Google Summer of Code 2010 Projects

The results are in! Google has just announced which students have been accepted into the Google Summer of Code 2010 program. This year, we received many very good applications from students that competed for one of three slots with Mixxx. Due to the volume of applications we received, the application process was highly competitive and we had to make some very tough decisions.

After two weeks of deliberation, we're pleased to introduce our Google Summer of Code students for 2010:

• Bruno Buccolo - Effects Units based on existing LADSPA Integration
• William Good - Digital Vinyl System (DVS) / External Mixer Mode
  
• Ryan Baker - Sampler
  

Bruno Buccolo's project involves developing an innovative user interface and control scheme for effects. During our past work on LADSPA effects, we discovered that creating a good user interface with MIDI control would require both more effort and clever thinking than we anticipated. This project aims to simplify effects management and make controlling effects live easy.

William Good will be working on an "External Mixer" Mode to enhance Mixxx's usability with hardware setups. This project will make it easier to connect your hardware mixer to Mixxx and aims to simplify Mixxx's user interface for vinyl control users.

Last but not least, Ryan Baker will develop a sampler allowing DJs to trigger sounds during their DJ sets. A sample bank can increase your flexibility when DJing by allowing you to layer drum loops additional buildups into your mix.

These projects are going to make the Summer extra exciting for our development team, and we hope to give you something to look forward to in a future release! In the meantime, we're fixing bugs in 1.8 and we hope to have an even better Beta 2 release for everyone to play with once we finish up. With 1.8.0 around the corner and some great projects lined up for the Summer, it's an exciting time for Mixxx!

Effects Progress

Since the 1.6.1 release, we've been hard at work integrating several new features that have been in the works for a while.

In our last user survey, many people told us that Mixxx needed some effects besides the flanger. In response to your feedback, we had Pawel Bartkiewicz work on LADSPA integration through Google Summer of Code in 2007. LADSPA is a terribly misleading acronym for "Linux Audio Developers Simple Plugin API". As it turns out, LADSPA isn't just for Linux - it's a cross-platform effects plugin framework, and that made it the natural choice for us. Pawel did great work last Summer, but it came in middle of our 1.6.0 development cycle and in order to properly integrate his work into Mixxx, several other tasks needed to be completed first.

One of these more noticeable tasks has been to create a new tabbed view, where both the library and effects pane can be managed.

With the new reverb and "DJFlanger" effects, you can add some interesting flavour to your mixes.

The screenshot above shows the effects panel inside the new tabbed view. It also shows several of the effects that we're going to bundle, on the left. The tabbed view will also give us a compact place to expand Mixxx's user interface in the future.

If you look at the screenshot closely, you can spot some rough edges that we're trying to fix before our next major release. The main tasks that remain are bug fixing, polishing, and updating our distribution stuff (installers, packaging scripts, etc.).

For Windows and OS X users hoping for VST support, we think it should be possible via Audacity's awesome VST enabler. The VST enabler should allow us to load VST plugins, but to my knowledge, nobody's tested it yet. The reason we can't build native VST support directly into Mixxx is because of Steinberg's restrictive license on their VST software development kit.

That's all for now! We're going to keep hacking away at LADSPA and the rest of the new features we're working on, and hopefully we'll have something out the door before the end of the year.