NAME¶
dbmixer - Mixer application for the DBMix sound system
SYNOPSIS¶
dbmixer
DESCRIPTION¶
dbmixer is an advanced mixer application to control various audio
channels. It is part of the DBMix sound system and requires a running
dbfsd. The user interface is devided into four parts: the
channel
boxes, one for each channel, on the top left, the
crossfader box
below, the
sample editor box right of the channel boxes, and the
controls box to the far right. Each of them is described in detail
below.
CHANNEL BOX COMPONENTS¶
The list box on top assigns each channel to a particular input device.
Pause and
Mute buttons below are pretty self-descriptive.
Cue redirects the channel to the cueing device and is only enabled if
dbfsd has been started with the
-c option. The buttons labelled
Once and
Loop act in conjunction with the sample editor (see
below). They play or loop respectively a short, pre-recorded sample on the
current channel. To adjust the channel's
volume, move the vertical
slider up and down. (The number on top of the slider is a bit misleading--100
means absolute silence while it shows 0 when the volume is at its maximum.) A
horizontal slider controls the
pitch of the sound output. The row of
buttons below resets the speed to 100 per cent (middle button), or alters the
speed by five per cent in either direction (left and right buttons). The
bottom row, finally, comprises of the
Pitch Sync buttons. While being
pressed, they temporarily slow down (
-S), pause (
.]S[.), or
speed up (
S+) the sound. The purpose of these three buttons is to
assist in beat matching: First use the pitch control to adjust two songs to
the same speed, the use the sync buttons to match the beats.
CROSSFADING BOX COMPONENTS¶
The crossfader comprises of three parts, the fader slider itself, and the two
channel selectors, one on each side of the fader. To crossfade, first select
the channels to fade between in the channel selectors. Then move the fader
slider to the desired position, or push one of the autofade buttons to the
right.
< fades to the left,
/\ centres the fader, and
> fades to the right. A slider labelled
Autofade Spd.
controls the autofade speed. It is actually located in the controls box, but
belongs to the crossfader, really. The value of this slider is the fade time
from end to end in seconds.
To either side of the crossfader channel selectors there are buttons that say
Punch. Doing so sets the volume for the selected crossfader channel to
maximum. When the button is released, the channel volume returns to its
previous value. This is usefull for quickly overlaying soundbytes from one
stream over another.
SAMPLE EDITOR BOX COMPONENTS¶
The list box on top connects the sample recorder to one of the channels. The
Load and
Save buttons (re-)store samples on disk. To record a
sample from the selected channel, press the
Record button. Press again
to stop recording. Max recording time is ten seconds. The
start and
end sliders are used to fine tune the start and end times of the
sample; values on top of the sliders the time offsets in seconds.
One can copy a sample to another channel using the
Copy Sample To button
and its associated list box. First select the channel from the list, then
click the button.
CONTROLS BOX COMPONENTS¶
The green light on top turns red whenever samples are clipped in the output.
This is most likely to occur during a crossfade. Next is the
Mic
Talkover button. It cuts all regular output channels to one third of
their volume to allow microphone input to be heard. See
dbin (1) to
learn how to enable microphone input.
Cue Split places cue output in
the right cup of the headphones, and the master output in the left.
The
Balance slider controls the volume ratio of left vs. right in the
master output, while the
Main and
Cue sliders allow to adjust
the soundcard volume for the master and cue devices, respectively.
Autofade
Spd. actually belongs to the crossfader and is described above.
KNOWN BUGS¶
dbmixer refuses to start if the maximum number of clients are already
running. In this case, close one of your clients, start
dbmixer, and
then restart your last client.
SEE ALSO¶
dbcat(1),
dbin(1),
dbfsd(1),
dbmix(7).
AUTHOR¶
This manual page was written by Daniel Kobras <kobras@debian.org>, for the
Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others). It is heavily based on
DBMix's README file written by Robert Michael S Dean.