Unscripted live comparison of chipsynth OPS7 with an original mk1
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- Опубліковано 21 вер 2021
- We briefly explain how to set up the SYSEX librarian mode of chipsynth OPS7, Bidule and a spectrum analyzer to do a random preset comparison between OPS7 and an OG mk1
For hardware comparison, one should list all the details of the test setup.
The exact model of DX7, its firmware version (yes it matters see my video) and all settings in the OPS7 settings page. We claim high accuracy only with:
A physical DX7 mk1 with firmware 1.8 (set "Newer firmware" in settings or "Older" if its not - we do not have all variants)
(Not a DX7II/FD/S, they will sound different, how much depends on the preset)
In OPS7 Settings:
DAC Bits : 10~12:2 (its the default)
DAC error set to taste with just a sine wave (between 1 to 3 is usually good)
Filtering to whatever fits the list with YOUR DX7 (you might want to try with a bright/noisy sound and a spectrum analyzer)
Chan Mix: Accurate, but should matter that much
Vel Mode: **CRUCIAL**: set to External if you feed your DX7 with external MIDI, or Internal if you play the DX7's keyboard and send its MIDI out to OPS7. This particular hot topic also plagued other comparison with other plugins in the past. To be fair, it is very important for Velocity scaling levels
Also please record your DX7mk1 in mono.
If after all this you find a preset that doesn't sound or behave the same, please get in touch and provide us with a syx file. We would gladly investigate.
Thanks to Joan Touzet for her TX816 tests
Product page:
plogue.com/products/chipsynth...
Plogue is not affiliated with any of the original integrated circuit, computer, console and synthesizer manufacturers. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. - Наука та технологія
You nailed it! I used to run the old "DX7 Resource Centre" years ago, and own several DX7s. Over the years, I've accidentally created some patches which only work properly in a real DX7; they don't sound completely right in FM8, DEXED, Arturia DX7 or the FM engine in my MODX. However they sound exactly as they do in a DX7, in OPS7 ! I think you have created the most authentic DX7 emulation ever!
This plugin is in a league of its own. You really only need about 30 seconds with the trial before realizing it has to be in your arsenal. Worth over 200$. The feeling of the sounds are highly inspiring. I mean seriously, this is beyond home run. I own all of Arturia, cherry audio and many other emulation synths. This is HANDS DOWN a new standard. Plogue be careful not to loose your minds. The detail in these sounds is obsessive.
Love the effort you put into all of this. Absolutely great and done with love and passion. Then when I see some other plugin manufacturers sell crap for 200 or 300$ e.g. some drum randomizer which a school child could have made, it really hurts me. I think I will buy this plugin even if I don't need it just because I totally love the approach and work!
This is amazing, it’s hard to find developers striving for this much similarity in design down to the chip level. Would love to see what you guys could do with a sampler like the akai s950. Would be super popular right now.
I was going ask whether you nailed the envelope hold time "bug"/feature to do delayed operator onset, but the water gong @13:00 make it pretty clear that you did. Kudos, amazing work.
Yes, and AFAIR that patch doesn't even do that in the DX7II. Ha
The level of details is amazing. This is amazing product. I honestly wish you success with it. Keep up the good work.
This is stunning work here. Even skeptical hardware fans like myself would be hard pressed to justify the hardware now! I can't wait to check this out. Thank you for your work!
I'll never let go of my gear. The way I see it, is I could use my DX7, or my SNES or Genesis to make music, or use our emulations it doesn't matter, I wouldn't make a difference. You usually go with what is more convenient. But I will forever love the 'metal'.
I'm so excited to be an early user! love the attention to detail you all have. THANK YOU!
You guys are amazing, thanks for documenting not only the results, but the process too, it’s super interesting!
Just an amazing attention to detail with a lot of passion could accomplish this. Thank you!
This is exactly what I've been looking for for years! I've been used Dexed and it's amazing for a free tool, but it's definitely a cleaner sound, none of that fuzziness. I used to love how my TX816 would dissolve into soft clouds of digital noise on the decay, and I'm looking forward to seeing how 8 instances of this stack up to recreate that massive sound.
I think this was the coolest dev video ever.
Great work on this! Sounds very good. =)
You guys did an amazing job honestly
Very impressive. Great work! I have a TX816 so I'm looking to compare it with that.
I just told Ave (traptendo) about this plugin. He never knew it was released. You guys need to send him your stuff when you release it. I have bought many plugins because of him.
Yes! New plogue release!
Merci ça déchire j'avais testé plusieurs logiciels le plus proche étant FM7 mais celui là est dingue!
I’ve been regretting selling my DX-7s for ten years but since getting this that’s all gone. It works with all the Sysex files and sounds exactly the same but far more practical to integrate into a DAW set up, it’s like having a dozen DX-7s at your fingertips.
Thank you! That was the intended goal!
I love this thing. OPS7 and relaxation with coffee is always fun. You nailed it yet again. Plogue for president :p 🍻
This is amazing - I just picked it up! Perfectly captures (less the noise floor of the DAC LOL) my original MKI. THANK YOU for including additional waveforms, effects, stereo audio. I would say you've made a DX7 MK 1.9 here LOL - not strictly a MKII, and you've given us a cleaner MKI for sure!
Question - any chance of adding 2 more operators, or would the emulated EGS/OPS not support that? Thinking about what might take this closer to an FS1R or something more modern and radical.
Incredible work and I will be playing this for a LONG time - WOW!
Well I'll be damned if this isn't the best VA I've seen in a long time. Knocked it out of the park again David!
When I saw VA, I at first thought Virtual Analog!
@@jackcimino8822 Omg I'm noticing now too! I did mean virtual analog, but given that the DX7 is mostly digital, it's better if I call it a VD :)
@@devjock I read VA as video analysis
This is awesome, thank you.
Great video ! I hope the NES chipsynth is available soon
Love the attention to detail shown here! Could you consider making the analog emulations you now have collected available as an FX plugin? I usually use bit depth reducers with saturation to get modern synths like NI FM8 to sound “retro”, but I’d love to be able to have selection of meticulously modeled analog output stages of this, the mega drive etc. available to fuzz and warm up any VST synth.
An addition to chipcrusher is indeed planned
Oh god I can't wait for that beta email
INsta bought !
Bravo !!
Amazing. Downloadable wav files would be great for more detailed comparison.
I'll try to add a few along with part two of my tech video about the research behind OPS7
@@plgDavid I couldn't think of something more interesting to me at this moment than that video about the research. I'm not a plugin user, I've got a lot of hardware, but since I've heard the portafm videos I've to say the sound is extremely close to the original... And I've almost every programmable pss/psr/dsr, along with DX7 mk1, DX5, DX100, TX81z, FB01, etc. For the first time I feel software equals hardware.
Great at 11:15 min, where you discuss the aliasing. SYX from DX7 or DX5 did never translate well to DEXED or DX7 V for sounds like St. Helens, Bombdrop, or Explosion over the whole range of the keybeds. I feel that these original sounds benefitted quite a bit from aliasing, or from steps of the frequency sweeps which are there in their structure.
What do you think about that?
Jeez, this is impressive. Might have to rob the cookie jar for this. 👀
😍
4:56 That's the first DX7 patch I've heard that has noticeable DAC distortion. Previously I'd only heard one TF1 module that had so much distortion that it sounded a little broken. Usually the distortion is noticeable on a spectrogram, but only minimally audible. Using discrete resistors for the exponent part of a floating point DAC is a terrible idea, because they won't be matched well enough to avoid discontinuities in the output. The Lexicon 224 and 200 use a 0.1% tolerance thin film resistor network, but 1 or 2% metal film resistors won't cut it.
Indeed (on all accounts). I mean surely all presets have this fuzz to an extent, but this combo of harmonics and lack of high frequency content makes it more apparent I think. I kindly asked Joan to desolder the resistors around the 4066 on her "distorted" TF1 and they all tested well within spec (those are 0.1% purple band precision resistors) out of circuit. So we are thinking the specific 4066 might be the issue at this point. Guess more investigating is needed. I think I'll socket one of my 4066 and swap them around to see if there is noticeable spectrum changes for part 2
@@Plogue IIRC the guy I was talking to that had the distorted TF1 found no improvement after fiddling with the trimpot and replacing the resistors. And I tried modeling the distortion with an Octave script (randomizing the resistor values within an adjustable tolerance) and found that the DX7 performs considerably worse than I'd expect from the resistors alone. I'd guess settling time or poor 4066 performance could be significant factors. Trying to do this at nearly 800 kHz is pushing it. Slew distortion is a possibility too, but in that case you'd get intermodulation products between the different voices rather than the fuzzy distortion that disappears at low amplitudes.
@@acreil Same, we made a bit of code where we can feed values of the 6 resistors and get the error measure for each companding stage and it was minimal whatever real world resistor set we found. So its the rest, but its definitely in the companding.
@@Plogue I think the best test patch should be a large amplitude, fixed frequency sub-audio tone with a small amplitude tone at maybe 100-1000 Hz (maybe algorithm 32). I tried it on my V50 (mashing a bunch of keys at the same time since the voices are summed before conversion) and it sounds incredibly horrible (although that should mainly be due to quantization rather than bad design). It's nice that you've now got a clean example to compare to so that other sources of artifacts can be ruled out. I'm sure you've tried that already too.
So I just decided to splurge and get this and the last few missing Plogue to complete my set and thank you and I love you - is there a discord or a community and do you share more of the syx settings because I feel like so many more could be bade for chipmdm etc considering how many i magically come up with with the random feature. I'd love to see more of the plogue presets shared! fm future drums etc!
Hi, no public Discord that I know of? just our forums really. There are quite a few generic vintage FM Discords though.
@@Plogue legit if you can recommend one that would be rad, I'll look around. Your forum is professional and useful, I just want to trade templates and patches for the OPS7 and such, keep on making amazing stuff, maybe someday I'll understand how to use Bidule, you're rad.
@@xirtus Sure, but its not a Plogue-specific discord, nor a support discord, its for all FM discord.gg/zGsu4u4fWQ
@@Plogue so I ended up with a laptop unable to get to my desktop Daw for awhile, at parents who have become ill, and trying to make music i'm sorry to disturb I hope you can help! I can't figure out how to find my old emails with my original keys! is there anyway you can help me find them? thank you for your help!
I'm waiting for the hardware snobs to get in here and claim that the real DX7 somehow sounds warmer.
We will be waiting to make a double blind test with them.
Not cold enough surely?
It does
@@killedxthexbeatx 🤣 Good one!
I want to try the emulation, where can I find the AFX preset "DX9, 7" ? 4:50
Considering you do an amazing job at digital emulations, would you ever take a look into doing emulations of low budget effects units of the late 80s/early 90s a lá Alesis Midiverb II?
Thank you for the suggestion!
Great video! Question - what are these "Aphex Twin soundcloud leaks" you speak of? I'm aware of the music Richard posted, but did he post his DX7 presets?
It was actually his DX9 memory dump as a "tape" backup but it is now gone soundcloud.com/user18081971/dx9-20-afx-voices
@@Plogue thank you!
interested exploration ... reverse engineering EGS-OPS is hard ... I love it ! I have a few Yamaha gears WT11, VL1m and also Korg P3 (using a YM2409 same chip as in the Yamaha TX16W samplers) and wanted to spy on the serial bus these Yamaha chips gets commands from. Any hints on what Logic Analyzer you use ?
We have been happy customers of Saleae's Logic Analyser for a decade+. Got 4 various models.
@@Plogue thanks, very inspiring work, never came across it until now ! Happy to watching more technical video ...
13:20 There is a bug in the original DX-7 where once you have sounded all 16 voices the delay parameter in the envelope becomes somewhat random. I've exploited this bug in several patches. Does the OPS7 have this bug?
Kinda. I think you might be refereeing to "Sim non init state" in settings?
@@Plogue I've never tried your plug-in, but I admire your thoroughness and rigor in implementing your version. I was just curious about that particular bug..
Will there ever be an updated version of chipsounds?
Chipsounds is slowly replaced by dedicated (better) chipsynths
Is there a trial version I can try?
Soon.
Hi. Recently I've bought a chipsynth OPS7. In common it sound fantastic and i love it, but I've got a few disappointed things about it. I believe you can help me. I want to emulate a filter with fm synthesis like on the original dx7. In this case i need to assign the level of the "modulator" to the modulation wheel. I've done this on the "MATRIX" page and it's work but it sounds bad. Modulation goes stepwise, not smoothly like on the original DX7. I think maybe the problem is in midi keyboard. I use native instruments komplete kontrol a-series. It works fine with other plugins and it's brand new. Please, can you help me!
Modulating parameters on a real DX7 mk1 is really not smooth I'm afraid. We emulated all that.
@@Plogue Oh, Yes) Sorry, I was wrong. I just mess a few parameters. You've got great technical support! They helped me a lot. Thank you🙏🏻
@@thisistrigger To be fair, the parameters you had to change to do what you wanted currently are named differently than on the mk1's faceplate. We will remedy that!
Will this work with TX81Z/DX11 sysex patches?
To do this perfectly, we would need to swap the whole firmware emu and chip emus. They have a different architecture and we would want to do it justice.
@@Plogue Thanks! I had read some chatter about 4-OP support being possible in something called “extended mode,” but it struck me as too good to be true.
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, consider adding 4-OP syx support. There is nothing around that can do it, not FM8, not Dexed, not Arturia, nothing. I have had to keep a TX81Z around all these years because I am a committed 4-OP user from way back and there is just no viable software support for my patches. There is a real need for a virtual instrument that can accurately read Yamaha 4-Op sysex (TX81Z, DX11, V-50, etc.). Thanks for listening.
4-OP 4-Eva! :-)
@@ladyapp-titude We will think about it, but again we don't do things 'half way'. Thanks
Yes! Exactly why it has to be you. Nobody else would I trust to get it right. :)
@@ladyapp-titude That is very kind. Thank you!
Could this send sysex to TX816 modules?
Yes.
Thank god i can ditch dexed now. Take my money!
Power DX7 would be impressed.
We actually tried to contact them to get on the beta. Door is still open!
Please, make HAL-9000
Can I ask on what happened to Chipspeech?
What about it?
@@Plogue All the twitter accounts have gone silent since april (or before that) and the most recent updates have just been MacOS bug fixes.
@@enderjed2523 Can't beat a dead horse. The community moved on.
@@Plogue You've got a point there. Atleast the community didn't rip itself apart like certain others.
Although can I hope that eventually Chipspeech will be updated for Win11 if it's not compatible? (although it probably is, considering on how similar Win11 and Win10 are.)
@@enderjed2523 We haven't had any reports of our product line not running on W11. And if that ever happens, we will fix it.
try to emulate metasonix gears ha ha ha ha
The way a programmer's mind drifts from one thing to another in a continuous flow of digressions it's absolutely impossible to emulate by another person... unfortunately, that also makes programmers' speeches quite hard to follow sometimes... or often...
Did my best, but you are totally right. I do feel that those are more human than the scripted versions? Anyway we try to mix and match both.