Yamaha DJX Users Group

 Yamaha DJX Archive

Back in 1999 Randy Dreammaker purchased the Yamaha DJX PSR-D1 Synthesizer Groove Keyboard. They were selling for around $400 at Best Buy.

He had owned lots of other synthesizers in the past, but there was something breakthrough about this synth that many "Professional Musicians" called a toy.

Every since that day, he has been a fan and when he needed to sell his first one back in 2005 when moving to have a little extra money, He missed it for years despite having other musical instruments.  Then one day around 2018 he came across one at a Goodwill for $25 and grabbed it.

Since that time, it has always been his intention to re-release a new Yamaha DJX related website for past and new fans of the now disappearing keyboards and Groove box machines.

Quite a few years have passed and he has finally decided to launch it as part of his already existing Randy Dreammaker website, without repurchasing the domain name, or building a fancy forum for people to chat on.  This time its going to simply be an archive of the works that Randy Dreammaker, Jason Powell and David Rullo released in the past.

Jason Powell and David Rullo were key in developing Instrument Definition files that allow the Yamaha DJX 1, 2 and 2B to work with older versions of Cakewalk and Cubase sequencers.  Randy wasn't working with sequencers at that time. His main contribution other than providing user support, a forum, writing articles and running the original Users Group, was to provide the only known Sysex software to work with the original Yamaha DJX.  Unlike the Yamaha DJX II series that came out later and included a pattern generator software that allowed transfer of files to a computer and sequencer, the original DJX didn't come with anything, despite being made with the ability and intention to be able to offload settings and set-ups to a computer.  Yamaha had intended it to work directly with sequencers, but Randy wanted an option to Bulk Dump and Save Yamaha Settings and New Voice Set-ups to a computer so he could re-upload them again later. The original Yamaha DJX model could store a couple of settings internally, but if it lost power or accidently got reset, everything was lost.

After six months of research, Randy discovered the only known piece of software that was available for free and allowed the Yamaha DJX-1 to communicate and transfer information to a computer. Of course that software will be included in the archive; it was last tested to work on Windows 2000 and has never been tested on any of the newer windows operating systems.

Fortunately, since the Yamaha DJX series came out back in the later 90's and early 2000's, buying an older computer capable of running most of the software and an older version of windows or Macintosh operating systems is really cheap. 

Finding an old school computer to midi cable will probably be the most challenging, and maybe finding a copy of old Cubase or Cakewalk sequencer software might be a challenge, but hey! You're smart, you'll figure something out.

Randy is excited to be able to offer the archive once again.  It is a work in process and will take time to bring everything online. So make sure to bookmark the Archives web page so you can check back from time to time.

Hope you are as excited as we are to get your hands on the knowledge and resources from those who created and documented the techniques for using the DJX so to speak.  

Here is a link to the archive. [HERE]