OPX4 vs other FM VSTs or apps for pure FM goodness

My simple advice: turn off the effects on the presets, there are a few tabs of them. IMO the tone immediately improves.

I'm lining my other thread on this synth, in case that's of help for any others. I show how to use the matrix as a traditional algorithm FM synth in there. That may help get people started on the matrix.

OPX-4 MANUAL – FIGURING IT OUT, SUPPLEMENTING THE MANUAL

joegrant413 wrote:My simple advice: turn off the effects on the presets, there are a few tabs of them. IMO the tone immediately improves.

That goes not just for OPx4: for example, Akai drenches everything in delay and it I find it not always appropriate. Their idea seems to be offering fully baked ready-to-eat sounds out of the box - which is nice not just for beginners but, as one progresses in skills, it is often just too much seasoning.

IMHO, this happens with 99% presets in all plugins. They're designed to sound great when browsing for sounds or when showing to a friend, but sound too bloated for a final mix.

I call them "look, ma" presets...

bitermc wrote:IMHO, this happens with 99% presets in all plugins. They're designed to sound great when browsing for sounds or when showing to a friend, but sound too bloated for a final mix.

I call them "look, ma" presets...

I don’t even think most sound good when just browsing & wish there was master FX off tabs to keep each FX off for all the preset when going thru them. That would make more sense & be a more efficient.

I've spent too much time with presets over all trying to figure out why something is happening, or when I am editing is not happening, I tend to not be bothered with presets at all. While I can see that they may serve as a learning start point, I rarely like preset sounds in synths and some just seem gimmicky to show off potential, than useable. This seems more true with more powerful complex synths than simple ones. The OPx4 falls into the former, clearly.

A nice article about Operator, Ableton's FM synth. I learned that naming the FM oscillators "operators" was a Yamaha invention and that, while the DX7 had six operators, Operator took inspiration from the simpler four operators DX27. Digging elsewhere, it seems that four operators is the popular sweetspot for capable enough yet simple and low-resources - I had not realized there was a lot of precedent for OPx4's choice of number of operators.

Jean-Marc Liotier wrote:

joegrant413 wrote:My simple advice: turn off the effects on the presets, there are a few tabs of them. IMO the tone immediately improves.

That goes not just for OPx4: for example, Akai drenches everything in delay and it I find it not always appropriate. Their idea seems to be offering fully baked ready-to-eat sounds out of the box - which is nice not just for beginners but, as one progresses in skills, it is often just too much seasoning.

amen to this.. chrous, reverb, delay. wet wet wet. why give us all these fx and fx chains if they are gonna decide for us?

its all 3 of things that wash out a track real bad and im sure people end up with reverb on reverb.. delay on delay. those things are meant to be subtle and used sparingly not slammed on every patch. you/i/we end up with interference pattern cancelling out signal.

Jean-Marc Liotier wrote:Digging elsewhere, it seems that four operators is the popular sweetspot for capable enough yet simple and low-resources - I had not realized there was a lot of precedent for OPx4's choice of number of operators.

The thing about OPx-4, compared to a DX 4-op or the Digitone, is OPx-4 doesn't really have the preset algorithms to order the four operators in the same way. Which, using the Matrix, may give more flexibility than having only eight algos. But to me (maybe biased since i learned FM on a DX-27/DX-11) preset algos are "easier" than trying to brute force a 16 variable matrix.

I came up with these based on the DX9's Algorithms

That’s very well visualised! Bravo!

Thank man, it certainly twisted my melon making it. I'm still a beginner with FM and every time I come back to these images I think I made a error, then I follow it through. So I definitely don't see the matrix as intuitive to replicating traditional operator layouts.

I agree. The OPX4 plugin is very powerful and allows for things not possible with Yamaha DX- and SY-synths, but on the other hand Yamahas ”fixed” algorithms make it easier to visualise how the different operators interact with each other.