MrPopinjay's xwax Setup :)

MrPopinjay's xwax Setup :)
Posted on: 10.12.2012 by Kiyoko Wellisch
My setup has changed (slightly) for the first time in a year and a half so I figured I'd make one of these threads

So after fiddling with software for a year or so and occasionally mucking about with friend's vinyl setups I took the plunge and bought myself two super OEM turntables and a Numark mixer in autumn 2010 along with a Audio4DJ and some timecode records. I tried various different bits of software for a few months before discovering linux and xwax, the minimal open source DVS.
xwax is the shit, you should check it out.

Here's a picture of it from June 2011.


Oh yeah, and I use Senny HD280 Pro headphones. I love them. Big, comfortable, really clear top end and insane isolation. I actually prefer them to the popular HD25-1 IIs

A few weeks later I found an Ecler Nuo 2.0 in a pawn shop and snapped it up. I absolutely adore this mixer and after using it for a while not else I've got my hands on has felt quite as good. Easily the best cheapish 2 channel mixer you can get in my opinion
The Numark M2 is sitting in a box somewhere. I really need to find a use for it.

It's so pretty


So in the last week or so an exciting new xwax feature has started development- generic midi controller support! Purely by chance a controller I own (the LPD8) is the first controller Mark decided to play with. (probably because it costs peanuts) So there it is, sitting on the right of my setup. (Also I'm using a friend's 1210 until I can be bothered to fix my other super oem)



(haha, look how worn out those labels are! I'm amazed these records still track to be honest)

I'm *really* enjoying having cue points. Back before I used xwax I had access to them but I never really used them, I wasn't competent enough simply mixing vinyl to be able to wrap my head around that layer but now I'm more experienced I'm having a blast. I am going a bit over the top though ;P

The LPD8 itself is alright. It's got a few stupid flaws that stop it from being a really awesome piece of kit. Firstly the pads are not nearly sensitive enough, I fixed this by adding some electrical tape to the bottom of the rubber pad. Second the stock knob caps are way too small to use, I solved this by swapping them out for the knob caps from my old Korg NanoKontrol that some dickhead broke and never owned up to. Lastly the firmware sucks. There's no midi controlled LED feedback so I can't tell if a pad has a cue point on it, the three little mode change buttons don't sent a midi note themselves and the thing keeps forgetting what preset I used last time. I can't really do anything about that.

I'm looking to get a better midi controller at some point. Most likely candidate is the very awesome looking Behringer CMD DC-1, assuming it ever comes out ;P

So, whatcha believe?
Kiyoko Wellisch
02.06.2013
"Postage: US $42.00 (approx.
Kiyoko Wellisch
02.06.2013
"Postage: US $42.00 (approx.
Kiyoko Wellisch
02.06.2013
Originally Posted by Ross
"My poor beloved Numark TTX that I have had for many, many years has a broken tone arm clip and I was hoping you'd be able to supply me with a replacement. I wouldn't want to have to go to Stanton's now would I?!"
You're a genius.



awwwhhh yeeeeer
Annalisa Shogren
02.06.2013
Originally Posted by HighTopFade
Is the Numark TTX a Super OEM?
No.
Kiyoko Wellisch
02.06.2013
"Postage: US $42.00 (approx.
Kiyoko Wellisch
07.01.2014
I bought myself a little birthday present.

Kiyoko Wellisch
29.12.2013
Corr. I've not been in here in a while.

Can you spot my new toy?

Kiyoko Wellisch
02.06.2013
4 different mixes, all excellent. Best bit of wax I've bought in ages :P
Annalisa Shogren
02.06.2013
Instant reload!
Kiyoko Wellisch
02.06.2013
Originally Posted by Ross
"My poor beloved Numark TTX that I have had for many, many years has a broken tone arm clip and I was hoping you'd be able to supply me with a replacement. I wouldn't want to have to go to Stanton's now would I?!"
You're a genius.



awwwhhh yeeeeer
Annalisa Shogren
02.06.2013
Originally Posted by HighTopFade
Is the Numark TTX a Super OEM?
No.
Rena Estabrook
02.06.2013
Is the Numark TTX a Super OEM?
Annalisa Shogren
02.06.2013
"My poor beloved Numark TTX that I have had for many, many years has a broken tone arm clip and I was hoping you'd be able to supply me with a replacement. I wouldn't want to have to go to Stanton's now would I?!"
Kiyoko Wellisch
02.06.2013
That's an idea, cheers mate
Annalisa Shogren
02.06.2013
Call their UK service center. Make out like you're a long time dedicated customer and they'll probably send you out a free one.

01252 896000
Kiyoko Wellisch
02.06.2013
"Postage: US $42.00 (approx.
Brunilda Kora
02.06.2013
Will this one work???

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Tone-arm-R...item5d3eb96823
Kiyoko Wellisch
02.06.2013
Oooh, new toys!



Anyone know where I can get a Numark TTX tone arm clip in the UK?
Kiyoko Wellisch
13.04.2013
I should believe so. A friend of mine has them and had no such issues. He makes cash buying, repairing and selling Technics and Audio Technica 1240s are his favourite decks
Rena Estabrook
10.04.2013
The Audio Technica 1240 should be good then. It's pretty new.
Kiyoko Wellisch
07.04.2013
I believe it was a believe that would sometimes happen with the second gen ones which got fixed. I searched the web a fair bit and the few references to wobbly tone arms were really old.

Still, I don't have any real knowledge or evidence.
Rena Estabrook
07.04.2013
I'm digging the Super OEM decks with the rounded corners. Is the tonearm wobble common with these decks or is this just a freak occurrence?
Kiyoko Wellisch
06.04.2013
I just realised that I should probably update this thread to show off my new toys

Here's one:



And here's a review:

Kiyoko Wellisch
10.02.2013
Yeah it's a bit of a bummer, I've not really looking into getting them repaired though since it doesn't really make any difference in the bedroom unless you scratch, which I cannot. Maybe when I have some spare cash I'll phone up a repair shop and see what they can do
Carter Wetrich
10.02.2013
That's cool, I like all the features the super oems give. Tone arm wobble sucks. Hopefully it not expensive to fix. I thought my one of my Technics tone arms was broken but it turned out that the height adjust lock wasn't locked. Once I locked it, the tone arm was solid and doesn't wobble anymore.
Kiyoko Wellisch
10.02.2013
Some people might find this blasphemous but I prefer them! Variety of nice little things that make them better in my eyes such as the use of LEDs over incandescents, the guard on the on-off switch, the wider pitch range, greater torque, etc. The fact the cables are not built in is a huge advantage! Latest gen of them has internal grounding and line level outputs which I rather fancy.

The dual start/stop buttons is a bit of a pain though if you want to Dicers, there's no where to put them.

Sadly mine has a bit of wobble in the tone arm which sucks and I've still not got round to fixing my other. Not much motivation while I still have my housemate's Technics available to me.
Carter Wetrich
10.02.2013
I was believeing of getting a super oem TT. How do you like the super OEM turntables compared to Technics?
Kiyoko Wellisch
17.01.2013
Ah well. I guess LED feedback isn't possible with those ones... Thanks dude!
Jonathan Chiuchiolo
17.01.2013
unfortunately not... they aren't standard note on/off they just send one note, and no matter how many different ways I tried to get VDJ to recognise them they just didn't work in the program... I just forgot about them and got rid of the mpk because the LED's were annoying me too much and numark support said they couldn't do anything to fix them.
Kiyoko Wellisch
17.01.2013
Yeah I managed to get the CC and "Pad" banks working but couldn't work out the program change ones. Did you have any success?
Jonathan Chiuchiolo
16.01.2013
the same notes as the pads will light the LEDs.. and yeah flashing is done in VDJ, same as midimasher.. here is the addresses in Hex

there are two banks of 8 pads and leds running from 0x01, 0x02, 0x03, 0x04, 0x05, 0x06, 0x07, 0x08, 0x09, 0x0A, 0x0B, 0x0C, 0x0D, 0x0E, 0x0F, 0x10.

they run on channel 0 to channel 3 to make up the 4 banks

the knobs on the mpk are from CC-0x11 to CC-0x20 again using channels 0 to 3.

hope that helps
Kiyoko Wellisch
16.01.2013
I've been playing with the LPD8, how did you make them flash? is it a VDJ feature?
Also did you manage to get the program change bank to flash?
Kiyoko Wellisch
16.01.2013
Well this is FOSS so anything is possible!

So do you have info on how to make the LEDs flash and such or am I going to have to find a good way to throw random notes at it and work it out through trial and error?
Jonathan Chiuchiolo
16.01.2013
you and zestoi believe alike LOL

yep, you could do that but you need to introduce a delay before the note on for the LED will work, I tried it in VDJ but won't have a delay until version 8 so couldn't get it to work. Zestoi did get it to work using his midimasher with traktor but I can't remember the delay time that he used.
Kiyoko Wellisch
16.01.2013
No way! I couldn't find any documentation on controlling the LEDs via midi. Do you have any you could share with me?

So if I set it to be a solid colour hitting the pad turns it off? Couldn't I just get xwax to tell it to turn back on again after it receives the note off value?
Jonathan Chiuchiolo
15.01.2013
yep you can control them with software... to get around the native behavior I just made them blink when they were supposed to be on, so pressing them did turn it off, but it will start up again after the predefined amount of time and continue blinking. You should ask Mark to add in blinking unless you know the C language then you could probably do it yourself as it's open source.
Kiyoko Wellisch
15.01.2013
You don't need a custom driver for the Audio8DJ, it works out of the box with the normal ALSA driver. (in fact most USB interfaces are plug and play). By default it presents as 4 stereo pairs so you'll probably want to make an .asoundrc file in order to combine it into one address for use with something like a DAW or JACK but stereo pairs is perfect for xwax + ALSA. Mark has one on his little soundcard page, I've not tested it though. I did test the Audio4DJ one and it didn't work

http://www.pogo.org.uk/~mark/linuxdj/
http://wiki.xwax.org/list_of_soundcards

Wait, so you can control the LPD8 LEDs via the software? :O
I stuck korg nanokontrol knobs on my LPD8, they work nicely.
Jonathan Chiuchiolo
14.01.2013
The one thing I don't like about the LPD and MPK is the stupid LED's can be controlled by software to turn on and off, but whenever you press the pads if the light is on it will automatically turn off.. Otherwise they are pretty decent at what they do especially for the price, but you may want to invest in some bigger knobs and some superglue to hold them tight so you can use them a little easier..

has anyone made a driver for an Audio 8 on linux yet? I have been playing with backtrack lately and love the linux OS but unfortunately decent DJ hardware is rarely supported as it usually means someone much smarter than your average DJ needs to reverse engineer the manufactures driver in their spare time.
Kiyoko Wellisch
14.01.2013
Just design it to fit on 720p and then leave it up to them to set their default scaling a little higher if they feel the need to make the text larger

Hey I don't care. There's not much to talk about with my setup unless you're really into the LPD8 :P
Jonathan Chiuchiolo
14.01.2013
i spose it's a good thing as when the web breaks it just means more work for designers responsive design is pretty good and easy enough to do, the only problem is that you can query the size of the window in pixels but that doesn't give you the actual size of the screen to know how large text and images should be... that means that even with responsive design techniques you just aren't going to be able to read the text without zooming, therefore the responsive design you have is pointless. There would have to be an addition to javascript to see what the device is and how much of the pixel real estate is actually usable. The issue is that because the internet is so large and been around for a long time change happens very slowly so the old stuff doesn't break.
sorry for hijacking your thread popin

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