Jacques Prestreau (aka BlackWinny) has taken the time to gather all the freely available 6-OP FM patches on the web and consolidate them into one amazing patch collection.

These should work in the amazing free FM synth Dexed, and several other 6-OP FM synths.

More info from Jacques about the collection (available in the read me file):

Dexed_cart version 1.0 by BlackWinny, 2015/01/04 (YYYY/MM/DD)

All these sysex files are (or should be) compatible with Dexed, FM8, and any emulation (software or hardware) of a synth of the 6-OP family of the Yamaha stuff which was produced featuring the FM synthesis with 6 operators.

This family included:

- DX7

- DX1

- TX816

- TX216

- TX7

- DX5

- DX7IID

- DX7IIFD

- DX7S

- TX802

You can get many informations about the features of these synths (and their respective differences) here: http://www.synthark.org/Yamaha/6op-FM_Family.html

There is already a crowd of compilations of sysex files for the Yamaha DX7 and its famous family. But all the compilations I have found are absolutely insane... due to an incredible amount of duplicate files that they contain.

There is even a compilation which gathers not less than 200,000 patches in 5,917 sysex files! But when comes the time to clean that huge collection... it appears that finally it contains less than 2,000 really different sysex files. Close to four thousands of the files in that 200K collection are in fact duplicate sysex files in many sub-collections... and many of them are even present because of conversions with different applications so with slight different results in the headers or the footers or their checksums. Many of them are even unusable because with errors or absent checksums or bad CRC, etc.

The same for the Dave Benson's collection, for the Bobby Blues "All the web" collection, for the AcidBoxBlues collection, for the Synthzone collection, etc. Each one contains already tons and tons and tons of dupes files, yes. Not only dupes of patches... but tons of dupes of sysex themselves!

Here you will find no dupes of sysex themselves. I have hunted them with the strongest severity.

To make my own collection, that you have under your eyes, I have took: - That Dx7_200k_collection above

- The Bobby Blues website (one of the most interesting ever)

- The Acidboxblues website

- The Dave Benson's DX7 Page

- The synthzone website

- The Chris's Music Site

- The DX7.nl website

- The Atari page from Tim Conrardy

- The Aminet website (the true one)

- And several smaller websites here and there, all providing sysex files as freewares

All that became a merry jumble (a total of 8,736 sysex files of all sizes and with several extension names!) where I had to find what was with what, who made what, who transformed what, who copied what to create a collection without mentioning the original authors, what was a correct new version of what, what was a failed new version of what, what works and what doesn't work, what is well named and what is badly named, what is a complete collection and what is an incomplete collection, where are the missing files if I had them by chance elsewhere... a titanesque task! It began in August 2014. A first preliminary version came out in September. And at last this first real version 1.0 come out now... in January 2015!

This new collection (eh eh... yes, it makes of course a new one!) has at least the advantage to be almost entirely sorted. Each time it was possible, I sorted by author. It means that the previous collections (almost all were only compilations of files which are already elsewhere) have been totally split up... and even smashed! Because it was in my opinion very important to sort first by author: the best way to retrieve the uniqueness. And also because a patch is a work of art, and it is respectful to give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to give back to the artist designer what belongs to this artist designer. But even that it doesn't totally prevent the presence of dupe patches, because a designer can use the same patch in several sysex creations... and also because there are wonderful sysex files made to gather patches for an instrument or made to gather superb patches for a style or music, for example. But each time it was possible I kept in priority the sysex file made by the creator himself... and removed tons and tons of dupes, successive and wrong conversions by different tools, etc.

Some sysex files remain sorted by instruments instead of by authors. They are in the folder "!Instruments" which begins by an exclamation point to remain at the top of the list of folders. These sysex files are at this place when the author remains unknown... or when the full sysex file contains all its patches for a specific instrument or type of instrument or for a style or music. But as soon as I could know the author, the file went to his personal folder. But several authors created even some real collections of several sysex files for an instrument, the ensemble constituting itself a collection specific to that instrument. So of course these full collections are classed as well... for the sense of practicality.

I have not split any sysex file... It would have been a work for several years, able to ruin a health or to lead someone to a divorce or to a psychiatric hospital. And it would have been also a risk to destroy by lack of knowledge some files which were in fact the original files by a creator. Eh... when you find ten times a same patch in ten sysex files it is not always possible to know which one is the original one if you don't have a text file explaining that it is the original. Unfortunately the DX7 (and its family) did not give the ability to sign a patch in its structure when exporting it in a sysex.

Some collections remain incomplete. I will try to complete them later, at the fortune of my discovers on the web... or with your help.

And to end this text, I mention that there is also a folder named "!Unsorted". Everybody will easily understand what it contains: the files that I have not yet got the time to sort... or which resist to my searches. It is probable that this folder contains some duplicate files (by a small difference or because they are new or old versions) related to some files already sorted. If I find what to do with them, they will be put at the right place... or removed like the thousands of duplicate sysex which have already been removed.

If you find clues to help me about some of these unsorted files (or if you find sorted files wrongly placed or which are duplicates that I have not detected)... feel free to tell me. This collection is yours as well as mine and I shall be happy to make successive new versions to enhance and improve that work. And of course there will be a changelog.

To use this file in Dexed, don't unzip it! The zip file is named "Dexed_cart_1.0.zip". You have just to rename it "Dexed_cart.zip" (you have just to remove "_1.0").

To use this file in FM8 (or any other synth having the feature to import DX7 sysex), unzip it and import the result in your synth. That's all.

Today is 2015/01/04 (YYYY/MM/DD) and this version of the file Dexed_Cart.zip is the 1.0.

Jacques PRESTREAU (aka BlackWinny), Paris, France