RYM2612 Iconic FM Synthesizer is in the shop

[TritoneAddiction]

Hydlide made a video on it.

[bsp]

I'm not really sure if that video does that synth justice but it's an ok intro for FM newbies (albeit a bit long).

I compared this synth to FM4 and PX7 myself and could not replicate the sound with these REs.
However, if you are looking for a high-quality sounding FM synth, better take a look at those other REs.

The whole point of this RE is that it is a rather accurate emulation of the YM2612 chip which was used in the Sega Genesis / Mega Drive in the late 80ies / early 90ies.

If you like this lo-fi sound (I do!), or if you even write music for retro-styled video games, this RE is a god sent.

Interestingly, the RE sounds quite organic for a digital synth. I noticed this when working on my song challenge entry, which uses a lot of note retriggering (for the drums).

The other soundchip in the Mega Drive is a PSG / SN76489-alike, which the author of the MS-34 RE (see discussion here) apparently had in mind.

If you combine both, you end up with a rather complete Mega Drive sound emulation

Last but not least, I like the resampler/bitcrusher in the RYM2612 RE (not demoed in the video, it's controlled by the "DAC prescaler" knob). Could not replicate it with Decimort2 or Resampler.

EDIT: It should also be mentioned that this RE is quite CPU efficient. The song I submitted for the compo has 14 instances and the DSP-meter never exceeded one bar.

[jonheal]

EDIT: It should also be mentioned that this RE is quite CPU efficient. The song I submitted for the compo has 14 instances and the DSP-meter never exceeded one bar.

By comparison, the FM4 is quite CPU hungry, although I suppose the "lo-fi-ness" of the RYM2612 saves it some cycles.

[jonheal]

EDIT: It should also be mentioned that this RE is quite CPU efficient. The song I submitted for the compo has 14 instances and the DSP-meter never exceeded one bar.

By comparison, the FM4 is quite CPU hungry, although I suppose the "lo-fi-ness" of the RYM2612 saves it some cycles.

After playing with the FM4 here for a bit, it seems the only things that really bumps up the DSP bars is raising the Release sliders. And increasing the release on the RYM2612 operators has pretty much the same effect on the DSP bars.

[inphonik]

Hello FM lovers

I humbly think there's a missing "demonstration" of what FM synthesis really is in essence. Even if its principle sounds familiar and understood by many people, I'd like to share a sonic demonstration.

I prepared the most simple handmade 2 operators FM patch in Thor using only analog oscillators. You can watch it here:

And the Reason file is available here : http://www.mathieudemange.fr/files/fm-theory.reason
(note that it uses Lectric Panda's Skope, but simply bypass it if you don't have it)

Just press play and watch the two rotary knobs from the Thor being automated and this'll hopefully help to reveal the very fundamental nature of FM synthesis. Don't hesitate to play with those two knobs after your first listening and study this Thor configuration. You'll doubtlessly recognize this typical FM timbre that sounds familiar.

96000 hz sample rate highly recommended.

Happy listening, feedback welcome

Yours,

Mathieu

[OverneathTheSkyBridg]

I've always meant to ask this question so I may as well ask it here. I'm trying out both the FM4 and the RYM2612, and as someone who already has the PX7 what advantages can either of these four operator fm synths offer that the PX7 can't cover?

[OverneathTheSkyBridg]

I'm also doing the song challenge, and I've noticed I've been getting nasty pops out of the device, even though my DSP usage is about 2 bars. Does anyone else experience this?

[Advanced Suite]

I'm also doing the song challenge, and I've noticed I've been getting nasty pops out of the device, even though my DSP usage is about 2 bars. Does anyone else experience this?

I was running into this problem earlier this year and it turned out to be my sound card

[OverneathTheSkyBridg]

I'm also doing the song challenge, and I've noticed I've been getting nasty pops out of the device, even though my DSP usage is about 2 bars. Does anyone else experience this?

I was running into this problem earlier this year and it turned out to be my sound card

I thought that at first, but after a few experiments I found it's definitely the device. I found that quitting and restarting Reason would work for a bit but it would slowly happen over time until it was basically unplayable. I bounced all the tracks down to audio and haven't had a problem with it since.

[joeyluck]

Posted earlier today on Mathieu Demange's Facebook Page:

Remember when we said we had "special plans for interoperability" with the RYM2612? It's coming soon!

[Faastwalker]

Posted earlier today on Mathieu Demange's Facebook Page:

What exactly is going on here? I'm not sure!

[ScuzzyEye]

Looks like it's a VGM (Video Game Music) player that handles Genesis/Mega Drive music rips. When you hear an instrument in the playback that you like, you can export it's settings to work with RYM2612, including it exporting a file on the fly when you drag out of the window. The export file that it makes is a .repatch. If you drop a Repatch in Reason it creates the device that's associated with the file.

[esselfortium]

That is fantastically cool!

[Exowildebeest]

Looks like it's a VGM (Video Game Music) player that handles Genesis/Mega Drive music rips. When you hear an instrument in the playback that you like, you can export it's settings to work with RYM2612, including it exporting a file on the fly when you drag out of the window. The export file that it makes is a .repatch. If you drop a Repatch in Reason it creates the device that's associated with the file.

Innovative!

Other devs could explore similar things, with utilities outside Reason making RE patches.

[ScuzzyEye]

Looks like it's a VGM (Video Game Music) player that handles Genesis/Mega Drive music rips. When you hear an instrument in the playback that you like, you can export it's settings to work with RYM2612, including it exporting a file on the fly when you drag out of the window. The export file that it makes is a .repatch. If you drop a Repatch in Reason it creates the device that's associated with the file.

Innovative!

Other devs could explore similar things, with utilities outside Reason making RE patches.

Not a bad idea, but I see it most useful for converting patches from other formats (which is basically what this is doing). If a device is so hard to program that it needs an external utility, maybe the UX should be revisited. The other exception would be something like a patch mutator, since that's not something the device can do itself.

[platzangst]

Looks like it's a VGM (Video Game Music) player that handles Genesis/Mega Drive music rips.

I tried to look the VGM format up, but was left stymied about what exactly is contained in such a file. I'm assuming it's not just straight digital audio of some sort?

On a related note, I wonder how feasible it would be to craft a more standard media player that could select a range of audio info and translate it into an RE-loadable patch for a theoretical RE sampler...

[ScuzzyEye]

Looks like it's a VGM (Video Game Music) player that handles Genesis/Mega Drive music rips.

I tried to look the VGM format up, but was left stymied about what exactly is contained in such a file. I'm assuming it's not just straight digital audio of some sort?

On a related note, I wonder how feasible it would be to craft a more standard media player that could select a range of audio info and translate it into an RE-loadable patch for a theoretical RE sampler...

The VGM format is a bit like MIDI in that it contains time stamps. But instead of standardized parameters it has what's more like raw memory writes that happen at those times. The rips are created by video game system emulators. Because these emulators have models of the sound chips, and how they are mapped in memory the basically record the writes that happen to the memory port(s) assigned to the sound chip. A VGM player also needs to emulate the sound chip (but not the rest of the system) to accurately reproduce the game's music. Each revision of the VGM format has added more chips. A player needs to emulate each individual chip that it wants to be able to play.

If you open a Repatch file in a text editor you'll see it's simply an XML file. Each control for the RE that the patch is for will have a discrete value. That's a fine format for a patch, basically a list of values assigned to controls. It's not a good format for storing large chunks of binary data that would be required for a sampler. There is one other data format, a string, that you can see in devices that let you enter text into a field. It's long been possible to encode binary data into strings (see email attachments in UUEncode, Base64, Yenc, etc.). But just like email once you start trying to encode multiple megabytes into text you're really abusing the system, and forget about gigabytes entirely. So if you're trying to make a device that holds a few small samples (like might be present in an 80s/90s video game cartridge) in its Repatch, that might be possible, but forget about designing the next revolution in samplers. At least until Reason lets devices have access to user provided samples stored in the song file.

[dioxide]

I think this is a great idea, very smart.

[joeyluck]

Just a heads up that RYMCast is now in public beta!

And we did an interview with them

https://www.reasontalk.com/2017/01/rymcast-and-rym2612/

[chimp_spanner]

Okay edited because I actually read the article and found all the files haha.

But yeah looking at how these files play back I think I get it now. 6 FM voices, each monophonic, and 4 PCM channels. I can replicate that in Reason no problem.

Only thing is I can't get RYMCast to drag and drop sounds into Reason. Is that functionality Mac only atm?

[inphonik]

Hi,

Simply put the player in pause before drag'n'drop. It's the way you "catch & freeze" instruments before exporting.

Cheers,

Mathieu

[chimp_spanner]

Hi,

Simply put the player in pause before drag'n'drop. It's the way you "catch & freeze" instruments before exporting.

Cheers,

Mathieu

Hey Mathieu, yeah that was me on email the other day! Thanks again for your help Got it working perfectly!

Do you know if there's a way to extract samples also?

[inphonik]

Hi Paul,

Woohoo! Man, you gotta finish that song, quick! It's excellent! Bravo!

As for the PCM samples, well, there seem to be some demands on that area so I guess I'll have to come up with something in a near future

Cheers,

Mathieu