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FM8

Synth (FM) Plugin by Native Instruments
MyKVRFAVORITE362WANT62
$229 / €199

FM8 has an average user rating of 4.38 from 32 reviews

Rate & Review FM8

User Reviews by KVR Members for FM8

FM8

Reviewed By AnotherBob [all]
March 28th, 2004
Version reviewed: 1 on Windows

I owned a Yamaha DX7 for a few years. It was cheap, light, and one of the first affordable synths with velocity sensitive keys. With all the benefits of using this keyboard on stage I hated the sound. FM7 is a software version of the DX7, developed by Native Instruments with the blessing of Yamaha. When FM7 hit the market I wondered why anyone would want a program that sounded like the thin, lifeless DX7. It was a year before I gave in to the positive reviews and tried this VSTi. To my surprise this is the one VSTi based on a hardware synthesizer that sounds better than the hardware. Much better. No DX7 ever made the luscious pads available on FM7. This is partially due to greater processing power of the host computer, a higher processing rate, better D/A’s, multi-stage eg’s and a decent effects section.

There are 100’s of patches available online for the DX7 and FM7. I received the extra sound set from NI free when I bought FM7. It has 128 beautiful and useful patches. Programming FM is very different than subtractive synthesis but at least FM7 has a tab designed for simple programming. I prefer to tweak patches created by others rather than start from scratch.

FM7 responds will to sustain pedal, after touch, pitch bend and modulation wheels. However, it does not allow the right click CC control assignment found on many new VSTis.

User Interface - Looks nice and provides tabs to access many functions and an easy mode page.

Sound - Very good.

Features - FM synthesis with excellent eg’s and effects.

Documentation - A decent book book.

Presets - Not a lot but what you get is good.

Customer Support - Better than what you get from a hardware company.

Value For The Money - A bit expensive for but this is still THE FM VSTi.

Stability - Never crashes my system.

Copy Protection - Occasional CD check.

Frequency Of Use - Maybe half of my songs.

CPU Load - Very light.

Remote Patch Change - Patch increment and decrement works from my keyboard workstation. Only holds one bank so bank change is useless.

Fun Factor - Medium if you like programming FM.

I would buy again, but first I would consider some of the competition that is half the price. The low CPU usage for a sound this good is probably the best reason.
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Comments & Discussion for Native Instruments FM8

Discussion
Discussion: Active

THIS POST HAS BEEN REMOVED

BlackWinny
BlackWinny
24 August 2013 at 5:00pm

To Miroslav, about the archive files with extension .sit:

The archive files with the extention .sit are a nightmare! Above all for all the people using Windows or Linux.

AVOID the archives .sit files!!.

You compel to install a specific expander for these files which are in a proprietary format! The standard archive/unarchive tools are ALL incompatible with this proprietary format! And even worse, even the specific tool itself change its specifications from a version to another.

To unarchive .sit files, first you compel to install StuffIt Expander... that generally we have not on our systems. So we install this tool... but it's then necessary to know that the last version that expanded the .sit file was the 2010 version. Starting from the 2011 version... Stuffit expander expands only the .sitx version, no more the .sit version.

So you compel your readers to install Stuffit Expander 2010! Not the later versions.

And above all, whatever your operating system... use .zip files or .rar files to stay compatible with every body.

Even you Stuffit tool can create .zip and .rar files to stay compatible with everybody.

To avoid the bothering installation of this specific expander totally unnecessary in the daily use of our systems and so to give access to these four files to EVERYONE, some minutes ago I just reuploaded the four files in the universal standard format that everybody can read natively, the .zip format! And I have set the four files in a one package.

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