AW: [Digital_Hell] DX-7 Noise

[Haible Juergen]

	>I *think* Robin 'devilfish' Whittle used to do low-noise fixes on
the DX7
	>(I know he did for the early Roland midi module).

This is just from memory (as so often):
 I think I remember the headphone amp of the DX-7 was quite noisy,
but not the normal audio path. You could trim the (compound) DAC
of the Mk1 DX7 for minimum noise of the D/A conversion, but the
whole FM algorithm would still produce more noise than the audio
path (except the HP amp).
The later models (Mk 2, TX-802 and even the models that combined
FM and ROMpler) had better DACs, but still suffered from the noisy
digital implementation. Only important for dark sounds, and not *that*
bad really - but I doubt that replacing opamps would help much.

Yamaha aparently have still put quite some remarkable analogue
stuff into the DX-7: I still remember my surprise when I found the
opto electronic VCA for the volume pedal !

JH.