Notices

Oh wow, some code monkeys are here!
Fly my pretties, fly!

That interfacde is all my own art except for the waveforms, i took those from traktor as i wanted actual waveforms from the tracks displayed, better looking if it looks right.

Good idea for the EQ knobs, the idea for those is click them and drag up or down to adjust.

I was inspired by traktor, pacemaker and some other dj gea for the layout design.

The fx buttons are for applying sound filters like reverb, wah, flanger, hi/low pass etc. Clicking and holding pops up the effects menu, then adjust the desired effect and release. Effecg stays on till you kill it, so you could have two going at once by going back in.
Ideal use will be with qwerty shortcut, holding X brings up effects menu so you dont have to go in and out. Realease X and then ypur ready to hit kill when your ready. This will make it easier for when you wanna loop a section and apply effects at the same time.

Im still working on a design doc that covers all functions in degtail, once i post this it will make everything very clear. I think anhyone with any mixing experience will see that this layout + qwerty shortcuts will allow some very fast mixing. Such a small layout and having shortcuts keeps everything so close and fast to access.

I'll be watching hyour progress with your Mixx port, i hope things workout and possibly lead to progress with this app!

Cheers.

haha, reading over my post, its funny seeing all my typos.

i just got an otterbox case and im not used to it yet..

Hi!
I'm a professional DJ and I've been playing for a living 8 years now and I must say that I really like this consept!

I have some suggestions however:

I'd ditch the album art from this layout. Ideally this should be usable without a stylys so make room and strip all the unnecessary components.

I don't think that this device will be able to handle any effects nor mastertempo. I'd initially leave them out - at least until the code is properly optimised.

I'd make the loopdivider (or whatever it's called) arrow-buttons bigger so they'd be more finger-friendly.

I'd also like to see a button that toggles between loop and hotcue buttons.

One thing that I hate about traktor (from whitch most of these elements are borrowed from) is the time only shows time left and not time played. Maybe you could toggle it by touching?

Crossfader should be a bit wider to prevent you from accidentaly touching the track while trying to crossfade.

With the eq's I'd design the interface, so that when you touch the knob there'd like an invisible lever to the knob so you can adjust it with a bigger move. (damn this is hard to explain)

The decks need gain-knob aswell.

What are the eject-buttons for? I assume that they are for accessing the music library?
It's nice touch to put separate 'libraries' for each deck to prevent accidental loading over playing track. Background of these individual libraries should be in their respective colors aswell.
I'd like it to prompt before loading next track if there one currently playing. Or make it so that it loads next track when you stop the deck.

If you intend to use bt-headphones to monitor mixing I'd suggest that you put a separate volume and master-plf fader/knob for them.

Oh and I'd implement a method to adjust pitch-slider accurately by touching either side of the fader (above & below) so it starts slowly moving. It's the same method that is used with serato scratchlive's internal mode...

and I allmost forgot:
pitch-bend buttons! Necessities!

This is my two cents. I'll be lookin closely how this project turns out Good luck!

Sweet, thanks for the suggestions.

The interface has changed from what you commented on. The album art was a temp addition to fill the space. Its a work in progress but a pretty complete one.

I agree on the EQ knobs, i think the best solution is one another forum member suggested, and that is make the selected knob enlarge when touched and perhaps even slightly blur the rest of the interface so it makes the knob the focus point.

Good point with the loop buttons, they should be bigger for fingers as not everyone will want to use a stylus.

The time left / played is a good idea, it could be a touch to toggle option or when shift on the qwerty is held down it changes. Again this could be an option in the preferences page.

Gain knobs will be in, when the shift key is held down on the qwerty, the eq knobs will change to gain controls as well as headphone controls such as mix and level. This way you can listen to the playing track as well as the cued track and control how much of each you hear.

Seperate eject buttons for each deck helps reduce slip ups. There will be an option to toggle a warning when loading a track into a deck with an already loaded/ playing track. Just in case.

I've thought a lot about the monitor setup and i would like to keep away from anything usb. The usb port is a well known problem for the n900, and i would like to keep it free so the phone can be charged while your mixing. I think a headphone jack setup will be best. What setup though i dont know.

Pitch slider ideas are good. Pitch bend though could be another shift key shortcut. The bpm sliders change to pitch bend controls when shift is held down?

Holding down Z could just change the loop controls to the hot cue controls? Pressing the corresponding cue number on the qwerty to trigger?

This is stuff we can work out when things get going.

Thanks heaps man for the suggestions, any ideas you have be sure to post them!

Also spread the word to anyone you might think will find this interesting. The more people that know the more chance to get the project going!

I've been waiting for a app like this for ages. Only one problem what happens if your showwing off at a party then the phone rings??? Joke.

But seriously I don't think that the device would be able to keep up with the pitch, fx, playing 2 tracks at once. Esspecial if they were to be 320kbps mps you were doing at the time.

The only on way this would be pratical if you could actually lock down the device when the app is loaded, disable un needed processes along with in coming calls. Even better have a option to force the phone to go into offline mode basicaly. I run my bad boy @ 1GHZ so I think I could possible get away with is but dont forget the basic coding for the processor is locked @ 500dsp ( I think anyway, unless some one has got around this already? :s )

For the Idea 9/10 so my device will be up for testing. It would be interesting to see how I get on with it, I used to use timecodes with my old cd mixers, not I got usb ones though. I'd be able to play at a house party and plan the mix or practice on the way there. Not that I don't pay full atention to the road 8-)
Nore my typing by the looks of it. So I shal leave you that, actually screw it. 10/10 I'd like this project to come alive.

Someone over at the Mixxx forums doubted the N900's ability to handle such an app, but i honestly think it can.

I can run traktor with 4 decks with no problems on my 1ghz laptop with only 512mb memory.

Putting your phone into offline mode might be a good idea to gain some more resources and help stop any unwanted communications interrupting the audio.

Oh and if the phone rings while your mixing, dont answer it, adjust your bpms and mix the ringtone into your set!

Years ago when i worked in a supermarket, the store phone would ring over the pa and sometimes would be in sync with the music playing. Classic.

If this can be done, it will be amazing. Honestly, having used a few of these apps on the pc, I don't know if the n900 is powerful enough. But hey, if you can pull it off, you'll be a hero in my eyes.

s13n1: is it out yet ?

In general I like the idea of such app. But I would rather prefer little bit austere UI and more finger friendly controls. Attached is just a quick sketchup I made (links to full sized .png). I have even more ideas in the head already but didn't have time to incorporate them (namely the waveform area showing the whole song overview and zoomed beats together - something like in one of the djdecks user made skins).

One other thing, how would one realize the prelistening of the track? Would be the master routed to i.e. left channel and cue to the right? This would degrade the production to a mono master output :-( With the external soundcard connected via USB it would be easy (H-E-N required then) but the drivers would be the issue I guess.

Anyway, even the version without prelistening would be fun! Keep going!

Blurring the background (if N900 and Qt can
handle this) is a development of my knob-enlargement idea. :-)

Maybe the knob should rather be like the big one in
http://cdn.tentec.com/9.jpg
or this one
http://images.trustedreviews.com/ima...336-CDJtop.jpg
I do not remember the exact GUI name for this currently...

Various other knob designs are here:
http://www.g200kg.com/en/software/index.html
http://nknobman.codeplex.com/
http://www.lesliesanford.com/Temp/TCHELICONharmonyG.png

I also like the knobs with number display:
http://www.g200kg.com/image/software/rovee100.png
but I am not sure if this is helpful in this case.



I'd avoid the overloaded look of ZynAddSubFX:
http://zynaddsubfx.sourceforge.net/
but this also has some other GUI ideas.


Edit: http://qmidictl.sourceforge.net/qmidictl-index.html seems to have some "beginning GUI elements".