One of my long-term projects is to collect and prepare acoustic instrument voices for Yamaha Reface DX. There aren’t as many high-quality acoustic voices as there are tons of bleeps and bloops. Most people associate FM synthesis with aggressive EDM sounds, but even 4-op FM is capable of so much more!
The project has come along pretty well. I’m now in the programming and tweaking phase to see if I can do better. However, the initial set of voices ain’t bad. Here is a table showing the voices and bank layout:
Bank 1
1-1 Rhodes 1-2 Wurlitzer 1-3 LegendEP 1-4 E. Organ 3
1-5 P. Organ 1-6 LargePipes 1-7 Cathedral 1-8 GentlePipe
Bank 2
2-1 WarmPad 2-2 Wash3Strng 2-3 Wood+Horn 2-4 Woodwindy
2-5 Warm&Cozy 2-6 RealStrngs 2-7 Horn 2 +1 2-8 FluteVoice
Bank 3
3-1 HornSwell 3-2 SoftBrass 3-3 WoodEns. 4 3-4 Oboe 1
3-5 TrumpetMel 3-6 Trombone 2 3-7 Clarinet 3-8 Bassoon
Bank 4
4-1 Wood EP 4-2 DynaString 4-3 Warm&Cozy 4-4 Violin -1
4-5 WoodEnsFlt 4-6 Wash3Strng 4-7 HamB3 4-8 Real flute
The “+1” and “-1” are reminders to change the OCTAVE slider before playing. To do: Add and store transpose changes in the voice SysEx (SYX). Next version!
The first three banks are relatively stable. Bank four voices are experiments in progress, back-ups or patches that I don’t want to lose. To do: I need to collect and tweak a few solid Hammond-ish B-3 sounds.
I drew on multiple sources. Many voices come from Yamaha Soundmondo and the Reface DX Legacy Project. If you’re looking for raw material to start patches of your own, I recommend the converted YS200 voices at the Legacy Project.
The DX11 conversions seem to have a few issues, i.e., strings don’t sound like strings (even remotely). Fortunately, the YS200 and DX11 are based on the same synthesis engine (Yamaha YM2414). Go for the YS200 first.
Here is a link to a ZIP file with Reface DX acoustic instrument patches. Each voice is a separate SYX file, i.e., a file containing one or more MIDI System Exclusive dump messages. I use MIDI-OX to download patches to Reface DX. If I like a patch, I hit the Reface STORE button, choose a target voice slot, and confirm the store operation.
Have fun!
Interested in Reface DX? Here are a few more links:
Copyright © 2025 Paul J. Drongowski