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Average rating:
4.5 out of 5
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I bought a DX-7IID when it came out. I ordered it without trying it, purely upon recommendation. When it arrived, the factory sounds were so horrendous, I almost cried. After I started to program the unit, though, its capabilities slowly surfaced. Ultimate I got to the point where it was used even for sampled timbres instead of samplers (horns, strings, etc) because it sounded better even for that.
One of the biggest secrets of the DX-II line that not many people know is the Unison Detune function. Turn it on, choose a medium setting and - bye bye FM thinness, good morning stadium-size sounds. The only problem is that I could never find the recipe for duplicating it on a TX-816, or FS-1R or anything. If anyone knows the secret, let me know.
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The DX7II D/FD is a quite-improved revamp of the 1983 DX7. I enjoy the expressiveness of the instrument, though the sounds are a bit dry without effects. People who say you can get good electric pianos are full of it unless they've modified the typical DX piano patches. You can get pretty good acoustic pianos, but...the DX programmers fell about three steps short of having an absolutely authentic Rhodes like you would hear it out of an amplifier. They forgot tremolo--easily added with a sine LFO modulating amplitude on the carrier--and they wimped it up with the little 'ping' that you don't actually hear in a real electric. I say get rid of it, pull down the frequency ratio to about 1.00 or shut off that operator. And bring any other ratios down to 1 or 2. Then you have the grittiness of a suitcase Rhodes that is almost indistinguishable.
People always complain about programming it--theyre right, it's difficult. But considering the presets for sounding like other instruments, forget it. They generally suck. Learn the instrument. Program it. use the synthesis engine to make sounds unique to the DX and lay off the cheesey pop sounds unless your goal is cheesey 80's pop. There are more than enough unique leads and pads you can make without using the same stuff that everyone else has used.
I say if you want something to sound specifically like other instruments, get a wavetable synth. Use the programmability of the DX to make sounds that are unique.
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If you liked the Stock Aitken and Waterman sound in the late eighties, this is your synth. Hard but doable to program your own sounds(making it more fun when something real neat comes out!). There are good shareware/freeware programs around to program it via MIDI with a PC (like WinSysex). There are also good librarian programs around to download complete banks into the DX7-II(SoundLib). Because`there were so many DX7`s sold, there is large resource of home-brewn patches around too. My tip: use Unison Poly with Detune(1 to 7)on every patch , it cuts in your polyphony(only 4 left) but it makes the sound very warm and proffesional sounding.
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The Dx-7IIfd is still my master keyboard. Ok. FM. isn't impressive but a DX El.Piano or Syth Bass will never get lost in you Mix. They will never loose in presence. I've spend many days programming this beast. And let me say it's an inmense source of satisfaction. I've come out with some weird, some inspiring and many stupid sounds, but at the end of the day I feel proud of it... NO GM, GS, XG no Megs. of samples, no FXs, No imitations. Just Personality...
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Finally brought a second hand DX7-II last year (been promising myself a DX7 since 1983 and finally had enough disposable income!).
It's a beautiful synth, FM still sounds good and is still unbeatable for what it does best (although I do need a good analogue poly as well to complement by Yammie CS15). But as a bonus, the DX7II also produces some very good warm patches when you layer two sounds and detune the sounds. The only thing missing to make it an absolute killer (having your cake and eating it) at this point is a good filter!
Listen to standard performance patch 12 - put a good dose of reverb on and you've got a beautiful choir sound. Performance patch 1 demonstrates that FM strings do not have to be weak sounding.
Voices downloaded from the 'net provide an endless variety of sounds including some very passable analogue type sounds. Although I have every intent to learn to program the beasty, I haven't even scratched the the 17000 sounds downloaded from the net.
In conclusion an excellent instrument and don't let the FM detractors put you off checking one out - remember it's horses for courses.....
BTW, the reason why FM sounds so close to the sound of real instruments (e.g. brass) is that the growth/decay of harmonics in a real instrument is rarely a linear progression, and FM can synthesize this non-linear progress very well. An analogue filter opening/closing cannot mimic the way harmonics on most real instruments naturally change over time (e.g. a guitar sound after a few seconds loses most of the fundamental - a bitch when you're trying to track the pitch of a guitar)
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