Author Archives: ZOG

About ZOG

DJ ZOG - https://www.zog.net.au/

multiple audio outputs for cue with Mixvibes CrossDJ with Android Marshmallow

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TLDR: If you can’t get multichannel USB audio working with CrossDJ on Android 6+, editing the /system/etc/audio_policy.conf file might help, if your device is rooted, and you don’t care about your warranty.

read on for how to do it, if you are comfortable with Linux shell commands and throwing your warranty to the wind. This is an updated version of a post I made to the Mixvibes support forum that they got a bit nervous about and locked…
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MIXXX DJ software – ZOG preferred build

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I’m just documenting this here for reference, and perhaps others find this useful.

  • MIXXX is my preferred DJ software, it works well with the Numark Mixtrack Pro interface
  • One reason to go the digital DJ route is to maximise sound quality, this means FLAC files where possible, CD rips or purchased as wav from beatport, bleep.com or bandcamp.. and 320k mp3 when FLAC files are simply not available..
  • But I found the MIXXX 2.0 series (or earlier) had issues decoding some valid flac files purchased from bandcamp.com, causing sound to abruptly cut out, while MIXXX appears to continue playing
  • after discussing with the incredibly helpful MIXXX developers they pointed me to the MIXXX 2.1 alpha source code available on github, which uses a new audio decoding engine.
  • This fixed all my issues and has proven to be very stable. The effects I have found not that great, but I don’t use them much, sticking to relatively straight forward mixing.

So here are the steps….
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MiniDSP chassis done, at last

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Not strictly related to the speakers themselves, but as the miniDSP is a core component in driving the speakers I’ve noted this in the “beyond-econowave” posts:
For a long time the miniDSP was sitting bolted to a lump of wood, the “temporary” test chassis, with a cardboard box sitting on top of it to cover it. But this test chassis was quite noisy.

I’ve made a simple pine enclosure that makes up in solidity what it lacks in sophistication. It still containes the miniDSP and 2 simple OPA2134 based pre-amps to give me a bit of gain over the quiet miniDSP output, but I’ve got a 4 channel stepped attenuator (actually two stereo stepped attenuators ganged together) as a master volume, plus the software volume control as a fine volume pot.

There’s also a switch to switch over to the analogue input for “guest devices” .e.g. mates dropping over with DJ mixers or synths – so the sockets are on the front for easy access.
Made with bits of pine from the local hardware warehouse, and painted with leftover stain/varnish from my big speakers so it matches.
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ZOG low budget battery powered party blaster system

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This system was started off cobbling together assorted spare parts that were in the garage gathering dust, to create a small battery powered (and partially solar) system that can fit in the boot of the car and be moved on a small trolley. But of course then I added some extra bits as well to get it how I liked it, so it’s not really assembled from “junk” any more, but it is all inexpensive low power use.

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