DBMIXER(1)

📦 version 0.9.8, in ubuntu jammy

💖 dbmixer — the manual, but make it cute 💖

okay bestie, gather round, because this is dbmixer from section 1 of the General Commands Manual, and she is that girl. ✨

🌸 NAME 🌸

dbmixer — the Mixer application for the DBMix sound system 🎚️🦋

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

dbmixer

that's it. that's the whole invocation. no flags, no args, just vibes. 💅

🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

so dbmixer is an advanced mixer application that controls all your various audio channels, and it's part of the DBMix sound system — which means it needs a running dbfsd to even function, no cap. 🙈

the user interface is split into four parts, and yes we're going to go through every single one because I love you:

  • the channel boxes — one for each channel, chilling on the top left
  • the crossfader box — right below those
  • the sample editor box — to the right of the channel boxes
  • the controls box — all the way on the far right

each one gets its own deep dive below. let's gooo. 🔥

👑 CHANNEL BOX COMPONENTS 👑

the list box up top assigns each channel to a particular input device. simple, iconic.

Pause and Mute buttons sit below and they're pretty self-descriptive ngl. 💀

Cue redirects the channel to the cueing device — and heads up, it's only enabled if dbfsd has been started with the -c option. no -c, no cue. periodt.

the buttons labelled Once and Loop work in conjunction with the sample editor (more on that 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. ok so tiny warning: the number on top of that slider is a bit misleading — 100 means absolute silence while it shows 0 when the volume is at its maximum. yes fr, it's backwards, we don't make the rules. 😭

a horizontal slider controls the pitch of the sound output. the row of buttons below resets the speed to 100 per cent (that's the middle button), or alters the speed by five per cent in either direction (left and right buttons). 🌈

the bottom row, finally, is the Pitch Sync buttons. while being pressed, they temporarily:

  • slow down — -S
  • pause — .]S[.
  • or speed up — S+

the sound. 🧚

the whole purpose of these three buttons is to assist in beat matching: first use the pitch control to adjust two songs to the same speed, then use the sync buttons to match the beats. dj bestie behaviour honestly. 🎧

🦋 CROSSFADING BOX COMPONENTS 🦋

the crossfader is made of three parts: the fader slider itself, plus the two channel selectors — one on each side of the fader.

to crossfade: first select the channels you want to fade between in the channel selectors. then either 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
  • > fades to the right

a slider labelled Autofade Spd. controls the autofade speed. lowkey she's actually located in the controls box, but she 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. pressing one 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 useful for quickly overlaying soundbytes from one stream over another — very main character energy. 👑

🍓 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 — so be quick, bestie. ⏱️

the start and end sliders are used to fine tune the start and end times of the sample; the values on top of the sliders are the time offsets in seconds.

you can also 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. easy. 🫶

🌈 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 up is the Mic Talkover button. it cuts all regular output channels to one third of their volume, so that microphone input can actually be heard. see dbin (1) to learn how to enable microphone input. 🎤

Cue Split places the 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 let you adjust the soundcard volume for the master and cue devices, respectively. 🎚️

Autofade Spd. actually belongs to the crossfader and is described above — she's just visiting. 💜

💀 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. that's the workaround, you're welcome. 🙈

⭐ 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. shoutout to them both, absolute legends. 🫶

and that's the whole thing!! this page came from the General Commands Manual, DBMIXER(1), dated August 8, 2002 — yes she's vintage, she's an icon, she's a legend, and she is the moment. now go mix something, bestie. 🎧✨💅

📦 where this page comes from