[dave]

Can anyone recomend any decent software for mixing MP3s etc - just want summert to tool about on really at home, mess about with pitch etc, the odd sample etc etc. The more shareware/free/cracked the better.

I know its seriously uncool to not have a couple of 1210s in the back bedroom but hey.....

[Bubba]

I played with a few of them, but found them all to be a bit crap really. You could prolly get used to them with a lot of practice but you can't cue up a track in your headphones so mixing becomes a bit of a nightmare.

I gave up and played about with Propellerhead Reason 2 instead - you can't really use existing tracks, but it's like having a full studio to hand and is almost as much fun as mixing - very creative.

[dave]

I'm not really fussed about like mixing and cueing like realtime with MP3s, more like just producing a mix at the end of it, in a kind of manual fashion. Just to put on a CD like, not to actually simulate having a pair of decks.

[Bubba]

Yeah, they'd probably work much better for that as you could take your time getting the pitches and start points sorted - I suppose you'd need something that can record all the in/out/fade/pitch/etc for each track for about an hour which could be anything up to 60 tracks if you're creating a Jeff Mills style frenzy.

Failing that you could always just do the old "fade one track out and bring the next one in mix". I reckon you'll need a lot of memory, etc if you're going to be pitching whole tracks up or down.

[dave]

Yeah thats the idea. ANyone recomend any?

[dobbin]

THE package which they mix all the ministry albums and the like on is called ProTools, you can download an evaluation version from http://www.digidesign.com/ptfree I haven't checked the link btw, so it may not work. The only reason its an eval is that you can only do eight tracks at once.

I found a nifty way round that too, simply do two eight track mixes and record them off as single tracks, then mix them together as well.

[Bubba]

Have you actually mixed some mp3's together and that then?

[dobbin]

yeah, and it doesn't alter your source file, you point it at your MP3's and set them up in like a timeline sequence and set your over lap - you can then just stretch the sample to change the pitch - you can zoom into wave level, so you can do this accurately by matching the peaks, then you either fade one in or graduate it accross or whatever, its cool!

You can even do little scratches by sampling it backwards... Quality!

[Bubba]

Wow! I must get a download then - I went to their site when you mentioned it to me b4, but got put off by the fact that most of their software seemed to work in conjunction with their hardware.

Still on the look out for a compressor / limiter for getting clean levels off the decks....