Progress since Beta 1

Since the release of Mixxx 1.6.0 beta1, we've been busy busy busy getting new features and bug fixes ready for beta2. The library has undergone substantial work including new playlist support, improvements to the file scanning, and several bug fixes that were causing stability issues in beta1.

Recently, Micah Lee (one of our Google Summer of Code students), began working on our BPM code again. Among his latest additions is support for "BPM schemes", which allows you to save preset BPM ranges to improve the accuracy of the BPM detection when launched from the track editor dialog.

"BPM Schemes" is one of the new features slipped into Mixxx 1.6.0 Beta2

Also, OS X users can expect a Leopard/Intel package for Beta2. Big thanks to all the testers who've helped me test the package.

Lastly, we expect the 1.6.0 beta2 release sometime in the next two weeks. There's still a few extra features we're going to try to slip in to the next release, so stay tuned!

Hercules DJ Control MP3 in Linux

Robin, one of our newer developers, has been working hard on improving our support for the Hercules DJ Control MP3 in Linux. I did some work on this myself last year, but unfortunately certain things were broken at the kernel-level and I wasn't able to get the LEDs working. After many attempts by several people, Robin managed to make a kernel patch to solve the remaining issues.

"Yuck, a kernel patch!", you say? As Robin writes:

This is all very hacky, but hopefully it won’t be in the future. I’m going to see if I can get that patch put in the kernel proper, which will solve the most annoying part of the problem. It would also be good to get Mixxx supporting both legacy mode and the newer one at the same time.

However, we’ve heard from Hercules, and they say that some time in the first part of this year, they’re going to try to get some Linux drivers out. Hopefully they’re open source, and turn the Herc devices into MIDI devices, which would make life a whole lot easier for support.

It looks like there's light at the end of the tunnel for Hercules users. Read more on Robin's blog.

Note: I should add that the Hercules MK2 and the Hercules MP3 Control are both supported very well on Windows.

MixxxScript - A Sneaky Feature Preview

Although we're technically in the beta part of the release cycle, we've still been spending some time on features for future releases. I've been working on adding a macro/scripting style environment to Mixxx which would allow users to extend Mixxx without the work of recompiling. Here's a screenshot of the very basic test GUI in action:


The script interpreting is done using the new QtScript ECMAScript interpreter built in to Qt 4.3 and the example you can see typed in above implements a basic auto-crossfader.

The potential here is fairly unlimited. API documentation and so on will follow soon so that people using Mixxx from SVN will be able to have a play.

Mixxx 1.6.0 Beta1 Released!

The Mixxx development team suggests 1.6.0 is most delicious if you get it while it's hot.

This is the first beta release of the 1.6.0 series and incorporates an enormous number of new toys, some of the highlights are:

• Vinyl control
• Skin colour schemes
• New music library
• Better BPM detection
• Better support for MIDI controllers
• ... and more

Obviously as with all beta software, expect a few problems, the following are things you may encounter:

• Various library issues, especially with regard to colour schemes and scanning/persistency
• Ubuntu users may have trouble connecting to JACK, we are working hard on this
• Vinyl control is not very extensively tested so please report your experiences

We desperately need your feedback to make 1.6.0 better, please report problems in any of the usual places, such as the bug tracker or on mixxx-devel for those who are subscribed.

We'd also like to mention that we're accepting donations to help support Mixxx's development. If you enjoy the software, use it professionally, or would just like to help us out, we'd appreciate a donation of any size.


Finally, we'd like to say thanks to all the people that make this possible, the Mixxx developer team, all our users, PortAudio and all our other friends and colleagues.

Update on Release Progress

This is just a very quick post to update everyone on the progress of the release. It looks like we'll be releasing the first 1.6.0-beta1 packages on either Sunday (23rd) or Monday (24th) depending on how much time we have. It looks like we'll have a Windows package, an Ubuntu package and of course a source package.

1.6.0 beta1 Nearly Ready

I know this has been rather a painful wait for some people who have been anticipating great things from the 1.6.0 series. So I thought I'd just post to say that we are nearly there. I can only speak for the Windows release personally but I'm now about 90% sure that this will be out by the end of December.

If you simply can't wait any longer then you might like to sign up to our mailing list. Some pre-beta binaries are starting to circulate there for those who are willing to test the latest version of Mixxx and provide feedback.

Adam

Quick Vinyl Control Video, SSE optimizations

A few nights ago I captured a video while doing a quick test mix using Mixxx's vinyl control.



Not my best transition ever, but it works. :)

I've been trying to do some tweaking to get the latency down and one of the biggest improvements came from compiling Mixxx with SSE and MMX optimizations. The tricky part with turning on these optimizations is that they'll only work on post-Pentium III CPUs. That's fine for our Windows and OS X builds, but it's a problem for our Ubuntu package because we can't assume any specific CPU architecture. One possible solution for this is to disable SSE/MMX optimizations in the package that lives in the Ubuntu repositories and host a different (SSE/MMX optimized) Ubuntu package on our website.

In the meantime, I still have lots of work to do on fixing up the library. Busy, busy!