Gsoc2010 Sampler

Creating a Sampler for Mixxx (GSoC 2010 Project)

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

Abstract

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.

Sampler Specification

Summary and Rationale

Use Cases

• 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.

Design

• 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

Work Breakdown

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

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