Ok, just tried Blue, and while I haven't delved into it, the fact that one voice uses about 8% CPU time on my system is the ultimate spoiler. The given presets were rather pointless for me, but that's true for any synth, including FM8. :P Where FM8 scores big time is the combination of vast editing ...

Naturally it also contains the omnipotent FM8, but that one can be had for less than half that price.

Well, they should know, as I'm spamming the NI FM8 forum with features/bugs and all these remixes. Haven't heard of Blue yet, I'll have a look into it. I dabbled a bit with some other Papen synth before, some while ago, but if anything (and that can be said about a LOT of VSTi's) it was heavy on the...

Ladies, Gentlemen, Digiphobes and anaphobes: 1492 - Conquest of Paradise

Go for an SY, 6 ops, 3 feedbacks and about 16 waveforms per operator. Nothing like that a DX can give you. Or perhaps an FS1r and a software editor. :D The amount of operators does mainly matter for layered sounds. There's a certain human limit as for how many operators one can dedicate to a single ...

Years ago I used to buy useless hardware to recreate this image: http://www.synthtopia.com/artists/images/Vangelis.gif ..and I was somewhat on my way! The 14u rack was all filled up, keyboards kept coming in. I even acquired a 2m mixing console (analogue, people! analogue!). At some point I moved to...

make sure your AD/DA interface is ready make sure your MIDI controller is on and connected, etc. o_O O_o 1) My computer is already switched on, due email and reading this hilarious forum :) 2) software takes a few seconds to load, shorter than the time I need to switch on all my hardware 3) I usual...

Within the hardware realm, I'd say that the two most powerful FM synths are the SY77/99 and the FS1r. I wouldn't go as far as stating that one of them is better than the other. The SY can do things the FS can't, and vice versa. I'd say that the FS1r is like a DX7 but with a few global additions: for...

That all depends on the type o' sounds you make. Fine feedback per operator has its uses for sure, try [tri]->[tri]. As for the amount of feedbacks: I often have feedback on all my operators (whether carrier or modulator), even if it's just a little bit. For more radical setups, like a fb>[E]->[F] s...

The FS1r wasn't so bad, it all depends on how smart you are with FM. For people who bought it just to have a truckload o' FM voices in their setup, it's probably more of a preset machine than anything else. If you know your way through FM, then the FS1r is not that complex.. it's just that the tiny ...

yea, can be practical to stuff multiple sounds into one single FM patch, but it's nothing new :P http://pub.unreal64.net/boor/CS_TBL-VintageFM80s.mp3 VintageFM80's - one of the entries to a former challenge here on VSE, some years ago. It's 2x FM8 and one Linn, and one generic mastering effect (dyna...

The advantage of making own sounds is that you can fine-tweak them to match your specific project. Also, part of a usual factory presets are n00b'ish or downright impractical in any sane musical context. Especially the FM8 presets were relatively weak.

There are major differences between FM8 and a DX7: - FM8 has effects, which can have a radical influence on the sound - FM8 has 32 waveforms for its operators, a DX7 has one: a sine - FM8 has segment envelopes with curves, a dX7 has a relatively simple envelope. The curves in FM8's envelopes are gre...

If you're an FM8 power user, then there's no point getting a DX7 or SY77. FM8 does so much more, mainly thanks to the effects and the operator waveforms, that the sounds you get have little in common with the old sound palette of the DX/SY. Also, the vast polyphony of 64 per FM8 instance is highly p...

As for the 88 keys: it may differ per person alright. I myself am making rather conventional sounds for equally conventional music, not so much the abstract stuff. My instruments would fit as an extra group within a conventional orchestra. Because of this conventional nature of my sounds, they catch...