For someone who loves FM, owns a TX81Z and suffers editing patches on the front panel, I welcome the Reface DX. The new display and editing interface looks very easy to deal with. I know of no other FM synth other than the DX200 with editing this accessible.

For the price, this works for me.

yamaha web app

I don't see the point of WebMIDI at all.
Surely it's possible to edit the synth without it.

The idea is that the manufacturer only has to make one version of the editing software - for the web which has a relatively strict set of supported protocols and interfaces - versus multiple operating systems with all their myriad quirks and oddities. They don't have to deal with licensing, distribution (printing expensive DVDs, etc), or upgrade channels. That is all managed on their servers.

From the consumer side, you don't have to install any software.

The big negative, of course, is that you need a stable internet connection (although there are solutions for that) and browser adoption of the Web MIDI standard. The browser adoption is going to be slow because MIDI is just not a priority and there are some security/privacy concerns. Microsoft will thumb its nose at the standard and do their own thing so developers will have to deal with that deviance. Apple will never cannibalize their app market by putting Web MIDI in mobile safari so you'll have to use Android phone/tablets (or specialized iOS apps) if you don't want to use a laptop.

It has a way to go but I do see a lot of big benefits to Web MIDI.

You're overreacting.
The only really 'new' thing is the feedback on all operators.
The negative feedback, yeah, well, YMMV.
You can get square waves with any sine operator implementation. You just need to use 2 operators.
So it is not world shattering stuff here. 'Normal' pm synthesis already has lots of potential especially since most serious implementations of the past 30 years or so allow you to use many different waveforms in the operators. There are vastly more possibilities with that than there are with the negative feedback people keep talking about. It's just that you'd need to dive pretty deep into pm synthesis to understand what to do with stuff like absolute sine waveforms.

If you think these synths will be sold on the basis that they have negative feedback then you're deluded,. heh

hahaha you guys are doing something wrong p.m.s.l

i got my first hand job with a casio vl-tone for real,totally portable and she was 16 i was 13 ,so you lot need to up ya game

Yeah, thanks! I'm a way better cook than musician.

Season the ground chuck with a bit of soy sauce, oyster sauce, toasted sesame oil, and fresh minced ginger.

You're also reading gearslutz and know there are options out there for much cheaper. The vast majority of late teen/twentysomething bedroom producers don't though. They'll see [insert favorite producer] talking about how great the Reface DX is and lap the stuff up.

Kudos to you for being wiser.

Casio could clean up if they re entered the phase distortion synthesis and came out with a HANDS on slider encrusted offering.





or VZ1

Thinking young folk like you renew my faith in the future.

so this is a web app to edit the synth you already have in front of you? Otherwise the point is to share your synth patches, man we've been sharing presets, libraries and whatnot online for years now, I don't really get it. I hope it's not the yamaha thing richard devine was excited about the other day

This is one funny thread and we are almost at 100 pages so keep up the good work fellow GSrs!

Doesn't count when it's your sister.

Yes, but since this is a 4-op, it is significant that you can now do sounds with one operator that would usually need two. It can potentially make sounds for which you would previously have needed an eight-operator DX7.
Also you can presumably make sounds that would previously have been completely impossible, since you can have feedback on the carrier and the modulator.

D.

Actually, we're really good about web standards and do a lot more contributing than thumbing.

If we identify our browser as safari or chrome to sites, most work quite well, because we're compliant, but many sites treat all versions of IE like IE 6.

In fact, in Edge, we do that and ignore the vendor specific prefixes that chrome and safari use and translate them to standards. Result: Web just works.

That said, we don't have web midi yet.

Pete

I thought the slider thing was funny and believe me I can appreciate a touch of humor these past few days. It gets like that sometimes.

The Sonic State series of videos on these keyboards was mainly positive, they all sounded nice actually but what I can't get past is the size and what do they do that hasn't already been done to death already, I mean there's nothing new about them or the sounds...

LOL...wtf at the bottom of this page in the pictures of gear there is a pair of Yamaha NS10's for $2,200 on e-bay Australia..???

what a joke...

Not so fast Master Po!! I've not yet finished reading Fukuda's book. heh

are you saying the dx brings little new to fm/pm synthesis or it brings little new to yamaha's previous iterations?

If this product line was released by Roland I'd love to compare the level of uncontrolled vitriol that would spew forth. The more I see this stuff the more it just plain stinks on so many levels including the Web Midi API part.
I managed to pick up a TX81z for $95.00 yesterday.
I'll keep using Reaktor, Tassman and my Monomachines for anything else FM related.

that goes for nearly every "new" "analog" synth which comes out the last few years doesn't it?

They were all 'first looks'. It's not a review if a comany rep is standing right next to you. Editorial control and all.

This is true. IE is definitely not the piece of hot garbage it was years ago. The hassles of IE still live strong in those of us who had to live through its "dark days" so we're still cynical

I built an ActiveX component many years ago that would MIDI-Enable web applications running in IE (basically a shim between client script and the WINMM MIDI API). That was right about the time Web 2.0 was taking off and the movement against BHOs was taking hold (for good reason). Needless to say, it didn't get far.

How much more is FM computationally heavy (if at all) than wavetable or a good VA? I'm curious if the reDX mono timbrality is a hardware limitation or an intentional feature limitation. The Micron is only 8 voices but with some planning you can cover it all with multis. My current fixation, Elastic Drums for the iPhone, is a 6 parts multi-timbral 4op fm groove box and has a some wild fx possibilities. Are the maths that DSP intensive?

My guess is this Reface line is mainly marketed to "Houses of Worship," with their take on the V-Synth coming next year (what Richard Divine spoke of).

Adapting things to their intended use is a good idea, simple as that.

So try and understand what this is trying to do instead of judging it by what you'd like it to do and you'll see how it make sense.

That won't make you like it, but you should notice that it is based on the same kind of thinking, good design, that you'd like them to use in the event they made something of interest to you.

The CP looks and sounds quite nice. A few simple but decent sounds and effects with a bunch of basic controls to manipulate them. I could make use of that in my live rig but the mini keys are just in the way. Some people (not me) find them OK for monophonic sounds but I don't see how anyone can play piano on those. If it was a stand alone box you could place on or above your full size keyboard I'd be all over it, especially at a commensurately sub £289 price tag which is what they already seem to be going for.

Made for blow out.

Forgive me here, the app stores and in real time monitors, thus allowing you to create and save patches. It doesn't edit anything does it? It indicates the fader positions across the range to show presets(certainly on the organ and cp via lit up faders and dials) and how to achieve them.

Right? Wrong?

The cp and yc app looked pretty cool