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XFB takes a MIDI controller, gives the DJ decks a tempo fader and Sync, and
closes the gap a crossfade used to leave where the outgoing track ended.
A controller on the desk
A MIDI controller can drive the station, the DJ decks and the pads. Options >
MIDI Controller lists everything a controller can do: pick an action, press
Learn, and move the fader or press the button. A monitor line shows every
message the controller sends, which is the quickest way to find out whether it
is talking to XFB at all.
The station's transport, Auto Mode, recording, volume and cue; on each deck
play, pause, stop, tempo, Sync, nudge, a jog wheel, filter, echo, brake and
backspin; the crossfader; and the sixteen pads of the bank on show. A jog wheel
pushes the record the way it turns, harder the faster it spins.
A controller can do nothing the operator at the screen could not: whatever a
role is not allowed to touch stays out of reach from the controller too, and a
locked desk ignores it. Controllers plugged in later are picked up on their
own, including one pulled out and plugged straight back in.
MIDI support is built in, with nothing extra to install. It is off until
switched on. The flatpak now asks for access to devices, which is how it
reaches the MIDI sequencer, so flatpak update will ask you to accept that.
Tempo, nudge and Sync
Each DJ deck has a tempo fader (±8, ±16 or ±50 %), buttons to nudge the beat
back into line, and Sync, which matches one deck's BPM to the other's. The
tempo is varispeed, as on a turntable: 6 % faster is 6 % higher. Sync lines up
the tempo, not the beats, so the nudge buttons are for the phase.
The decks also answer faster: a deck control is now heard about 150 ms after
you touch it, instead of 350 ms.
Crossfades without a gap
Auto-mix times the next track to start exactly where the outgoing one's audio
ends. The join used to wait for the next position update, and on Windows for a
second player to start up, so there was often a third to half a second of
silence right where the mix should have been. The next track now joins on the
exact sample the overlap names.
On Windows the running order now plays through XFB's own audio engine by
default, which is what makes that possible there. It is Options > Mixing >
"Mix transitions in XFB's audio engine", and can be switched on elsewhere too.
Windows is back
4.01 shipped without a Windows installer, so for Windows users coming from 4.0,
this release also brings everything in
4.01: recording what goes
on air, control over the network, and the control page a phone can drive the
station from.
Also
- A DJ deck's decoder ran a little further ahead of the deck the longer it
played; over an hour it could hold minutes of audio. It now stays bounded. - The AppImage's desktop file now passes the AppImage catalog's check.
- The Debian package names ALSA and the accessibility bus among its
dependencies, rather than assuming them. - Portuguese and French for all of the above.
Packages
Windows (x64 and ARM64), macOS, Debian/Ubuntu (amd64 and arm64), Fedora 44
(x86_64 and aarch64), AppImage and flatpak (x86_64 and aarch64), and the
Android companion app the desk hands out, version 1.2, unchanged.