I love the dfam!
I use it mainly as lead/bass for a lot of music I make.
I clock it and use effects from my A4 to expand the sounds from the dfam.
I’m thinking of selling some things and I’m wondering if I can emulate the dfam by using an analog 4 voice and an external sequencer.
Has anyone sequenced the A4 with a korg sq-1?
I think the A4 is a great candidate for doing cool DFAMesque stuff. In many ways it would be much more versatile. 64 steps, plocks and lots of modulation potential. I think it shines with this sort of thing actually.
That said, it would be different in almost every regard. Envelope responses, filters sound different, oscillators sound different. The dfam is such a fun knob twisty, cable patchy hands on thing and the results reflect that.
Would be dope though
Yeah that’s what I’m worried about, that the hands on ease of the dfam isn’t something I can replace even using the performance page
But I’d agree with your other sentiment, the A4 has a lot more sound shaping possibility.
Don’t sell it.
Exactly, why settle for emulation when you have the real thing?
I have tried to emulate my DFAM with every synth i own that has 2 osc, noise and osc FM…
That’s about 10 very capable synths, some analog, some digital…
I have tried with the A4MKII…nope…not even close.
Tell us more about those synths. 
Saving space and utilizing gear more efficiently.
Yeah it really does sound special. And so easy to interact with.
I’ve been trying to duplicate the dfam myself but I don’t think it’s really possible. It’s fm sounds especially sweet. I’d like to sell it to clear some space and use the cash toward a digitone but it’s one of those secret sauce machines despite how difficult it is to integrate into a setup.
I accept that I don’t know anything about your homes or living situations… but selling something you find special and useful just to make space seems like a weird optimisation to me. Surely a stand or a shelf is a better solution?
Our culture encourages over-optimising for “efficiency”. Nature isn’t efficient… there’s multiple distinct versions of “eyes”, “skeletons”… every single cell carries the entire code for the body it contributes to, plus its own energy storing and extracting machinery. Your body has 6 times the kidney, 3 times the liver and twice the lung it needs. “Efficiency” usually leads people down the path of optimising for spending as little money as possible… which leads towards the thought processes that push down wages, lay people off, rather than trusting that colleagues could do with better living conditions.
I know I’m conflating issues that don’t seem relevant here, but it’s a bug-bear of mine. We’re constantly looking to chip away at joy in favour of efficiency and we should push back this force at every level including our homes and hobbies. Optimise for joy where you can 'cos no-one else will do that for you ('til we change our culture).
/end-rant
I tried to get a DFAM sound out of the A4 beforebI had a DFAM.
But the oscillators sound different, the free tuning on the sequencer gives every pattern a unique vibe. Just the way it sounds and behaves.
The FM sounds on the DFAM sounds very different than the AM on the A4.
Puh, I’d argue you can get similar sounds, but there will always be a distinction.
As mentioned the sequencer makes a big difference. How you operate an instrument has a huge impact on the sound you produce with it.
I would either keep it or sample the sh!t out of sell it. But I don’t think you can really replace it with a A4.
My 2cts.
Not the A4 but I followed this workflow on both the pro3 and the pro2 to my great delight.
Ah yeah, it’s kinda like I’m finding out exactly what I want to try to gig with. What do I want to carry with me.
Also freeing up some funds will help me extend a break from work that I am on rn
Ok, that sounds more like optimising for joy. Good luck.
(but sell something else first. You have 6x the kidney you need, remember…)
In this video the A4 gets pretty nicely into DFAM territory soundwise, I think. But having owned both the DFAM (twice) and the A4, I know the overall feel and immediacy isn’t really comparable.
Ha A4 then? That’s kinda the line here. Maybe i can part with some other vaguely sentimental tools.
I’m going to try running the dfam pitch sequencer and vca eg out into the a4 I’ll take a recording
after a test, it doesn’t really seem possible to get the snappiness of the dfam using the cv in on the A4 and the envelope generator of the DFAM. Plenty of fm/am weirdness to have though. Lots of interesting timbres I would describe as glassy, grainy, and juicy.
It was a lot of fun, and i only adjusted a few of my perf parameters, I think this could work really well over midi with a korg sq-1. using midi would allow for velocity to be sent instead of EG and then i could use the A4 EG’s which would probably be more responsive than the A4’s CV input.
10+ min jam using the dfam sequencer for the a4
A4 from @Eaves
Ruismaker Noir
