sloopDX

sloopDX was born from an obvious observation: the FM-1+VA by Baud Girl (closed) had the best FM editing and SLOOP the best workflow. Sven Trogus (zvenson, DesignBurg — the guy behind the community hub) put the two together: the live workflow of SLOOP with a real DX7 inside. A single synthesis engine — Dexed’s msfa core ported to integer C and verified against Dexed sample by sample (99% identical, the rest within 1–2 LSB) — with a cutoff-and-resonance LP behind every voice. The drum track is 16 FM drum kits you program on the device itself.

Workflow

Live groovebox with a DX7 flavor (FM basses, E.PIANO, bells, brass over free-take loops) and, as a bonus, the cheapest DX7 voice editor there is. Full voice editing on the device — algorithm drawing, per-operator pages, solo/mute — plus a web editor with draggable envelopes and .syx import/export. Patterns of up to 128 steps (4 tracks share a pool of 256) and an OMNI arp mode: black keys as chord buttons, white keys as a harp, with a bass line that follows.

Engines & what it emulates

Yamaha DX7: 6 operators, 32 algorithms, rate/level envelopes with scaling, pitch envelope, LFO and feedback. 20 homemade factory voices (EPIANO 1/2, FM BASS, DEEP SUB, 808 SUB, REESE, MARIMBA, KOTO…) and 8 banks × 32 = 256 voices from standard .syx bulk dumps. DX KIT, 808 FM, ELECTRO, METAL and MY KIT kits: every percussion is an FM voice with a noise operator.

What sets it apart

• Kit generator with dice and shareable seeds; MY KIT exports as .syx.
• Programmable FM drum kits (8 macros per sound, reverb send) and per-step TUNE/DECAY locks.
• All of SLOOP’s performance layers: free takes, sections, punch-ins.

Status & caveats

“3.4, a stable release” per the hub (the 3.x series ships from the project site and the last tagged GitHub release is v2.6). Yet to verify: the editor end-to-end, and CPU load with 14 simultaneous DX7 voices. The factory voices are generated by a script (gen_dx7_bank.py); zero data from Yamaha. Its little brother zp12 shares the flash with it.