Dexed

At the beginning of the 1980s, the synthesizer market was dominated by analog models. This all changed when the Yamaha DX7 was released to become the first successful digital synth and one of the bestselling synths of all time. The instrument employed frequency modulation synthesis which was one of the first methods of generating digital sounds. These were the same sounds that would go on to define 80s pop music.

Today we’ll be taking a look at a virtual synth that is modeled on the Yamaha DX7. This one is called Dexed.

While you probably won’t have any trouble navigating its interface, it should be noted that an FM synth is a bit different from the usual “virtual analog” models that are popular these days. Instead of oscillators, FM synths employ operators to generate sounds but also to modulate other operators.

If you understand this concept quickly (I didn’t) then Dexed will probably seem a user-friendly software and you may learn how to program it quite quickly. You can easily switch between algorithms by just turning a knob, and all the parameters are accessible from the same interface. Though envelope generators (EGs) of each operator may confuse you at first, you’ll probably get some nice sounds out of Dexed after a bit of trial and error.

On the Yamaha DX7, you could only save your presets on cartridges. For that reason only, the presets on this synth are also called cartridges. Dexed doesn’t come with many, but you can find plenty of DX7 programs on the Internet as SysEx (or SYX) files. The synth saves your programs/presets/cartridges/whatever you want to call them in the same format.

It’s obvious that Dexed tries maybe a little too hard to virtually imitate a pioneering synth from an era long gone. Nevertheless, there aren’t many free synths out there that sound so good.