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Fm types / wider range of sonic capability

DJ Fresh
Thanks for making such an inspiring instrument!

I’ve had my fm for a couple of weeks. I love the UI and UX, very intuitive. The knob control is a godsend and menu system and undo history are amazing

I have to say however slightly dissapointed in a few things

Demo sounds - they really sound like something from the 80s which in some ways is nice but feels like a worrying reminder that maybe pure fm is not capable of modern sounds? Or is it just that the demo sounds are very limited?

I have sat and tried to make more modern sounds and I think where it really falls down is two areas

- effects

Distortion particularly just sounds very algorithmic. Something heavier like a fuzz or tape style distortion would really help transform clean fm sound. I use outboard distortion (well actually digital outboard emulation on my ua Apollo and this takes things into a whole different world) any plans to go a bit less clean with the effects?

- Envelope shapes

The envelope designer is fantastic but missing the ability to change curve shape (exponential / linear) ideally this would be adjustable like the way in Ableton you can hold down alt and morph between - exponential to linear and then + exponential

This is truly a fantastic piece of design and ux but if it can only do one thing in this day and age it’s going to end up in a corner really quickly which is such a shame… any plans to introduce phase distortion or any other interesting ‘fm variants’? Or more interesting filter types (comb / bandwidth / notch etc)

Someone suggested short sample transients like the D50 in another thread which sounded like a great relatively low resource feature from what I understand (which also keeps the synth in its fm lane)

Subtractive synthesis would probably be a diversion to far but the capabilities at the moment sonically are just too limited
KODAMO
Demo sounds - they really sound like something from the 80s which in some ways is nice but feels like a worrying reminder that maybe pure fm is not capable of modern sounds? Or is it just that the demo sounds are very limited?


You can do everything with FM, usually the "modern" sounds in are quite simple in essence, they just have tons effects on them. A trap that is easy to fall into is to start repeating the same sound design patterns after a few sounds. Try totally different approaches each time to get different style of sounds. Unfortunately a lot of sound and music is categorized "80's" but what is considered modern is quite a limited tonal range.

Subtractive synthesis would probably be a diversion to far but the capabilities at the moment sonically are just too limited


Subtractive synthesis is already there, it's the resonant lowpass/highpass filter on each voice. With FM you can build some analog-like Square/Saws etc. and filter them like on a classic synthesizer. Sonically, you can do everything with FM including wavetable or additive, it's totally up to the sound designer. The EssenceFM already has more tools than most synths to get a large palette of sounds.

Check some productions by Snipecatcher, he only uses the EssenceFM for all these tracks (including drums and effects !):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Yz6tMpiJlA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeWl4JNPA-g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmxRkIVsGbk

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