Why do sysex imports sound so bad in sytrus compared to ther FM synths.

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Sun Jun 14, 2020 12:51 pm

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Why do sysex imports sound so bad in sytrus compared to ther FM synths.

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I own Sytrus, Dexed, FM8 and DX7-V and I thought I would do a comparison because Sysx patches in Sytrus sound sub par. So I loaded a patch called analog into all 4 and the differences were quite big. Why is that?

So I looked at what the synths were doing in an oscilliscope when modulating a sine with a sine.

First thing, I chucked FM8 away, nowhere near as good as dexed or DX7-V. I noticed Gol has replied several times over the years to people asking about the operator detune and he has steadfastly replied, "just use the ratio and freq to do this". But then you walk into patches with operators that call for 1.00 Hz. Intrestingly FM8 does not have any detune either, but I could see it was adding a +0.91 Hz or -0.91 Hz offset for the +7 or -7 detune found in dexed and DX7-V. Would this mean 1Hz-0.91Hz = 0.09Hz on the operator for an equivalent "-7" on the real thing (or dexed or DX7-V)?

Having a detune that mimicked the DX7 would make it a damn site easier with sysx and I know there is also the trick of setting the pitch envelope to something small like 12 cents and doing it that way, but then you are "guessing" at the right detune rather than doing it scientifically. And yes, I know what unison is and what it does, but It's not recreating the sound I am interested in, it's compatibility with the thousands of existing DX7 patches out on the interwebs.

Then there is the question of 1x ratio imported into DX7-V or dexed being imported into sytrus as 0.9989? What gives? Is it trying to pre detune through the ratio?

Thge "*"'s in the image are because I found both dexed and DX7-V needed to be transposed down, otherwise the ratios were out of sync with 0.5 in both DX7-V and dexed being equal to 1.0 in Sytrus.

As you can see in the image, only when modulation was set at 13% and phase offset to 59% was I able to get exactly the same waveform out of Sytrus as DX7-V and try as I may, I couldn't get the same waveform out of dexed.

In summary, DX7-V imports and plays sysx patches well - with one caveat - As one youtuber found out, if you dont set the Velocity range to full (The red pentagon), certain patches will sound wierd.

The frustrating part is that I can see no correlation between phase offset and modulation level in Sytrus vs. the "73" in DX7-V and Sytrus does seem capable of producing the exact same waveforms as DX7-V

Anyone have any answers, clues or ideas?

At the end of the day, I'm just looking for a method, that I know I can follow and get patches coming out of sytrus comparable to DX7-V. Would this not be a nice "feather in your cap" for Sytrus to be able to boast DX7-V levels of sysx import functionality?

P.S. GOL for the love of any diety you believe in - can we please have the modulator wheel percentages somewhere? either in the hints or on the wheel itself - I keep making the mistake of right clicking them to copy pasta the values... ..but no, that just mutes them :D So it's a, once you set them, no idea what the value is until you move it again.

P.P.S. As the 32 algorithms of the original are fixed things, couldnt you have them as presets?

Cheers!
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