The new shape of Mixxx 3.0 – Open Source DJing

I am intrigued, what makes it a good music player for non-DJs?

I recently looked and bought into the DJ tech today. I know mixxx, used it many times. And Rekordbox isn't perfect either. But you can't even compare. If the one is Dj Software, mixxx right now, is just a music player with DJ theme

Yeah, I know both QWidgets and QML quite well and I also don't see a strong reason to port. Genuinely custom painting of highly detailed elements in QML is either pretty annoying (comparable to doing it in OpenGL, and then you still need to do user interaction without much help from the framework) or slow if cobbling it together from existing items or using a canvas. I've helped fix particular issues on a project that needed highly detailed custom painting in QML (think rendering text in an editor component, though it wasn't that), but in the end it failed for performance reasons. I knew of some really good developers on that project, so it wasn't plain incompetence. Edit: I think it can be done, it's just a lot of avoidable work.

Mixxx might not have that problem, not sure. The waveform view is presumably custom painted, but shouldn't be too difficult. There may or may not be others.

The one killer feature any DJ software can have - and it's a tough one - is....

Not crashing during playback.

But hey why refine and fix bugs when you can constantly iterate on new features no one asked for (sadly this applies to most open source software).

FYI this is not a new major release, this is work starting on a new major release. At least two more versions of 2.x are planned and 3.0 is not yet actually scheduled.

May not have been what you meant, but I wanted to clarify for others reading this comment: 3.0 is quite a ways off.

What methods were you using to try and influence the direction of Mixxx?

80% of DJing is the generalized skill of picking music that fits the vibe, that you can practice with any software. 10% is doing transparent and/or engaging transitions and the rest of the 10% is technical chops, being fluid and being able to recover when you inevitably fuck up. Approach your learning accordingly :)

As a DJ since age 16 who earned a living from it once:

The number one most important skill is to pick the right music in the right moment. Period. Online many people will tell you about beatmatching, transitions, the best gear and all that, and sure, it is good if you can do that or buy that. But better a DJ who picks good music with crude transitions than one who picks boring music with stellar transitions. My digital sets I do with my laptop, Mixxx and an audio interface, no controller, just keyboard shortcuts.

Even if you just crudly made hard cut-transitions and don't match beats you can still give people a great evening if your music selection and the order in which you present it is good. I once had people partying till early morning with my phone (android/poweramp) as a source, as it wasn't a planned gig.

That means you (should) invest significant time in listening and sorting your music and have an clear idea which types of DJ set you like. A lot of this will depend on the style(s) of music as well. Putting on dub is very different from straight techno which is very different from let's say playing an 80s post punk set or something entirely eclectic. And a lot of that depends on the venue, the crowd etc. A good DJ will react to the circumstances around them.

As for Mixxx, most of the metaphors and parts of the UI in DJ software is derived from vinyl DJing. A crate would be a literal crate filled with vinyls. Since vinyl is heavy as shit, bringing all your music was/is not an option and DJs packed literal crates, for a specific gig, etc. The two Decks on Mixxx are refering to the record players (typically two "Decks") you would have with vinyl. In the middle you have a mixer section, just like the mixer between the two record players.

Your task is (a bit simplified): selecting a song, playing it, selecting another song and then transitioning to that song ad infinitum. So you load up a song in the left deck hit play and have it play and you move the crossfader to the left so only the left deck can be heard. You then search for the next track while the song is playing and load it up on the right deck. Mixers typically have a PFL button (pre fader listen) that allow you to "privately" listen to channels even if their volume fader (or the crossfader) is turned down (this is why DJs have headphones). You basically listen with one ear to the the thing the audience hears and with the other to the next song.

Now the song on the left deck is nearing its end and you have another song on the right deck, you try to make the two align in time, tempo, frequency, pitch in such a way that the transition sounds good and then you use the crossfader to blend over. Or you could just wait for song A to finish and then hit play on song B if you don't care too much about the transition. Or you could mix only the bass from song A with the hihats from song B, add effects, shout something into the mic and then play a song from a third deck, while all while listening to song requests.

For the tempo matching Mixxx has a button that does that for you on each deck, not like if you DJ with vinyl where you have to do that by ear. The mixer has an EQ (changing the level of Bass/Mids/Highs at fixed frequencies) and a Filter (cutting away high and low frequencies with variable frequency, allowing you to avoid situations where two basslines/hihats are playing at once during a transition.

You can go arbitrarily complex, but as mentioned at the beginning, music selection and situational awareness is king, everything else is just details as long as you don't make jarring mistakes with jumps in level or prolonged gaps of silence etc.

Every single dj software is super crammed and has no empty space in it. This is true because djs cannot switch views while performing. There’s a lot of info which must be visible at all times on 1 single page. Regardless of UI framework or target device, it will continue to be like that because the target audience needs the interface to be dense.

As a long time Mixxx user What do I see there:

1. better readability in the tables: good and probaly themable

2. tiny waveforms in the table: very cool, allows you to quickly judge the structure and sonic qualities of a track without listening! A real time-saver in a live situation

3. Library overhaul: the left pane always felt a little clunky: can't say much from the sceeenshots, but doesn't look bad

4. Tooltip: better than the old ones for sure

5. Enhanced support for lightweight plattforms: cool, not gonna use it, but hey

6. better search: This is a big one. Search always felt a bit unfinished. It worked, but sometimes find a song you knew existed was faster using the browser..

7. Interactive Settings: nice one as well. The settings were probably the least polished part of Mixxx, this increases the speed once more.

this went out of style a long time ago. when you play videos out, everyone just stares at the screens.