One of the reasons I’m such a plugin-head is that I love to have the option to play with tonnes of different synths and effects without having to rent a warehouse to store them all! I’ll avoid the divisive conversation about software vs. hardware. Let’s just say that software is awesome, regardless of whether it’s ‘as good’ as hardware… or whatever. 😉
Dexed allows us to have a classic Yamaha DX7 in our laptops. It can sound pretty sterile at first, but add some saturation, reverb, delay etc… and it really begins to come alive.
You don’t even need to know how to program a DX7 if you don’t want to. There’s literally THOUSANDS of ready made presets you can load up and get playing right away. There’s links to two collections at the end of this article. Feel free to share more in the comments!