Oh I love FM synths! I'm working on a customisable one in my spare time lately for the kids' school, as the music teacher was complaining that the students have been using all the same samples over and over. Feel free to have a peek! Desktop only. Source code is hopefully nice and clean too: https://chrishulbert.github.io/you-synth
Super cool. Well done. Now make it a full Yamaha ReFace DX ;)
Also woaah, the randomize is amazing.
Proposal: make z and x change octave.
Fyi Robert Henke's new album came out a few weeks ago: https://roberthenke.bandcamp.com/album/studio
Reason has a very nice and versatile FM synth, "Algoritm": https://www.reasonstudios.com/shop/rack-extension/algoritm-f...
Ableton tutorial features an excellent (and completely free) FM synth in-browser: https://learningsynths.ableton.com/en/playground
FM is one of the most "naturally digital" synthesis method to implement, it's trivial once you have an accumulator and sin table working. The simplest form (and arguably the easiest to sound musical), can be expressed with a one-liner formula:
Ah Operator. This synth is so deep. Not only is it a fantastic FM synth, but it does subtractive synthesis well too. Also, it really is impressive how the UI manages to fit all those parameters. I mostly use it for cool synth leads. Here's one of my favorite videos on Operator https://youtu.be/rfeY0_k1ctk?si=s68Lr033cHf34a4M by Robert Henke himself.
somebody please make a plugin version of operator for both windows and mac, there are zero good options for fm synth plugins in 2024 except for sytrus on windows if they even still sell it. exacoustics GHOST is looking very promising though, just still in its teething stages
I have been out of audio for a long time but this sounds crazy.
Have owned FS1R and DX11, made my own FM synths in reaktor but I would still rate FM7/FM8 the greatest of all FM synths. There has just never been a better interface to program FM. In the same way I would probably rate the FS1R as one of the all time worst FM synths and I do enjoy a synth that is not easy to program for the uniqueness.
Unless it is vaporware now I would just get FM8.
fm8 is still around and i have it but unfortunately on higher dpi screens its quite frustrating to navigate the ui
Is Dexed not good? https://asb2m10.github.io/dexed/
Probably not pure FM synth, but what about Aalto from Madrona Labs?
there are numerous good FM modules inside VCV Rack (and Cardinal), which have the benefit (or drawback) that you get full control over both upstream modulation and downstream processing. And they exist for all platforms that Rack (& Cardinal) run on, not just "windows and mac".
I love FM synthesis and I love Robert Henke. Great article
Had the good luck of attending an Henke (Monolake) concert in large-ish and cubical space fully rigged with speaker arrays doing wave-field-synthesis which was beyond anything I heard before or since. Loud is one thing, gigantic is something else. https://roberthenke.com/concerts/wfs.html
You should have stepped over to the TU Berlin. A few month's before that concert, there was a performance/recreation of a concert that took place in Koln cathedral of various Messiaen organ works, played back on the WFS system installed at the TU. Much, much bigger than Henke's setup at Tresor, and it was a truly remarkable experience.