The popularity of Yamaha's DX7 synthesizer has reached a point whereby you can be certain to hear its characteristic tone in every commercial-break on television, on the vast majority of current singles, and most other places where modern music is to be found. To further generalise, of the sounds that you hear in this way the majority of them are the DX7's original preset ROM voices, as the aptitude for DX programming, or rather the time necessary to get to grips with it, is elusive to the majority of composer/performers. Consequently, the DX Owners Club was started for the swapping and building-up of DX voice libraries; and now Yamaha have produced their own alternate library of DX7 patches in the form of six 64-patch ROM cartridges, which is the same configuration as the standard DX7 ROMs (two banks of 32 voices).

Covering the majority of categories of sound, these ROMs are labelled VRC101 to VRC106:

VRC-101

In this ROM's 'A' bank of 32 voices you'll find Pianos and Guitars; its heading is 'Keyboard, Plucked and Tuned Percussion Group', and representing the keyboard department, you will find four Pianos, four Electric Pianos, various Clavs, Harpsichords and a few other obscurities such as Plepiard (?). I must admit that the Piano voices are the most disappointing of any of these cartridge voices, as they are not even as good as the DX7's original Piano voices, which were only three on a 10 scale of the DX7's potential anyway. These Piano voices curiously have more in common with a Jazz Guitar (quite a good Jazz Guitar... ) than the Pianos they claim to be. The Electric Pianos too were only mediocre, but the Acoustic Guitars are much more representative of what the DX7 is capable of, with a great deal of harmonic accuracy in the 'pluck' department. There are also a few Electric Guitars in VRC-101, and although not being a perfect synthesis of an electric guitar's sound, they are very powerful and Clav-like none-the-less.

Switching over to 'B' will give you a further 32 voices — Electric, Synth and Wooden Basses, Mandolins, Banjos, Vibes, Glocks, Xylophones and Marimbas are all here. Some of the synth Basses are quite 'un-digital' and would not be out of place on a Prophet or Jupiter.

VRC-102

This second ROM is devoted entirely to Wind Instruments; the cartridge is labelled Brass, Woodwind, Saxophones, etc, but the voices were somehow doubled so that in both bank A and B, voices one to 16 were the same as voices 17 to 32.

This is certainly a one-off fault as this meant that there were, in fact, no Saxes to be found in 102. The voices that were accessible, though, were quite good. Piccolos, Flutes, Oboes, Clarinets, Bassoons, were all in bank A. These were all reasonably faithful to their intended sounds and pleasantly breathy.

In bank B are the brass instruments — Trumpets, Flugelhorn, Trombones, as well as Recorders and a few other miscellaneous woodwind. I was again deprived of hearing voices one to 16, but the previously mentioned sounds in 17 to 32 were all very good, especially the Trombones when a little portamento was added.

VRC-103

This is titled the 'Sustain Group', and as such we find in it Strings, Voices, Organs, etc. In bank A are the Strings and some of the Voices — the Strings are reasonably good, but not half as good as some of the String voices I have heard come out of the DX Owners Club, or that Yamaha's demo-man Dave Bristow has produced. The human Voices, once you have found their best octave on the keyboard (male vocals all sound much more realistic in the bottom two octaves of the DX7's five octave range) do sound fairly good, but still not as good as some that I have come across.

In group B are the Chorus Vocals, a few Whistles, and the organs. The Chorus Voices are much better than group A's Voices, and are fairly convincing with a bit of reverb. Group B has 16 different Organs — one for every conceivable sound, and all near perfect copies of the real things.

VRC-104

104 is the Percussion Group, containing Drums, Latin Percussion, Synth Percussion, etc. Bank A has conventional and electronic kits, Timbales, Congas, Japanese Drums, Hand Claps, Wood Blocks etc — all very useful. The conventional drums — Toms, Bass drums, and Snares are all very good in their own right, as they don't just represent conventional sounds, but they produce very useful percussion sounds. The electronic kits too have some quite good sounds amongst them.

In bank B are various other percussion noises including Reversed Cymbals, Glass Harps, Wind Bells, and nine 'Syn Perc' voices. These are very imaginative and extremely DX7-ish...

YAMAHA ALTERNATE VOICE ROMs for the DX7 — RRP: £55 each