Emulating the DX7 the HARD way
Why Hacker News recommends it
Recommended in DX7 reverse-engineering threads as a look at the effort behind bit-accurate emulation.
What it is
An episode of Plogue's chipresearch series on emulating the Yamaha DX7 from the hardware up. It covers the sub CPU and main CPU, address map investigation, cartridges, firmware analysis and a skeleton MAME driver.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2021 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Recommends tgv · 2021-10 · on “Yamaha DX7 Technical Analysis”
Plogue, a Canadian software company, have recently released a (software) emulation of the DX-7 in excruciating detail. Here you can see part of the trouble they went through: [this video] . Suffice to say that they used a logic analyzer to discover gritty details that no other analysis of the DX-7 I know has ever paid attention of.
Recommends TonyTrapp · 2022-02 · on “Yamaha DX7 chip reverse-engineering, part V: the output circuitry”
Maybe the closest free plugin, but it's not on the level of accuracy as Plogue's Chipsynth OPS7, which is bit-accurate. The author has an interesting video here, with more to come hopefully: [this video]
Recommends duniel · 2024-01 · on “Reverse-engineering the Yamaha DX7 synthesizer's sound chip from die photos (2021)”
I would recommend Plogue's OPS7, they have put considerable amounts of time and effort into reverse engineering the original chips. The interface is a little clunky but it sounds fantastic. [LINK] Edit: a YouTube video about the reverse engineering process from David at Plogue: [this video]