looking for a suitable fm7 substitute...

ok, now hopefully this doesn't intice a barrage of the old "why look for recreations of something that already exists when the real power of reaktor is in new and experimental sounds?!" yes, yes i agree. i just love that fm7 sound, and can't bring myself to buy another synth, as i feel like my soft synth library is already overkill for me personally, with logic pro, reaktor, kontakt, and a few others.
Having said that, i'm wondering if anyone has any advice about an fm synth in the user library that comes close to the fm7. i've tried the fm8 and dex, which are quite nice. Any ideas?

also just wanna say thanks to all those sharing these fine creations with those of us who have not the skill to do so,
rob

 

i think an easy project for reaktor 5 would be to open up the old FritzFM from the premium library and add breakpoint envelopes. that would be a start. then eventually, you could work on a better modulation matrix, which wouldnt be all that hard. and kill the effects, youd be better off adding your own anyways. the only other FM synth i know with the FM7 envelopes in reaktor is Gourd Fortissimo's "tao te FM", a new upload, which i think is very nice, but unfortunatly not right for standard DX-type sounds.

 

To begin with, FM7 (and the DX series) were NOT FM synths per se; they were phase modulation and not frequency modulation (there IS a difference). Somebody put up a fairly nice phase modulation clone a couple years ago, but the name escapes me (I lost it during a reformat).

The biggest advantage you'll see with FM7 is the CPU usage- Reaktor will use at least three times the CPU to accomplish the same thing.

ew

 

ok, eric, ive heard the phase mod thing a bunch of times. isnt phase mod mean modulating the phase oscillator that drives a sine wavetable? or am i wrong, is that phase distortion? anyways, i was wondering because if my first thought is correct, wouldnt all the oscillators in core be using phase modulation? i say that since almost all the oscillators ive looked in use a phase oscillator being shaped in some way or another to become some other waveshape. or does phase modulation imply using wavetable oscillators only. also, do the primary osciilators function that differantly from the core ones? im not being an argumentative bastard here, i really have been wondering this for a while now.

 

both in the user library, both are very good:-

FM6 DIGITAL FM TONE SOURCE v1.1

FM81S FM TONE GENERATOR v0.2

By Thomas Goebel

no fm7 style envelopes, but great fm sound


sowari

 

very nice suggestions, thank you.

rob

 

I think you're talking about phase distortion (which is a close relative of both phase and frequency modulation). I could be wrong here, but if I remember in phase modulation, the modulating oscillator is directly modulating the read phase of the carrier. The fact that the modulation's in audio range is what generates the harmonics.

Don't get your second point- by definition, any digital oscillator is a wavetable oscillator, is it not? The ensemble I mentioned (I think Phil listed it in his suggestions) used the phase input on the oscillator to generate the complex wave. So, yeah the normal Reaktor oscillators can be used.

Your question about core vs primary- I couldn't begin to guess.

ew

 

aw, shucks (*blushes*).

hassan ali khan asked me to spruce up fritz fm for him with some lfos for a lowpass filter. since i'm doing that, i could add some breakpoint envelopes as well. i've thought seriously about making something that would be better for more conventional stuff.

i did add multiple breakpoint envelopes to the superb fm81s and have been tweaking that a little bit. that's only four oscillators, but it is the best synth in the library for regular fm style presets. unfortunately, the mbp envelopes are big, and resizing them does great violence to their functionality. i could try something with tabs like on aerobic and some of the other new synths...

ew's also right; fm7 is far more cpu efficient than the equivalent synth would be in reaktor.

 

no, i thought a wavetable means reading individual sample data from an array of some sort (like the reaktor audio table or core table/array). the core sine oscillator, for instance, puts the phase oscillator through some shaping math to turn the ramp wave to a sine approximation. OTOH, the last tutorial in the core tutorial shows how to make a sine oscillator using the core table module. i think that is more allong the lines of a wavetable. anyways, thanks for the info above, i really should look into this more, its fairly intersting.

 

an alternate to this envelope (i don't like it because you can't see the movement) is maybe the "SpanEnv" used by Norman Wilson in his Sparky v2 (user library). a similar idea was used by Chris List in his morphology synth. these envelopes can loop but are a lot easier to resize AND you can see the movement.

Wilson also made an interesting FM synth called FM Sweeper.

sowari

 

No, a wavetable oscillator is by definition sample based. Digital oscillator can also be done through DSP, such as the Reaktor primary level (and perhaps core... still haven't upgraded to R5 yet) oscillators, and the DX operators.

 

i'll check these out. there are some features of the mbp envelope that i like that i don't recall from sparky (e.g., you can recall snaps specifically from the envelope itself without having to reset the whole ensemble), but i agree, not being able to see the movement is a real drag (sorry, unintentional pun).

fwiw: i think i should have a new fm synth up in the ul by the weekend that's better for percussive fm sounds. this thread really made me think i should complete it and it's been faster going than i thought it would be. it's a hybrid of the phase mod concept from fm81s and the modulation matrix of fm8. so, like tao te fm, there is absolutely nothing new in this synth. that will undoubtedly be my trademark. it does have some mbp env's but also some dancing randomized envelopes a la dieter zobel.

mmmmm, zobel...

[p.s. just to follow on sowari's comment, fm sweeper is really remarkable; far beyond my skills to even conceive of such a thing. zobel and scott (rachmiel) each have some great fm synths as well that can be randomized and still make decent sounds, which is very tricky business indeed.]

 

btw, i think that it IS possible to store snaps of the sparky envelope using the snap value module. have a look at my GrainFalter .ens which uses scenes to store settings in a graincloud sampler. those scenes are stored in a snap value module.

maybe i will also work on this idea myself.

and yes, those zobel envelopes are great.

sowari

 

yes, most of the core oscillators, as i said, are DSP based, rather than wavetable. im actually suprised that the DX used DSP-based sine oscillators, though, given the price-to-time-frame of the original DX7. i figured wavetables were pretty much the only way to go back then.

 

Can anyone explain to me how the FM Op in the Core in Reaktor 5 functions in regard to phase modulation and the discussion below regarding FM synthesis?

Should I be able to use this as a shortcut for creating an FM synthesizer by routing the output of each into another to act as FM operators?

 

according to the core manual it uses actual DX phasemodulation. i think the modulation amount is in radians though, which has to be kept in mind. maybe try plugging those into a basic FM synth and see what happens.

 

yes, i looked at it, the differance is that the modulator is converted to radians and then added to the phase output, rather than the phase frequency. i think the original phase input is needed to keep the base pitch.

 

you could also try opening fm8 from the user library and replacing all the operators in that with the new fm operator macros. they really are quite handy and offer some cool options, although you do need to tweak them somewhat with audio voice combiners.

 

ok, since this thread i have been working on a basic FM synth, like a simpler version of FM-7, with R5's BP envelopes. its kinda huge right now, due to a lot of BMP's and i think the snap arrays in the envelopes dont help either. also, its a cpu pig, but ill work on this. anyways, i was wondering if anyone was interested in trying this out and maybe coming up with some snaps for me, as i really have very little experience programming FM synths. i dont want to post this to the UL unfinished but i think it sounds pretty decent already, and once i slim it down it should be pretty nice. if anyone is interested, either e-mail me at db_sputnik*at*yahoo.com, or leave your e-mail address here. you will need a broadband connection probably, since it is large. also, if possible, tell me if you can use RAR archives, since i can make the attachment much smaller that way.

thanks for the help

 

okay, better late than never, i guess. i put up this synth at long last. it's called "fm schwein."

it seems to work better for pads than i thought it would so it's sort of a general purpose fm synth. it's still a cpu pig (hence the name) compared to fm7 though, and somehow it just doesn't sound the same. if anyone has ideas on how to make it sound a little "browner" (and adding tube distortion doesn't seem to work) that would be great, because it currently sounds very grey/blue. sometimes that's good too though, i guess.

also, sorry, but there's no electric piano emulation presets because i personally don't care much for the dx7 ep sound. i think you could figure it out based on the presets i have in there though. it should be possible to copy settings from dx7 patches into this if you have access to them.