Mixxx DJ Hardware Guide: list of sound cards & controllers

Talk about your MIDI interfaces, microphones, keyboards...

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Be.
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Mixxx DJ Hardware Guide: list of sound cards & controllers

Post by Be. »

I recently rewrote Mixxx's hardware compatibility wiki page with a big list of controllers and sound cards along with prices, some technical specifications, and of course Linux compatibility. This list is focused on DJing, so I left out most sound cards that only have 2 outputs.
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Re: Mixxx DJ Hardware Guide: list of sound cards & controlle

Post by gimmeapill »

Hi Be.

Nice that you tackle the long overdue Mixxx controller documentation update.
I just had a look and have some comments regarding the Hercules DJ Console RMX (1st gen): This one deserves a warning - the wiki shouldn't give the wrong assumption that it works out of the box with HID or MIDI on Linux.

Last I checked there is no functional HID mapping for it, and MIDI with the legacy (unmaintained since 2009) Hercules Linux Driver is a royal mess: it requires 9 patches to build on a modern kernel. I have a first hand experience here, being the current maintainer of the Arch pkgbuild for the Hercules kernel module (or at least trying to):
https://aur4.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git ... D?h=hdjmod

The only distro that seems to keep up with binary packaging is OpenSUSE (Factory), but users on Ubuntu/Debian will likely find only outdated PPAs.
The relevant page of the MIxxx Wiki is also plain outdated http://mixxx.org/wiki/doku.php/hercules ... nel_module

This includes the url of the Linux driver which has also changed - there's no more mention of it on the Hercules support page.
Here's the last known good location: ftp://ftp.hercules.com/pub/webupdate/DJ ... _Linux.tgz

Long story short: it is probably better to direct Linux users to controllers that are known to be functional on their platform (either class compliant or with a properly maintained driver).

Cheers,

LX
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Re: Mixxx DJ Hardware Guide: list of sound cards & controlle

Post by Be. »

gimmeapill wrote:Hi Be.

Nice that you tackle the long overdue Mixxx controller documentation update.
I just had a look and have some comments regarding the Hercules DJ Console RMX (1st gen): This one deserves a warning - the wiki shouldn't give the wrong assumption that it works out of the box with HID or MIDI on Linux.

Last I checked there is no functional HID mapping for it
Check again:
https://github.com/mixxxdj/mixxx/blob/1 ... k1.hid.xml
https://github.com/mixxxdj/mixxx/blob/1 ... scripts.js

It's a wiki, so if there is something you want to see changed on it, please go ahead and change it.
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Re: Mixxx DJ Hardware Guide: list of sound cards & controlle

Post by gimmeapill »

That's for the Dj Console Mk1 - different device. The 2 mappings for the RMX are midi only:
https://github.com/mixxxdj/mixxx/blob/1 ... X.midi.xml
https://github.com/mixxxdj/mixxx/blob/1 ... d.midi.xml

I think the DJ Control Steel is also in the same situation (this would deserve to be double checked - as there's possibly a working HID mapping somewhere on the Mixxx forums).
As said, the Hercules section is still quite a mine field on Linux - some devices fell right in the middle between the old Hercules midi driver and the HID migration.
This is not just about updating the wiki (which I used to edit a bit back in the 1.7 days), but clearing up the support stance on Linux for those old devices.
If it says "officially supported" on the 3 platforms, users tend to expect it to work, one way or another. Not to have to mess their system by force installing kernel modules built for Ubuntu 10.x...

In the case of the RMX + possibly the Steel, the following caveats should be mentioned:
- no HID mapping avaible,
- requires a patched driver in the form of a kernel module (non official - upstream is dead),
- no easy way to install on current Ubuntu/Debian (no recent ppa or third party .deb) - just OpenSuse and somehow Arch, + maybe also some source based distros like Gentoo.
That's already the cold shower for a few users...

Luckily those devices are not for sale anymore and the new ones that are detected only as HID seem to be better supported.
Also, to be fair, Hercules does maintain the Mac and Windows drivers for their legacy stuff - just not Linux...

Cheers,

LX
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Re: Mixxx DJ Hardware Guide: list of sound cards & controllers

Post by gimmeapill »

Bumping that old thread, as the legacy Hercules controllers are indeed working fine with HID since Mixxx 2.0. (hadn't tried it for a good while).
So I'm taking the previous statement back: That nasty hdjmod kernel module is not really needed anymore.

Thanks Be. for the clean up ;-)

Thins being said, I'm still using hdjmod for now, as there 2 minor features missing for my RMX: jog wheel to scroll through the library + 1 gen firmware offset. I'll see if I can do something for that later on when time permits...
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Re: Mixxx DJ Hardware Guide: list of sound cards & controllers

Post by Snc333 »

After doing hours and hours of research and testing I stumbled onto this thread...

I'm trying to run the Hercules RMX controller as HID on Mixxx 2.0 on Linux and it is not working for me.

What's not working is that Linux is not recognizing the Hercules sound card. The mapping works fine. Love the controls. But I can preview tracks as it looks like my computer's sound card is the only one available is the sound hardware options... Any thoughts?
gimmeapill wrote:Bumping that old thread, as the legacy Hercules controllers are indeed working fine with HID since Mixxx 2.0. (hadn't tried it for a good while).
So I'm taking the previous statement back: That nasty hdjmod kernel module is not really needed anymore.

Thanks Be. for the clean up ;-)

Thins being said, I'm still using hdjmod for now, as there 2 minor features missing for my RMX: jog wheel to scroll through the library + 1 gen firmware offset. I'll see if I can do something for that later on when time permits...
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Re: Mixxx DJ Hardware Guide: list of sound cards & controllers

Post by gimmeapill »

@Snc333: the control part is the hardest to get right, the sound card should work by default with alsa.
Are you sure that this is a dj console RMX first generation? I'm not sure at all about the RMX 2 (not saying that it doesn't work, just that I never had one to test).
Suggestion: try first to do your audio setup with jack or alsa without mixxx (audio group, permissions,etc... as per http://wiki.linuxaudio.org/wiki/system_configuration - except that you can safely skip the real time kernel part for djing).
Then, once you're sure the sound card is working, try again with Mixxx.
If you still can't get anywhere try to run https://github.com/raboof/realtimeconfigquickscan and post the results back.
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