Blog Without An Important Name

(Note: files updated for Ubuntu 8.04)
(Another note: this is all unnecessary now, as Hercules has released Linux drivers for their devices. Just install, and away it goes.)

A little while back, I got a Hercules DJ Control MP3, which is an entry-level DJ console that connects to the computer with USB. Unlike most of these kinds of things, this isn’t a MIDI device, so making it work requires a bit of hacking.

Mixxx supports the Herc DJ Control Mk1 and Mk2 just fine, by talking to them directly over USB, unfortunately the Control MP3 requires some magic for this to work that noone has figured out yet. However, the kernel can talk to it using the HID system, which usually is used for keyboards, mice, and other random controllers. The problem with this is that the LEDs don’t work. For some reason, the Linux kernel (as of 2.6) ignores any LEDs that the device says it has if it doesn’t know what they are. With a bit of kernel hacking, this behaviour can be changed, and then Mixxx will use it just fine. If you don’t do this, the controls work, but the LEDs don’t. And we all want blinky LEDs, don’t we? (Also, I used some of the spare LEDs on the controller and made them into a VU meter, which works surprisingly well.)

So to start with: making the kernel work right. I’ve made a patch against the Ubuntu 2.6.22 2.6.24 kernel, here. Or, if you are using Ubuntu 32-bit with this kernel, you can just use these two modules: hid.ko and usbhid.ko. (Files for Ubuntu 7.10 are also available). With the Herc unplugged, do:

sudo rmmod usbhid; sudo rmmod hid; sudo insmod hid.ko; sudo insmod usbhid.ko

(it pays to do them all on one line, as USB keyboards and mice may stop working while the module is unloaded). If these load properly, then you’re half way there.

The next step is to make Mixxx work with this. By default, it only supports the Mk1 and Mk2, as it uses the direct USB way of talking to them. To make it use HID, you need to recompile it, using the current SVN version. How to do this is documented on the Mixxx website, but the compile command needs an extra option, thus:

scons djconsole_legacy=1

The binary that this spits out should handle the LEDs just fine.

This is all very hacky, but hopefully it won’t be in the future. I’m going to see if I can get that patch put in the kernel proper, which will solve the most annoying part of the problem. It would also be good to get Mixxx supporting both legacy mode and the newer one at the same time.

However, we’ve heard from Hercules, and they say that some time in the first part of this year, they’re going to try to get some Linux drivers out. Hopefully they’re open source, and turn the Herc devices into MIDI devices, which would make life a whole lot easier for support.

For the past couple of months I’ve been playing with Mixxx, practising mixing music. Today I played in front of a crowd for the first time ever. It was a friends birthday, and I’d raided his Gatecrasher CD collection first, so it wasn’t nice, heavy industrial like I’d like, but still, most of the people there seemed to like it. Coincidentally, I’d included a few tracks that people knew, which helped.

It was a load of fun, so hopefully I’ll get the chance to do it more. Even better if it’s the sort of stuff I prefer, although it’s much harder to mix the heavier stuff. But, if I put in more practise I’ll get better at it.

I really need to get a cheap control system to use with the laptop, it’ll be much better than using the keyboard for everything. I’m looking at the Hercules DJ Control MP3, it’s supposed to be pretty crap (very laggy), but it’s cheap, small and portable. It also works with Mixxx properly. When I get into this more, I can look into buying a more expensive and good one and hack Mixxx to work with it. Unfortunately, they don’t ship this outside the US, so I’ll have to find someone there to ship it to and send it on.

Just recently, eMusic updated their download manager to one based on XULRunner, to the outcries of many people on the forums. So I took the work I did for Naxos a while back, and built Windows and Mac OSX versions of my formerly-Linux-only eMusic/J download manager. I’ve had feedback on the Windows version saying that it’s working great for people, which is good. I don’t have a Windows or Mac machine to test either of them on, so I wasn’t terribly confident.

Anyway, they can be found here:

• Windows version
• Mac version

(Update: try the eMusic/J homepage for the latest version on all platforms.)

Recently I have discovered a really cool website, Jamendo. In a nutshell, it provides free music. Unlike most uses of P2P, it does so legitimately. The creators are required to release under one of the Creative Commons licenses, so you can be sure that not only is noone going to mind you having it, but they’re going to be happy if you pass it along, or remix it (depends on the artist), or whatever.

The site also makes it easy to find new stuff (for those in the know, it’s very ‘Web 2.0′ ), and to send a donation to the artist if you like.

There’s a heap of French music on there, it is based in France and I guess it got pushed there a bit or something. However, although I’m less fussed on the French language stuff, there is still a lot of English stuff too. And German metal and industrial, which is nice, too.

It’d be great to see more people, especially local people, getting into this kind of thing.

One of the features of the site is that you can write reviews on albums that are automatically synchronised to a blog. So I plan on doing that. Expect to see a whole lot of links to and reviews of free metal, industrial, synth-industrial, and gothic (and whatever else I hear that I feel is worth writing about) to come through here. I’ve already found a few albums I really like, and I haven’t spent a whole lot of time looking.