Since its debut of 1983, digital FM synthesis always played a crucial role in creating the TD sound. Many of the well known sound programs of the 80s came from these Yamaha devices - the first and flagship product of them was the legendary DX7, there were no any keyboard player in the world who would miss it.

Among the huge wall of TD sounds created with this instrument I have to mention the most characteristic one which is easily recognizable at the very first moment of listening for all the TD fans. This is a sound program called Stratotron (audio sample) and it already existed in the 1980s - at least I had it in my DX7 also. The source of this patch is not clear (if anybody knows anything please contact), but had a great success in Edgar's studio and later at numerous scene of the e-music industry. Lots of instruments and sample banks, CDs, download services include this sound (for example the leading Hungarian sample source for the Reason system, Reasonbanks.com).

The legend got an extra attention when Native Instruments, king of software synthesizers released their FM instrument called FM7, based on the architecture of the original DX7 though utilised a most advanced technology. Engineers at Native seem to love TD too because an advanced version of Stratotron called Six-String (audio sample) received the very good 2nd position of the preset sound set. Six-String differs very slightly from the original - it has shorter sustain and release phases and has a delay effect (the original DX7 had no delay effect incorporated).

In addition, the original Stratotron is still available in FM7, the second preset bank contains it, at position 111.

Some weeks ago FM7 has updated, the new version, FM8 has a dramatically redesigned feature set but it still contains Six-String and Stratotron.