Creating a Sampler for Mixxx (GSoC 2010 Project)

• Student: Ryan Baker
  • Email: [email protected]
  • IRC Handle: ryan_baker
  • Skype Handle: baker1990
• Mentor: Albert Santoni

For some people, myself included, mixing and DJ'ing is more than just playing one track after the other at the same speed. For my project, I will be writing a sampler for Mixxx that will allow users to play hits, loops, vocals, and other samples on command. This will allow users to add flair and creativity to their mixes. I believe this will be a major addition to Mixxx and feel that it is a feature that many users will appreciate.

• DJ Bill wants to send a sample bank to his friend, DJ Jane. Being able to export sample banks will make it easy for Bill to share his sample banks with his friends.
• DJ Ryan wants to add drum loops and one-shots into mixes. You should be able to control whether each sample is looped or only played once through.
• DJ Adam wants to create on the fly remixes using vocal and instrument samples. You should be able to time-stretch the samples to fit the tempo of the song.
• DJ Awesome wants to sample directly from a playing song and use this to create on the fly remixes and loops. You should be able to sample directly from a playing song.

• Feature ideas:
  • Simple playback (start/stop)
  • Looping
  • Time stretch / pitch adjustment
    • How do we do tempo syncing?
  • Waveform view
  • Cue / Loop points (start/end)
  • Saving / loading sample banks
  • Sample bank management GUI (load/save/delete)
    • Reuse EngineBuffer for each sample in the bank
    • Are there any performance concerns about this?
    • Should we unify all the Reader threads?
  • Sampling from playing decks

• User Interface
  • How do we deal with skinning?
  • Simple/Minimal Controls

Note: This work breakdown structure (WBS) will be refined as the scope of this project becomes better determined.

1. Sampler
   1. Playback Engine
      1. Sampler class (aggregates Player)
      2. Simple playback (play/stop)
      3. Looping
      4. Tempo sync
   2. Sample Bank Manager
      1. GUI for loading, saving, deleting
      2. Bank export
   3. Sampler widget
      1. Waveform
      2. Playback control