Recovering and reproducing Native Instruments FM7 Sounds in FM8

I have hell lots of old Ableton Live Sets, that really rock - sadly they were made up mostly by Native Instruments FM7 and Absynth 3. Problem: when you open up your old Sets, Ableton does not find the right Instrument to use, since FM8 and Absynth 3 are not backwards compatible (at least when it comes to loading the settings via program change MIDI messages).

See the posting about Absynth for hans-on updating old settings, this posting deals with the FM7 and FM8.

FM7 and FM8 sounds still don't sound 100% the same (see the Discussion in the Native Instruments Forum) but  you should definitely try how your presets sound in FM8, since the FM engine has been improved a lot. For similar results, there are some pointers on how to come quite close:

In most cases the FM7 presets come closer to the original if you switch off the "high resolution mode". If it still sounds a bit to harsh, sharp or noisy try reducing brightness using the FM8 easy edit section...

NI FM7 Program Screenshot 1

Recovering/ updating your songs and sequences from FM7 to FM8 is possible - browsing through the presets in FM8 (there is a part in the library where you can switch to the FM7 Presets) i found the sound I was searching for after about 15minutes of listening through all programs (though it sounded less lo-fi than intended). Before you freak out by having to listen through all the presets and finding your original sounds, i made a list of all the mappings.