I’ve been waiting for this for a long time ! Mixxx was limited by a maximum of two channels for mixing; two digital decks, although if you knew what you were doing you could open multiple copies, but that would not give you crossfader control. But now Mixxx has a total of four, yes, 4 channels ! That opens up a lot more room for mixing. The only niggle here that which channel is on which side of the crossfader does not seem to assignable (“A/B mxing”), but seeing as this is an Alpha release that may be planned for the full release.
Another breakthrough is the inclusion of extended effects. Previously only a Flanger effect was available. Now we Have Flanger, Echo, Reverb and BitCrusher. The effect modules – highlighted with the orange circle in the screen shot above – are initially named “Effect Chains” (not visible in the image) which is a bit confusing to begin with as really only the four available effects are selectable. However this is a hint of the planned much extended effects architecture for Mixxx that includes the ability to define complex effects chains and even a facility to include externally loaded LV2 and LADSPA effects.
I’ve had all this running on my 1.8 GHZ single core CPU, really a low to medium end machine without a single audio glitch that I can hear. This is with other applications open in the background. Altogether very impressive for something playing multiple tracks and and effects ! I have not had a single crash yet and only some small UI bugs (drop down lists that are not closed properly). Very impressive for an Alpha release.
If you can, download and do all you can to support the Mixxx development team. Contribute ! Mixxx will have reached a major achievement and new era of open source music/DJ application when the full effects architecture is ready sometime after the release of 1.12. In the mean time there’s plenty of Mixxx goodness to be getting on with. I think it’s also important not to forget, especially for those new to open source, is that if you want a new feature of want to fix some niggle then the entire source can be forked, either by you or a helpful friend, and those ideas can be implemented either for your own build, or they might even be merged back into the main Mixxx release. Happy mixxxing !
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