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Megan L. Lavengood
Personal blog · meganlavengood.comhistoryhardware
Megan L. Lavengood's personal blog at meganlavengood.com covers history and hardware. Since 2022, 3 different Hacker News readers have linked it 3 times, most often “The Yamaha DX7 in Synthesizer History”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-21, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for its reverse-engineering of the Yamaha DX7 chip, including a multi-part series on the synth's output circuitry. The comments discuss the DX7 and its history but do not judge the posts.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- The Yamaha DX7 in Synthesizer History2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-04-21
What Hacker News says?
The Yamaha DX7, the quintessential digital-replacing-analog synth, cost $2k USD in 1983, not $4-5k. I can't speak for what that cost in Euros (which didn't exist yet) or with import tariffs in an unspecified country. Today you can get one used for $500 USD. And while analog is and was more expensive, today you can get a Behringer Deep Mind 12 for $900 USD new and it sounds fantastic. Meanwhile, Teenage Engineering i…
Comment linking /the-yamaha-dx7-in-synthesizer-history/
on “TX-6 – Teenage Engineering”Submitted The Yamaha DX7 in Synthesizer History as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI think by 1988 the world was well and truly suffering from "DX7 preset fatigue". To quote Philip Oakey from Human League: "They get really bland after a while. And when we get into what I call the DX Sound Hunt, it drives me up the wall. Someone in the studio will say, ‘Okay! Let’s have a bell sound.’ Then we start going through the 128 sounds on our DX —we have the Sycologic MX1 expander board— and playing every o…
Comment linking /the-yamaha-dx7-in-synthesizer-history
on “Yamaha DX7 chip reverse-engineering, part V: the output circuitry”