Free gear alert: Dexed puts a Yamaha DX7 in your DAW for zero dollars
Free gear alert: Dexed puts a Yamaha DX7 in your DAW for zero dollars
If you have ever wanted that glassy 80s FM sound without paying vintage synth money, this is the one. Dexed is a free plugin that models the Yamaha DX7, the 1983 keyboard that defined a decade. We are talking the electric pianos, the bells, the glassy basses, the whole FM thing, running on your computer.
What makes it great is that it is not just a rough copy. It recreates the DX7 engine with all six operators, it loads original DX7 SysEx patches, and if you actually own a real DX7 it doubles as an editor and patch librarian for it. It also gives you 144 automatable parameters on one panel, which is a lot more friendly than the original hardware ever was.
The details:
Price: free, open source (GPL v3)
Formats: VST, VST3, AU, CLAP
Systems: Windows, Mac, Linux
Download it here: https://github.com/asb2m10/dexed/releases
How to install:
Windows: grab the release zip, copy the VST3 file into C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3, then rescan plugins in your DAW.
Mac: copy the AU or VST3 into Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components or VST3, then rescan plugins in your DAW.
Linux: builds are on the releases page too.
No ROM files needed here. Dexed rebuilds the DX7 engine from scratch, so there is nothing extra to hunt down. Just install it and start playing. There are thousands of free DX7 patches floating around in SysEx format if you want instant sounds.
Here is what it looks like running:
And here it is in action:
Honestly, for free, this one is a no brainer. If FM sounds are your thing, or you just want a piece of synth history on your hard drive, grab it.