Features

Everything a deck does. And a few things decks don't.

Everything below is in release 1.0.2. Each feature says how far it has been taken: with real CDJs on the link, on the real decks, or so far only on emulated decks and emulated CDJs.

with real CDJs Shown with real CDJ-2000NXS players
on real decks Played on the TriMixxx decks
emulated so far Shown on emulated decks and CDJs; the real-hardware check is still to come

Playing

The controls a DJ already knows.

Everything on the deck is a physical control, wired the way a CDJ's are. The screen shows; the hands play.

Transport, loops and cues
on real decks
PLAY and CUE, LOOP IN, LOOP OUT and RELOOP, four hot cues in colour, 8- and 4-beat loops, loop ×2 and ÷2, slip, and master tempo.
A jog wheel from a CDJ
on real decks
A CDJ-1000MK3 jog assembly: 12,960 counts a turn, read by the controller's hardware counter. Touch the platter to scratch; turn it untouched to bend.
A 14-bit tempo fader
on real decks
Ranges of ±6, ±10 and ±16 % and WIDE. After SYNC, a range change or a load, the fader waits until it crosses the playing tempo before it takes over, and the screen shows where it would go.
Pads that light up with meaning
on real decks
Thirteen RGB pads on two rings, coloured by what they do: the tempo range, hot cue colours, slip flashing, KEY SYNC in purple. A rainbow runs round both rings at start-up, and every light goes out at shutdown.

The deck view of Birth4000 by Floating Points at 126.25 BPM: on the left a build-up in yellow mids and white highs with no bass, a beat of silence at the playhead, then the drop with blue bass under every kick; white beat lines, red downbeats, and the whole track's overview along the bottom. — The deck view. The only button left on screen is Shut down; everything else is on the deck.

Library

Your sticks, and a browser for a thumb.

Plug in a USB stick exported from rekordbox, or one with nothing but music files on it, or one of each. The deck reads them as they are, mounted read-only.

rekordbox sticks, as exported
on real decks
Playlists, beat grids, hot cues, loops, colour waveforms, cover art and Camelot keys, read straight off the stick. Nothing is analysed again.
A CDJ-style browser
on real decks
A full-screen menu the encoder drives: search with an on-screen keyboard, playlists, folders, genre, artist, album, label, key with compatible keys in green, BPM in buckets one fader range wide, last played and date added. SORT on twelve fields. A long press on BACK returns to the deck and keeps your place.
Plain sticks
on real decks
A stick of music files with no rekordbox library browses by folder, with tags and covers. Only the track you load is analysed.
Pull a stick out, any time
on real decks
Sticks are mounted read-only, so yanking one mid-set can't corrupt it: no eject button, no damaged library. The deck plays its own copy of the track, so the music doesn't stop either. The one write is a recorded set you ask the deck to save, after which the stick is read-only again.
Loads in half a second
with real CDJs
A track starts while it is still arriving: its start, then its end, then the rest following the playhead. From a CDJ, about 0.56 s from button to sound. Off a slow stick, a 52 MB AIFF now starts in 0.46 s instead of 18 (measured on an emulated stick).
Autoplay
emulated so far
Pick a stick and a genre. The deck plays it, choosing the unplayed track nearest in BPM each time, round after round, until you take over.

The deck's browser at USB 1, BPM, 126 – 142: eight tracks sorted by tempo, each with its own cover, title, artist, BPM and Camelot key, the first highlighted. — A rekordbox stick's tracks by tempo, each with its cover, BPM and key.

A plain stick's folder: tracks listed by their tags, some with cover art, one only by its filename. — A plain stick, browsed by folder: tags where the files have them, the filename where they don't.

The Autoplay menu listing the genres on a stick: Disco, House, Techno, and the number of tracks in each. — Autoplay: choose a genre, and the deck plays it.

Pro DJ Link

On the link, beside the CDJs.

Plug the deck's Ethernet into a booth's Pro DJ Link network and it becomes a player like the others, built from captures of real CDJ-2000NXS players.

Browse and load from CDJs
with real CDJs
The deck claims a player number, lists every CDJ's USB and SD, browses them like its own sticks, and loads and plays their tracks with their grids, cues and waveforms.
Serve your sticks to CDJs
with real CDJs
CDJs see the deck under LINK and play its sticks: all eleven browse categories, search, sorting, key matching, artwork, hot cues and both waveforms.
Two sticks, both on the link
emulated so far
Plug in two sticks and CDJs see both: the first as the deck's USB, the second as its SD card, the two slots a CDJ offers itself. An NXS browsed, loaded and played a rekordbox stick from the SD slot; a plain stick there is yet to be tried.
SYNC and MASTER
with real CDJs
The deck follows a CDJ's tempo and phase, and a CDJ follows the deck's. With the deck as master at −3.05 %, a CDJ followed it to 116.34 BPM, to the hundredth.
Master, the way CDJs pass it
emulated so far
The first deck to play takes master, a stopped master hands it on, and a hand-over takes 67 to 133 ms, as between two CDJs. SYNC lands with one exact beat-jump, then holds phase with a trim of at most 1 % that never shows on the BPM.
A phase meter
with real CDJs
Two rows in the header: the deck you are mixing against, and your own.
KEY SYNC
emulated so far
A press shifts the track onto the master's Camelot number, between −5 and +6 semitones, in the track's own mode. A hold opens the twelve keys to pick from. The pad stays purple while the track is out of its own key.
Plain sticks both ways
emulated so far
A CDJ browses the deck's plain stick by folder and plays from it; a CDJ's plain stick shows up on the deck as a folder source.
History
emulated so far
What played on the link during this power-up and the two before, whoever played it: this deck, another TriMixxx or a CDJ. A timeline of what overlapped and for how long, with covers.

The History list: tracks played on the link this session, each with the stick it came from and how long it played, two of them on one row because they played together. — History: two tracks on one row played together, for 3 s here.

Record set

Take the night home.

The deck's sound card has an input. Plug the mixer's record out into it, and the deck records the set.

Recorded to the card, written to your stick
emulated so far
A 320 kbit/s MP3 is written to the deck's card as you play, never held in RAM. At the end it goes onto one of your sticks, with the History's track list beside it.
It notices the silence
emulated so far
Up to three hours. After five minutes of silence, the deck asks whether the set is over.

The home list while recording: an End recording row with the elapsed time and a left and right level meter. — While it records: the time so far, and a meter for each side.

A prompt over the deck: End the recording? Nothing on the input for 5 minutes. Buttons: Keep recording, End recording. — Five minutes of silence, and the deck asks.

The set being written to a stick, 42 % done, with a warning not to remove the stick. — Writing the set to a stick, 16 MB at a time.

Reliability

Built to survive a booth.

Power gets pulled, cables get yanked, Wi-Fi isn't there. The deck is designed to shrug all of it off.

Updates that roll back
on real decks
A new release goes into the deck's idle slot and starts as a trial. If the network and ssh don't come up within 150 s, the deck goes back to the release it ran before. Diagnostics can restart into the other slot.
Safe to pull the plug
on real decks
The system is read-only under a layer in RAM, the logs live in RAM, and the settings are never written back, so pulling the power can't corrupt the system.
Always comes back as a deck
on real decks
Whatever fails at start-up, the deck falls back to Mixxx, and Mixxx restarts two seconds after any exit.
Up in seconds
on real decks
The logo is on screen about 8 s after power-on, the whole boot takes about 15 s, and the boot log keeps printing behind the splash.
Diagnostics
on real decks
CPU, temperature, throttling, underruns, the network and the release, an output trim of ±6 dB and the panel's brightness, on one page.
Its own Wi-Fi
on real decks
With no network to join 45 s into a boot, the deck becomes a hotspot named after itself, so a phone can always reach it.

The deck's home list: a stick called DJSTICK, then Autoplay, History, Record set, Diagnostics and Shut down. — The home list: the sticks first, then Autoplay, History, Record set, Diagnostics and Shut down.

Hidden modes

Hold a button at power-on.

The deck reads its own buttons while it boots, and becomes something else when one is held.

Hold PLAY at power-on

DOOM

The deck boots into DOOM (1993). The jog turns, touching it fires, the tempo fader is the throttle, and ring A's seven pads are the seven weapons. The game is a stock chocolate-doom: the deck's controls reach it as a virtual keyboard and mouse.

Hold CUE at power-on

Rescue console

A logged-in terminal on the left of the touchscreen and an on-screen keyboard on the right, for when something needs fixing and there's no keyboard in the booth. The pads type the arrow keys.

Hold LOOP IN + LOOP OUT for 2 s

Back to the deck

From DOOM or the console, the one chord nobody holds by accident brings the deck back to Mixxx. A power cycle always does too.