I ‘grew up’ on the YM2612 due to the Genesis being my childhood console.
As a rapper/producer these days - I’m always reaching back there when composing Beats - with the self-imposed limitations included, of course. Some prouducers still prefer an MPC2000 over a DAW.
Have you interacted with the folks at Plogue making the OPS7 emulator? They seem to be obsessed with reverse engineering to get bit-level hardware accuracy (but with a logic analyzer).
It's not bad, but I've heard that the person who started it is a jerk who constantly posts self-serving comments on HN, and always seems to pop up on threads about the DX7.
When I started doing my research into the DX7 I pored over Dexed's source code to understand how its emulation worked. It was really amazing to discover what an interesting legacy its source code has! The bulk of Dexed's code is derived from Raph Levien's (hi Raph!) Music Synthesizer For Android (msfa). However there's additional code derived from Steffen Ohrendorf's ppplay[0], which in turn builds upon different people's research, reverse-engineering, and experimentation going back decades. Going through it, I really felt like I was looking at something organic built not just from, but upon the passion, and dedication of so many different talented people, over many years. Very cool!
Yes, I'm really pleased with the way it started as an individual project and turned into a collaboration. And I think it's likely that Ken's detailed and excellent investigative work will find its way into further code improvements.
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: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJ97iXQrqzw
