Hi Jon,
I'd be happy to -- except that it's probably a little
disappointing:? just two small banks, maybe? 20-25 sounds each.? A
few of the sounds are detuned clones of other patches to use as a
detuned layer set.? It would easily fit in a pair of original
DX7's.? ?
________
Backgrounder:? I play in a one-man act called Bruce Andrews and the
No Street Band ("No Street," because there's no band).? I do a lot
of '80s and '90s, and the DX sound was a big part of the '80s.? My
rig, though, has a lot of other sonic pieces:? Nord Stage 3, DSI
Tetra, SampleTank 4, Minimonsta, Oddity 2, and Cakewalk by Bandlab
to hold it all together, and provide prerecorded backup harmonies.
As such, I'm not trying to emulate subtractive synthesis; I have
one real analog synth, and three virtual ones, at my fingers.? I'm
also not trying to emulate piano, saxophone, or strings; the Stage
has that pretty well covered.? The OPS7 only has to fill in the
'DX-y stuff':? glassy bells, synth pads, etc.? Sometimes extra
horns and harpsichord, when the Stage is too busy doing other
things.? Maybe a pulse line to mimic a chugging rhythm guitar.? I
don't even use the 'DX Rhodes' sound; I never liked it that much,
and thought it was overused back in the day.? And I never did much
with alternative tunings and such on the TX.? But for say, Tears
for Fears, or a song like "Drive" by the Cars, it takes center
stage.
________
It might be more helpful to describe my 'recipe' for transferring
sounds from the TX802 to OPS7:
- Start by exporting the sounds from the TX by SysEx.? Most of
them will come through surprisingly intact.
- Set the OPS7 resolution to 15-bit; the stock 10/12-bit sounds
too grainy to my ears.
- If a sound has a pitch envelope, the Pitch EG Amount is going
to have to be cut to 1/4 to 1/3 of the value that was imported
from the TX.
- Take a look at the frequencies of OP1-OP6; most of the time,
they transfer properly, but I had one or two cases where the
values were off.
- After that, use your ears.? There are subtle -- and
occasionally, not so subtle -- differences in decay rates,
particularly on release times.? I'm not sure how much of this
can be chalked up to the OPS7's emulation of an *original* DX7,
rather than the Gen 2 models.
- The OPS7 is a little brighter and 'edgier' than a TX802, so
you may want to tweak the level of some operators to
compensate.? (I like the brighter sound, so I did not do this.)
and finally:
- Throw out everything you know about the TX802's Performances
and architecture.? The OPS7 is closer to a DX5 with better
DACs.? In order to do complex splits and layers, one is likely
to need to run multiple instances of OPS7 in a DAW.? The good
news:? I run up to 4 instances in Cakewalk on an older i3
laptop, and it's pretty stable, even live.? And the 16-note
polyphony limit is gone!? ?
Regards,
-BW
Bruce Wahler
Halfmoon-Switch.com?
bw@...
978.597.7008
?
On 5/7/2022 3:30 AM, Jon Kubis wrote:
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Show quoted text
Hey?Bruce!
Any chance of sharing your OPS7 banks with the
corrected?patches? I've got OPS7 and that sounds like a blast
to check out!
JK
On
Thu, Mar 24, 2022 at 03:01 PM, Bruce Wahler wrote:
________
For anyone who is interested, the TX802 banks loaded fine
without any more fuss than mentioning "Multiple F0/F7
Found!"? I haven't extensively played around yet, but they
sound pretty much the same.? I don't expect to spend too
much time tweaking envelopes and levels.
With a lot of spreadsheet time, I was able to condense my
64-patch User Performance Bank into something that fits the
Bank A/B architecture, and doesn't use more than two
instances of OPS7.? The hardest part was moving Voices
around to balance them between the banks, something that
seldom comes up in the TX802:
- The TX802 is 8-part multitimbral, with one user bank,
and limited polyphony
- Two OPS7s is 4-part multitimbral, with four user banks
and comparatively inexhaustible polyphony
Epilogue:
I've finished my port from my TX802 to OPS7.? I did find a
couple of wrinkles in the translation:
- In one -- and only one -- patch, OPS7 selected a
frequency of 8.00 for one modulator, even though the
original patch used 12.00.? I have no idea why!
- Pitch EG modulation was off in many patches.? It seems
that the scaling for Pitch EG Level is off by 2x, or maybe
even 4x.? I set the scaling to 0.5 and things came back
80-90%, then I tweaked a little.? Not having a DX7 for
reference, I don't know why this is.
- OPS7 doesn't seem to support real-time CC7, so volume
control on stage requires some ingenuity.
The end result sounds more like a DX7 than a TX802 to my ears,
even when setting up 15-bit DAC output, but as I mentioned
before, I kind of like the edginess.? To be fair, the OPS7
doesn't claim to be a TX802; it's closer to a DX1/DX5 in
capabilities, with the option of better DACs.
I've also used up to four instances live in Cakewalk by
BandLab, with good stability.? So converting TX Performances
to OPS duals was easier than I feared.? All in all, I'm happy
with the VSTi.
Regards,
-BW
