KQ Dixie Legacy

I am a professional keyboardist who uses iOS soft synths exclusively in live performances and studio work. I am also a sound designer and create my own sounds. I don’t use presets. I’ve been needing an excellent DX 7 emulator to properly create 80’s style synth patches, and I’m thrilled to now have one. The learning curve on this one for a programmer is difficult if you’re not used to FM synthesis, and the fact that the user manual is not in English can be a challenge...BUT... The emulation is so similar to the DX7 that you can learn what you need by reading a Yamaha DX7 manual (find PDF online). I’ve already created several patches and am using those to replace my previous sounds created using other types of synths. I see reviews with certain requests...but some may be missing the point that this is a pretty accurate emulation...with the benefits of the original and some of the “flaws” of the original. Example: I love that this uses only sine waves in its operators. Other FM synths use sine plus more complex wave forms. They sound great, but the DX7 only used sine waves and therefore so does KQ Dixie. Fantastic development work here.

Yamaha’s DX7 digital synthesizer was EVERYWHERE in the 1980’s. It’s FM digital synthesis was capable of very unique sounds. Although because of the great difficulty programming the original hardware units, most everyone just used the presets. Those 32 original voices are here too, and have their charm, but the real draw to Dixie is that the thousands upon thousands of voices & patches created by DX7 users over the past 30 years are compatible with the app! Google DX7 patches (sysex format), download the patch or a .zip of patches, import into Dixie via the Files app. That easy. Plus if you want to create new custom patches, I’ve never seen an FM synth that made patch editing easier to grasp. There’s plenty of effects and controls are easy to read & interact with. This app could be 10x more expensive and it’d be well worth it. Highly recommended.

The discovery of this app has absolutely made my day! I own the excellent Korg Volca FM, which led me down the rabbit hole of exploring all things DX7 and FM synthesis-related. All you need to know about the DX7 is that there are THOUSANDS of interesting patches all over the web. Most of these were professionally programmed decades ago, and have just been floating around ever since. But until KQ Dixie came along, there was actually no way to PLAY a DX7 patch on iOS. There were apps that would store and send sysex (DX7) files to your Volca FM, but you couldn’t hear what the patch sounded like until it was on an external piece of hardware. That why KQ Dixie is so useful to me. Finally, I have a way to audition this content, identify patches I would like to have on my Volca, and even dabble in some light programming. As it turns out, however, KQ Dixie is a great instrument app in its own right. I really like the clean UI and easy access to the keyboard and all parameters. There are even some neat touches like on-board filters, overdrive, and delay effects. In fact, it’s so good, it might make more sense just to use this app within the iOS ecosystem, rather than capturing sound from an external synth. NOTE: This is a very early review, and there are some understandable bugs with v. 1.0 pertaining to importing .syx and .zip files. The developer is attentive to these, and at least one update has already been submitted. And, to top it all off, KQ Dixie functions as an AU instrument, which makes it infinitely useful in DAW’s which support that functionality, as well as other apps like AUM or Quantiloop that can house AU apps.