Category Archives: audio nerding

Notes on fiddling with assorted bits of low cost (and maybe not so low cost) audio gear

engine-mixx playlist exchange for ENGINE DJ and MIXXX

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One minor frustration with the Denon ENGINE DJ software is it can export m3u8 playlist files but it cannot import them. But it can import xml export files from it’s almost direct competitor Rekordbox.

This is a command line and (Linux) GUI tool for managing conversion between these formats, assuming you have an “anchor” config that places the same files in different filesystem path conventions for different operating systems.

It’s early days and a bit rough and only lightly tested so far, but it solves this issue for me.

Since m3u8 playlists are quite widespread this is not only useful for MIXXX, though it was made with MIXXX in mind.

https://codeberg.org/djzogmelbourne2/engine-mixxx

 

The DENON PRIME GO as main DJ device, one year on

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I’ve had the DENON PRIME GO now for just over a year. It replaced my Linux laptop / MIXXX / Pioneer DDJ-SB2 setup, which was great – but I’d had the occasional cryptic crash on stage that was near impossible to replicate in my home studio and debug effectively.

I feel I haven’t abandoned Linux as the ENGINE OS DJ platform is an embedded Linux appliance under the hood – though it is not open source.

TLDR:

Great sound, convenient, reliable. Not perfect, but more than good enough. I’ve played a bunch of shows of various sizes using this device in the last year and it has delivered. It lets me enjoy the music and have fun.

I had one hardware failure with it – the cross-fader stopped working, but not while playing “live”.  Denon/DJCITY repaired this under warranty, which took about 6 weeks.

On to the details….

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MIXXX 2.1 has been released

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ZOG + Col preferred DJ software Mixxx has had a new release of stable version 2.1

MIXXX 2.1 has arrived

this is now the preferred build to use from the official Mixxx PPA source, so the previous posts about using specific alpha builds or building from source are obsolete.

The Download instructions, including Ubuntu Linux PPA install source, are here:
MIXXX Download Instructions

The ZOG DJ rig is still:

Controller:
Pioneer DDJ SB2

Laptop
Dell Latitude E6410 with i5 M540 CPU
It has been upgraded with a Toshiba OCZ TR150 Series 960GB SSD.

OS
Xubuntu Linux, 16.04 -lowlatency kernel

current ZOG MIXXX setup Jan 2018

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The last post on MIXXX I made is now out of date, so here’s what I’ve been using recently, as since the MIXXX team are releasing .deb files of their nightly builds, I’ve been trying them instead of the self compiled version.

Installed version of MIXXX
mixxx-2.1.0-alpha-pre-master-git6340-release-xenial-amd64.deb
Downloaded from http://downloads.mixxx.org/builds/master/release/

ZOG DJ rig with DDJ SB2

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Native Instruments Audio2 DJ interface and Linux 4 channel alsa config

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I was recently given a Native Instruments Audio2 DJ interface, this is a great little card with working Linux drivers that works well with MIXXX using a variation of the .asoundrc available on the MIXXX site and other locations.

But either my version of the card, or the Linux driver has changed, as my card identifies differently so the config files available elsewhere don’t work with my OS (Xubuntu 14.04 with kernel 4.2.0-18-lowlatency).

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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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