i want to open a syx file i took from my
yamaha tx7 and modify all the sounds and save it to a syx file like an editor, does this version of
dexed v.0.6.1 support this function, also when i modify the syx file bank and save the bank to
syx file i would also like to import it to the cart menu, can this be possible with future versions?