Although the Yamaha DX7 is often generally equated with FM synthesis, this is not entirely accurate. And also unfair, but more on that later. Although the basic principle is generally the same for every FM engine, it is not identical. This has become apparent over the years. Today, FM synthesis is as ubiquitous in the world of electronic sound generators as analog synthesis. So if you look at different FM synthesizers, you can attribute a different basic character to each one. Sometimes this is not particularly striking, but it is at least subtly audible.
I noticed this particularly clearly a few years ago with the Alesis Fusion. Since then, I’ve been referring to its FM engine as “hot”. What does that mean? Depending on the operator modulation, the sound becomes quite biting, almost coarse, at higher amplitude levels. We already know this from the forefather Yamaha DX7, which can show this sonic face quite well with basses, for example. Other FM engines, on the other hand, are at the other end of this spectrum and seem downright tame in comparison. And there are some whose character sits somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. To illustrate this, I have put together some videos for this blog post. You’ll hear sounds from the Yamaha DX7, Alesis Fusion, Korg Opsix, and the two software FM synthesizers Tracktion f’em and Sugar Bytes Aparillo.
To round it off, there are two more videos, each of which is compared to the DX7. These are the Korg Kronos and its MOD7 FM section and the Yamaha MODX. We already know such comparisons quite well from the Minimoog and its emulations and clones. Now that the text is done, let’s move on to the sounds and the videos. Have fun!
DX7
Fusion
Opsix
f’em
Aparillo
Kronos 2 MOD7 vs DX7II
MODX vs Yamaha DX7