Well it didn’t go unnoticed. Yamaha’s Reface range of synths have stirred up quite some emotions on the web. I thought to add my impression on the Reface DX here since it’s been a long time for a new FM synth to hit the market.

The unit looks good, nice design touch on the DX Legacy. It’s small but the keys have velocity which is a nice surprise. Runs on batteries, Small speakers, USB, FX unit built in, AUX in, interesting…

But now… 4 operators. Ok, I see in the manual that you now have feedback on every operator so it should sound better than e.g. DX100… but it’s still a bit cheap for the price on which the DX is estimated. The Aux in is only for hearing music from your mobile device? no external FX signal processing? Although there are four configurable ribbon panels editing FM will still be a pain in the *. This all is a bit disappointing. I understand you can now share voices via the browser. That’s nice, but I wonder if you can edit your patches through the browser.

It looks like the hardware adds so little to the FM system that Yamaha would have been better off releasing it as a FM sound module with editing capabilities over the web or other midi  controller hardware. Having FM with some good FX built in is a nice asset to any producer but it’s just a shame to pay extra for the keyboard…

Here’s a video from Sonicstate which shows you the ins and outs: