Best DX plugin?

[wonder]

I'm looking for a good electric piano plugin force and studio use. Think DX or Phil Collins or some of the good Yamaha motif Bell DX and Yamaha electric EP sounds.

Any suggestions?

[philbrown]

Native instruments: FM8. It's not a piano VI, it's a souped up DX-style FM synth.

[billf]

FM8 is very good. I have a hardware DX synth, and quite often will use FM8 instead. If FM8 isn't feasible for some reason, if you have Logic X, it has an FM synth, but I'm not sure how good it is.

[philbrown]

Native instruments: FM8. It's not a piano VI, it's a souped up DX-style FM synth.

oh really so wht he don't knows?

You need some serious work on your trolling technique.

[Gravity Jim]

Another vote for FM8. For that super-electronic FM piano thing, it nails it.

[mhschmieder]

Hah, I skipped this one at first, thinking from the title that it was about DirectX plug-ins, which I don't think the Windows version of DP supports.

Anyway, I have to say FM8, because I've tried the others and also the sample-based ones just don't cut it (and never will).

FM7 was better as an emu of the original, but you can sort of trick out FM8 to act like a DX7. I don't have time to go into the details right now; I posted them years ago but probably it would be too hard to find. In summary, you'll need to go mono, shut off all effects (except maybe chorus), and make sure you only use the sine wave sources.

There are a few other steps you have to take to get FM8 to sound like FM7 or a DX7. I spent dozens of hours on this and wrote it up in detail at the time.

[guitardood]

I've got FM8 as part of Komplete, but didn't know it was basically a DX emu on steroids. I've actually purchased FM-Tines from Gospel Musicians which works in either Machfive or UVI player. Sounds pretty good and even emulates the noise from the original DX, but I'll have to check out FM8 a little more.

[corbo-billy]

With another ergonomic dimension , BAZILLE from Uhe .

[dewdman42]

Hah, I skipped this one at first, thinking from the title that it was about DirectX plug-ins, which I don't think the Windows version of DP supports.

Anyway, I have to say FM8, because I've tried the others and also the sample-based ones just don't cut it (and never will).

FM7 was better as an emu of the original, but you can sort of trick out FM8 to act like a DX7. I don't have time to go into the details right now; I posted them years ago but probably it would be too hard to find. In summary, you'll need to go mono, shut off all effects (except maybe chorus), and make sure you only use the sine wave sources.

There are a few other steps you have to take to get FM8 to sound like FM7 or a DX7. I spent dozens of hours on this and wrote it up in detail at the time.

Do FM7 presets load into FM8 and if so, will they have all of those bits disabled and sound like they did on FM7? Just curious. I remember many conversations about FM7 vs FM8, I never owned FM7 but I do own FM8 and sometimes I wonder the difference in sound. Back in the day I enjoyed playing around with a 1st gen DX7, it was super cool at the time the way velocity and aftertouch could effect the timbre in real time so much, which was kind of a new thing.

[mhschmieder]

Well, I had different needs at the time: I was doing a lot of live keyboard work and also trying to match EXACT sounds in the studio. This is no longer a personal need, so I have been able to follow NI's advice to "move on" and accept the more advanced FM8 vs. the "looking back" aspect of FM7. Sort of like my Chameleon 5000 vs. Alchemy dilemma, I guess.

The conversion process was a bit tricky and produced some redundancies. Part of it has to do with new patch naming rules. Many old DX7 patch libraries have lots of spaces, asterisks, underscores, dashes, etc. to distinguish similar patches. These loaded as-is inso FM7 but required "conversion" to load properly into FM8, followed by a resave in FM8 format (whereas FM7 could work directly in real-time with DX7 format).

FM8 is WAY faster than FM7, thankfully. It used to take eons (even with early FM8 releases) to scroll through libraries, even when I already knew which patch I needed.

With FM7, I literally could not tell the difference (given the same signal path) vs. a TX816 or whatever other FM-oriented modules I was using at any given point in time. I no longer use FM technology for natural instruments though, due to how the sampling world has marched on, so no longer need exact replicas of "old" sounds such as the excellent FM-based marimbas. I only use FM for atmospheric stuff and blippy things now. So I can handle FM8's revisionism.

[wonder]

Maybe its just the way I tried FM8 but the layout and presets were a little arduous.

I'll reinstall and try again.

Would be nice for JUST a DX VI for guys that DONT need all the bells and whistles.

[mikehalloran]

Here's an old link to four freebies. No idea if it will help.
http://blog.wavosaur.com/4-free-dx7-vst ... nth-4-all/

[wonder]

Here's an old link to four freebies. No idea if it will help.
http://blog.wavosaur.com/4-free-dx7-vst ... nth-4-all/

I did find a site with 8,000+ presets.

I think what I'm having a hard time with is the organization and browsing of presets. But, I'll figure it out