Finally I can talk about this
As one of the test monkeys I have been playing with MOD-7 for a little while and what you can expect is the full range of FM capabilities you'd expect from a 6 op synth, plus a whole bunch of other stuff that goes well beyond your daddy's FM synth
In fact you can create some amazing sounds using this EXi without ever using any FM.
This EXi continues the philosophy of the previous releases; namely taking a synthesis technique from the Korg canon and then very significantly expanding on that idea and going bananas with the modulation capabilities. Just like the STR-1 went well beyond the Plucked String model of the MOSS board, the MOD-7 totally smokes the MOSS VPM implementation. For all those people that wanted the Radias features that weren't already covered by the AL-1 (VPM, Waveshaper, PCM manipulation) then you will find all of those things in spades in the MOD-7.
We all know about FM so it's worth just talking about some of the other fun things you can do with MOD-7 :
Check out the virtual GUI and you'll notice that you can choose to use either hard wired oscillator topologies/algorithms like the DX7 or you can use an MS20EX style patch panel to hook things up. This is a wonderful thing because you can build up your own connections of modulators/carriers as you're designing your sound which feels very natural. You'd need to be a real FM wunderkind to know exactly which algorithm was the right place to start from when designing a sound that you only had an inkling of in your minds ear. The patch panel lets you change your mind very easily as you're designing your sound and encourages a little more experimentation. It also lets you do more interesting feedback things than ye olde models did. Speaking of feedback that is a very effective technique used on the MOSS board and here you can introduce far more interesting feedback arrangements than the mixer on the MOSS board allowed.
All of those 6 FM ops are actually more like little processing units, you don't have to use them as oscillators per se. You can do the DX7 thing and set the pitch ratio to FIXED and use it as a sine waveshaper, or you can use it for Ringmod (or AM) acting on a pair of inputs or you can just use Waveshaper section of the OSC alone to process inputs from other parts of the EXi. So you can take a guitar multisample and drive it through a waveshaper to get a very different guitar timbre and then drive that into another waveshaper which is acting as a tube emulator. If you've used Kurzweil's VAST and enjoyed that, you'll love this. The waveshapers are far better endowed and flexible in MOD-7
Speaking of waveshaping ... FM & waveshaping ... its a funny old combination when you first look at it, but the pairing works really well. In traditional FM you'd normally modulate a carrier using a sine wave or better still a slightly more complex waveform you created using feedback or a chain of other ops. With MOD-7 you can have a sine carrier and then modulate it with a very rich waveform created by passing a sine through a waveshaper. The waveshapers offer a whole bunch of shapes that take a sine and add extra harmonics, add a little drive, or recreate other waveforms such as those extra waves that were present in the TX-81Z for example. So you can create more complex sounds using less ops. The waveshapers are not static either. You modulate a bunch of parameters there to add some very interesting variation or motion to the sound. You can go really bananas and unleash waveshaping, feedback and ringmodulation all in one single oscillator, to create an FM modulator that goes well beyond anything you can even comprehend
The key thing to understand with MOD-7 is that is not just an FM synth. It's really like a whole toolkit of different synthesis techniques :
FM
AM
Additive
PCM sampling
Subtractive/Analog (the oscillators will generate saws/squares/triangles, there are filters, ring mod)
Waveshaping
Feedback
... that you can mix together to create fascinating new sounds. Or if you prefer, simply to add a little zest to a favourite ROM multisample like an acoustic bass or sax.
Finally, the real beauty of it is, all of that is just one half of an EXi Program. In the other half you can do it all over again with another MOD-7 instance or any of the other EXi engines. It's particularly nice to mix it with a MS20EX or AL-1, very complimentary sound characters.
A little bit of freeform mind dump there about a few random things. It's difficult when this information has had to be withheld and then released all in one go, like water building up behind a dam. I didn't know where to start, there's just so much to talk about it with this EXi.
Any questions just ask ...
Daz.
