[HN Gopher] Xwax Is an Open-Source Digital Vinyl System (DVS) fo...
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Xwax Is an Open-Source Digital Vinyl System (DVS) for Linux
Author : gjvc
Score : 84 points
Date : 2024-07-16 12:56 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (xwax.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (xwax.org)
| gjvc wrote:
| xwax is an open-source Digital Vinyl System (DVS) for Linux. It
| allows DJs and turntablists to playback digital audio files (MP3,
| Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, AAC and more), controlled using a normal pair
| of turntables via timecoded vinyls.
| gjvc wrote:
| note to whomever downvoted this comment: quite often people are
| too lazy to actually click the link and read the target site
| for themselves, so I quite often copy a summary sentence to
| this discussion section to give better context.
| zbuf wrote:
| xwax author here, nice to see it submitted to HN front page. Must
| be 20+ years now since I wrote the original code for DJ'ing live.
| Very happy to answer questions
| diggan wrote:
| In terms of beat mixing/matching, how does xwax compare to
| mixxx? They seem to be about the same age, but xwax seems a lot
| more lightweight/barebones compared to mixxx, is xwax perhaps
| not meant for end-users?
| zbuf wrote:
| xwax /is/ meant for end-users, but right at the beginning it
| only had actual live professional use in mind. I was
| literally DJ'ing in clubs at the time and I wanted the
| digital equivalent of playing vinyl records.
|
| I was collaborating with a friend on the early versions, to
| see if it could be commercialised to provide a "house" system
| for radio studios and clubs (much like the house provides
| CDJs or turntables). Today that's superseded by DJs bringing
| their own laptops, of course.
|
| I don't know much about Mixxx these days; that project was
| always much better set up to grow through a range of
| contributors (eg. with its scripting engine). But I think
| it's technical architecture is probably quite different.
|
| Whereas, xwax was designed from day 1 with the idea it was a
| realtime system with very tight latencies, taking input from
| one audio interface and responding to it on another. That was
| fun on Linux (and FreeBSD!) systems of the early 2000s.
| majikandy wrote:
| From what I've read on Wikipedia, mixxx apparently uses the
| xwax source code. As does PiDeck. It would be really
| interesting to know what else uses it.
| comprev wrote:
| I used Final Scratch about 20 years ago. These days I use
| Recordbox DVS as all my kit is Pioneer.
|
| The infinite music catalogue in digital format with the
| analogue feel of mixing vinyl is the perfect match for me. It's
| been fun introducing friends to DJing by loading up anything
| they want into Rekordbox and seeing the delight on their faces
| after a first successful blend of their favourite music.
| gtvwill wrote:
| Thank you for your contribution to open source music
| production/dj'ing!
| jdmoreira wrote:
| Leaving this here in hopes someone has an idea or wants to
| initiate a project.
|
| I would love to be able to do DVS without a computer. I basically
| just want some piece of hardware with buttons (something like a
| groove box or https://1010music.com/product/blackbox) and I want
| to connect it it with usb-c to a one of those DVS mixers or a
| Reloop Flux.
|
| I don't need anything fancy really. I basically just want to use
| my technics and this as a replacement / alternative for CDJs.
|
| Been looking for something like this for years. The closest I
| know of is an iOS app that does DVS named djaypro
| zbuf wrote:
| How do you propose that you'd select and load tracks? Or view
| time remaining. Even if you don't care about a waveform
| display, some sort of computer (ie. display) seems to become
| necessary at some point. Perhaps you could check the PiDeck
| project, which puts xwax into smaller hardware.
| wheels wrote:
| A friend of mine was doing Technics repair and customization
| and about 6 years back we started building a prototype of
| embedding a Pi with a 3.5" LCD in the body of a 1200. I build
| a custom Qt GUI for xwax that was controlled by a single
| rotary encoder with a push button. We could throw out a lot
| of the UI since it was only ever playing one track at a time.
| He eventually got called up to be Alle Farben's touring sound
| guy and we never picked it back up once he was back.
| lukaszkorecki wrote:
| djaypro is what you want in this case - but you'll also need a
| mixer/interface which supports DVS (like Numark Scratch).
|
| There are all-in-one hardware options but from what I remember
| all of them come with their own control platters etc
| finnomenon wrote:
| I first started using xwax in 2011. Been on and off until last
| year when my PC setup changed. Currently blocked from using it
| because the armbian won't recognize the Audio4DJ soundcard. I
| definitely need to put time into fixing that.
| lpil wrote:
| I used xwax for many years and was always delighted by it. A
| fantastic bit of software!
| majikandy wrote:
| Xwax is amazing. But what was more amazing to me was that the
| magic external box with Final Scratch was actually just a sound
| card and the rest was all software. Dunno if I am over
| simplifying but it was amazing to see that the time coded record
| and the software like xwax was all that was actually needed.
| codedokode wrote:
| I was a little confused when reading "Getting Started" page as it
| is not immediately obvious that you need a vynil player and a
| timecoded disc to use it.
|
| And I am surprised that there was an open-source software for
| this.
|
| I wonder if there is software to do scratches using a mouse or a
| MIDI slider? It looks like Mixxx might allow that using
| scripting.
| zbuf wrote:
| Pre-dating xwax and Mixxx there was "TerminatorX", sounds like
| it might be what you're interested in.
| hedora wrote:
| I'm probably not the only person that hoped this was a digital
| archiving tool.
|
| Apparently, a one-off record costs about $99:
|
| https://vinylify.com/how-to-make-vinyl-online/
|
| Using modern LDPC (or whatever error correction is most
| appropriate), and assuming a midrange stylus (budget ~ $99), and
| 100 year retention, I wonder how much data can you jam onto a
| 10", 2-sided record.
| zbuf wrote:
| The records used by xwax have about 100 kilobytes of data on
| each side of a 12" record. However, the goals are very
| different here; it's designed to decode the position under
| specific conditions such as being moved very fast, in reverse
| and changing direction rapidly. There would be a more efficient
| encoding if your goal was to fit as much data as possible and
| relax the other requirements.
| hedora wrote:
| Yeah; I'm imagining the record sits in a basement for 100
| years, and has mildew + scratches. Each error correction
| block has to be (I'd guess) at least 10x wider than a
| scratch, assuming the codes can correct 1 bit out of 10.
|
| CDs use Reed Solomon, configured for a 1:10000 bit error
| rate, but NAND storage uses LDPC, which is much more robust.
|
| Anyway, reading such a block would likely take the record
| player 10's-100's of milliseconds, and xwax seems to target
| 1ms.
| gjvc wrote:
| good explanation about Final Scratch here
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Scratch
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(page generated 2024-07-20 23:08 UTC)