Digital Suburban has announced the release of Dexed, a fantastic freeware Yamaha DX7 inspired FM synthesizer in VSTi plugin format for Windows, Mac and Linux based DAWs.
Don’t be fooled by the cheap looking GUI design. In my opinion, this is the best Yamaha DX7 emulation in the freeware world. I’ve been looking for an instrument like this for such a long while, and finally, here it is!
See also: Free FM Synthesizer VSTi Plugins!Why do I like Dexed so much? There are several decent free FM synthesizers out there already (take a look at the article linked above), but this one is the most stable, easy to use, and feature packed of the bunch. Dexed comes with a huge sound bank containing 1024 classic DX7 presets, bringing tons and tons of classic FM sounds at your fingertips.
I’m not much of an FM synth programmer to begin with, so having access to so many presets is a huge plus in my case. Adding to that, the interface is very easy to understand (as far as FM synthesizers go) and I’m sure that this great little plugin will help me get better at programming synthesizers based on frequency modulation. In terms of accessibility and ease of use, I would also recommend the very good FMMF by de la Mancha.
The included patches are organized into 32 sound banks with 32 presets in each bank. You’ll find loads of classic FM sounds in these, from legendary electric pianos to brass, sound effects, and other stuff. If you’re looking for that legendary Lately Bass preset, load up a patch called BassAirMan from sound bank #5.
The plugin also works as a program editor for the hardware Yamaha DX7 synthesizer. It was actually developed primarily to serve as a software companion for the DX7, but it turned out to be such a great emulation of the original instrument.
Anyways, I’m honestly blown away by this freeware instrument. It could be due to the fact that I’ve been looking for an easy to use FM synthesizer for such a long time, but who knows. If you’re looking for a free FM instrument for your software collection, definitely grab this one and give it a go. I’m pretty sure that you wan’t be disappointed.
Video Demo
Check out the Dexed demo video:
Download
Dexed is available for free download via Github (935 kB download size, ZIP archive, 32-bit & 64-bit VSTi plugin format for Windows, Mac, Linux).
