Yamaha Essay FInished FM

	In 1984 Yamaha introduced the DX7, a revolutionary musical instrument that created what became known as the sound of the 80s.  This showed the capability of Phase Distortion synthesis.  While the DX, TX, FS, and early PSR series keyboards are commonly referred to as Frequency Modulation units, they do not use true FM for sound generation, instead opting for a different but similar methot called Phase Distortion.  The road to this legendary instrument, which became the best selling keyboard synthesizer of all time, (and still is!) is an interesting story.  FM has more or less died as well credited form of musical sound generation, but the DX7 and its descendants and revisions are still used widely in many studios around the world, and is one of the few keyboards that I would say would never leave my setup, were I to have one.  What FM I do use comes from one of the last hurrahs of '80s FM synthesis, the Yamaha DX11 and TX81z.  Internally these instruments are nearly identical.  There is one difference about the sound engines of these otherwise identical instruments, that being a small but sometimes useful feature called a pitch envelope.   This can make the pitch of a sound change over time as you hold the key down, which can be useful in a lot of situations, but is not a complete deal breaker.  I got the TX81z first, bought used for $80 in May of 2012.  This was my first "real" synthesizer, as the only other one I had was a very limited groove box.  The TX81z is Yamaha's first truly multitimbral FM synthesizer, based around one of the later FM chips Yamaha made, called the YM2414, often reffered to as the OPZ. (Operator Type-Z)  This was also their first synthesizer to use multiple waveforms for FM synthesis.  Previously, (In the case of older Yamaha instruments like the GS1, GS2, DX1, DX5, DX7, DX9, DX100, DX21, DX27 TX7, TX816, TX802, as well as their earlier FM generator chips.) only sine waves were used for FM synthesis.  This meant that if you wanted a more complex wave than a sine wave, you would have to lose a set of operators to generate that more complex wave. The DX7 had 6 operators, which could all act on each other.  If someone wanted to use a more complex wave, the would have to use 2 of the 6 to generate that wave.  In the case of the TX81z, each operator had 8 waveforms, which meant more flexibility.  However, the TX81z only had 4 operators, which gave a realistic downside to the upside of having more waveforms.  There was never another Yamaha synthesizer that did this, including the flagship FS1r that was made 10 years later.  In August of that same year I visited a guitar show, with no intent to leave with anything.  However after about 20 minutes of wandering around the hall, I saw a Yamaha DX11 for sale for $100.  I asked the seller if I could play it, and he obliged.  After fiddling with the keyboard for a few minutes, the seller told me to shut it off and come back if I was going to buy it.  I promised I would.  After some haggling, I brought the price down to $80, which I had at the time.  I was unimaginably excited about this purchase. Finally, I owned a real keyboard synthesizer, and one of a type I never thought I would own, no less!  The history of the DX11 is mostly applicable to the TX81z as well.  In 1988 Yamaha relased a 61 key keyboard version of their popular TX81z.  In Japan, it was called the Yamaha V2, but the name was changed for the market outside of Japan for fears of the instrument being associated with the Nazi-developed V2 missile.  This keyboard is based on the same YM2414 architecture of the last year's TX81z, using the same 63B03 processor for patch managment, MIDI decoding, and display driving.  While this synthesizer was not as popular as the TX81z, it wasn't a complete failure.  These systems are not insanely difficult to come by, but they are not commonplace.  The main reason for this is that it was released at a bad time, when FM was considered overused and passe.  This was mainly because Yamaha's FM syntheizers dominated the market, but were and still are notoriously difficult to program, leading producers to use the premade patches already on the keyboard.  When the DX11 came out, it was only seen as another overused piano box, and it was discontinued with the TX81z in late 1988.  FM was seen as dead, and Yamaha went on to work on thier SY, EX, and Motif series keyboards into the 90s.  FM had one last shout in the FS1r, released in 1998 and discontinued in 2000.  The FS1r suffered from the same issues the other late FM synthesizers suffered from, and it's specifications were seen as inadequate for the standards of 1998. The FS1r was a 16 (!) operator FM synthesizer, sporting 8 voiced and 8 unvoiced formant generators, instead of the operators of yesteryear.  These fromant generators could produce vocal effects, using formant filtering to achieve the same effect as a human mouth shaping words.  The FS1r was a bargain at the time for the amount of power is held within this blue-silver box.  Selling for $400 retail, this was not a large investment, even at the time.  Unfortunately that power was not realised until after the FS1r was discontinued, making this instrument very sought after. These are very few and far between, and when they do rarely appear on sites like EBay and Reverb.com, they command a hefty price.  In my experience, I have not seen an FS1r sell for less than $1,000 secondhand.  While it is entirely worth it if you have the money, I do not.  This was a bi mistake on Yamaha's part, and a few years after it's discontinuance, rumors of an FS2r were floating around the Internet.  These rumors were just that, and Yamaha has not made another original FM synthesizer since.  There was the PLG100DX and PLG150DX, which were essentially reissues of the original DX7 on add-in cards compatible with Yamaha's then-current line of synthesizers and workstations.  These cards existed around the time that the FS1r was discontinued.  There was also the DX200, which was Yamaha's AN200 groovebox with a PLG150DX preinstalled in the expansion slot, and the front controls reassigned to FM functions.  When the DX200 was discontinued, Yamaha would not make another FM synthesizer.  As of now (March 2015), there is more rumors about Yamaha bringing FM back in the form of a new FM synth, but according to my research, these rumors are unfounded.  FM had a bit more success on the video game and computer side of the agrument, though.

	This started with arcade games in the mid 80s using Yamaha's YM2151, another 4 operator multichannel FM chip.  Around the same time, there was an expansion for the Nintendo Entertainment System that was planned to add FM synthesis capabilities, but this idea was scrapped.  The connector was still implemented on the system,  and is under a plastic cover on the bottom of the console.  In 1986, the IBM PC compatible computer market joined the FM club, with the AdLib sound card.  This card, based around the YM3812 OPL2 sound generator chip, using mainly off-the-shelf parts and external glue logic to control the Yamaha chip.  With the AdLib being so simply constructed using widely available parts, it was quckly cloned by Creative Labs, who had introduced their own sound device, the Creative Music System, (later renamed the Game Blaster to coincide with their Blaster branding) at the same time as the AdLib.  This card, called the Sound Blaster, quickly overtook the AdLib because of it's similar price and added features.  These features include audio input, a more usable volume control method, (the AdLib used a small knob that stuck out of the back of the card, where as the Sound Blaster used a wheel that was set into the back plate of the card) an included 15-pin joystick interface on the card, and, the final nail in the coffin for AdLib, PCM digital sound for sound effects and evetually music.  This made digitised sound effects possible, and eventually games started only using the PCM channel of the Sound Blaster to play either digitised music or sequenced samples, called .MOD files.  The AdLib was revised, adding the features that the Sound Blaster originally added, but it was too little too late for AdLib, and they soon went defunct.  The Sound Blaster, and in turn, the Yamaha YM3812 chip it used, lived on through the 80s and into the 90s.  FM's death in the PC realm was realised in Yamaha's own OPL3 compatible sound card, the YMF747 Gold.  I bought one of these cards, and saved it from being a gold harvest card.  (Gold harvest is when the card is burned away to get the gold traces, to then melt down into boullion and sell.  The card was called the YMF747 Gold because all of the traces were made from gold,  making this card a very valuable one to gold harvest eviltons.)  The card was fully functional, yet was still being sold as scrap.  This card had the main attraction, a Yamaha XG compatible sound generation unit, (General MIDI compatible sampled sounds, a very good system to use in computers that are used with MIDI a lot.) and the part that this article is intersted in; a Yamaha OPL3-compatible emulation of the successor to the classic OPL2.  This worked satisfactorily in place of a later Sound Blaster card (AdLib never made a PCI compatible card) but was incompatible with DOS games from my experiance.
	The arcades were in FM first, and the home video game consoles followed suit.  The first appearance of FM in a home video game console was in the form of an expansion to Sega's Master System console.  This provided nine channels of two operator FM synthesis, provided by a Yamaha YM2413 FM sound chip.  This was based on the OPL2, and was very limited. It allowed 15 preset patches, and one user patch.  All of the 15 instrument patches were "hard-wired" into the chip, and could not be modified by any means. The 1 user patch could not be stored, according to my research.  After this, the next system to use FM was the Sega Genesis from 1989.  This system included FM as part of the system, it was not an add-on.  This used the Yamaha YM2612, providing 6 FM channels with 4 operators for each channel, and 1 PCM channel, usually used for drums.  After this came the SNK Neo Geo AES in 1991.  This console was essentially a home version of SNK's MVS arcade game system.  This system used the Yamaha YM2610, providing four FM channels, with four operators each, three square wave channels, six 12-bit PCM channels, one 16-bit PCM channel, and one white noise generator.  The next to use FM was the Atari Jaguar.  This system used a custom audio generator, codename JERRY, using a variable amount of channels for FM synthesis.  No other information about the FM section of the JERRY chip is given.  The next and final home video game console to use FM synthesis was the Sega Saturn.  The Saturn used the Yamaha YMF292 (A custom chip for the Saturn) providing 32 channels of FM Synthesis providing anywhere from 2 to 32 operator FM synthesis with the amount of channels reversely proportional to the amount of operators in use.

	As a sound generation method, FM has died.  But it is still well loved by many people.  As it becomes more popular once again, it may return with a new keyboard from Yamaha.  Until then, we still have the DX7.