MIXXX allows you to perform live DJ mixes with your digital music collection. It is used by professional DJs and bedroom DJs alike. MIXXX is designed by an international team of volunteer DJs and the project is open source and community driven.
You have almost the same features in your hands as most paid programs like beat syncing, section loop, chained effects, and recording and broadcasting. Of course, the best thing about MIXXX is that it is free to use by anyone, so if you have little to no budget when hunting for a DJ mixing software.
With over 85 MIDI DJ controllers supported out-of-the-box and several HID controllers, MiXXX gives you comprehensive hardware control for your DJ mixes. In addition, it has a cutting-edge mixing engine including support for MP3, M4A/AAC, OGG, FLAC, and WAV audio, adjustable EQ shelves, timecode vinyl control, recording, and Shoutcast broadcasting.
MIXXX runs on a wide range of hardware, and even supports integration with 3rd party hardware from many DJ gear manufacturers. Running on a no-frills laptop with no external sound card, it didn’t get any glitches or dropouts when playing multiple tracks with effects.
The interface is quite refined and polished. It’s fairly easy to use it with drag and drop elements. You can resize all the skins according to your needs and show/hide most of the UI elements that you want. In addition to that, you can also customize the whole skin by editing an XML file.
MIXXX offers an amazing customer support center where you will be able to access FAQs, manuals, IRC channel, and the official forums. You can use these different channels to ask for help whenever you are stuck or come across a difficult problem.
At the following link you can find a great guide on how you can set up a home DJ studio: The Ultimate Guide to Building a Home DJ Studio
MIXXX Key Features and Highlights
- Free and open source
- Cross–Platform: Compatible with Windows, Linux, and MacOS.
- iTunes Integration: Use your playlists and songs from iTunes, Traktor and Rhythmbox.
- Effects: Reverb, Delay/Echo, Flanger, Scratch, Loops, Pitch Shifting, Graphic Waveform, Skinnable Decks.
- Audio Processing: Automatic Crossfade, Quantization, Automatic Beat Matching, Time Stretching, Automatic Volume Gain, Number of Decks, Hot Cues.
- Supported File Types: MP3, Wave, AAC, AIFF, FLAC.
- Features: Beat Gridding, Mixtape Recording, Mixing History, Supports MIDI and HID Controllers, Automatic Key Detection, Supports Microphones, Playlists, Internet Broadcast, Vinyl Turntables.
Conclusion
MIXXX is just perfect for Linux users (Windows and Mac too) that want an alternative to e.g. Rekordbox. In short, many features, nice theming, active development. Setup can be a little bit of a hassle, but it is worth it. The ability to export tracks from a given playlist let you prepare your gigs optimally.
Requiring no cost at all, MIXXX is probably one of the best free mixing DJ software available to date.
For more information about MIXXX you can visit the project’s website.
