I’m looking for an audio app for learning tunes by ear. Ideally would have:
1- slow playback, without adjusting pitch.
2- loop selection - to play a segment of the audio over and over
3- pitch adjustment (some old recordings are out of tune)
Anyone have one they like? For android the closest I’ve found is Fossify music player, which offers feature 1.
For PC, audacity has all these features, but its pretty clunky to use.
Mixxx can do all of those things, it’s a free alternative to Serato DJ and similar. It’s super straightforward to playback audio slowed to the exact BPM you need, loop it, and/or play it in a different key. Give it a try!
Let me know if you need any help.
It reset my monitors and I thought my system was rebooting! Then things came back up, with windows on different monitors than before, lol. Its stuck on a splash screen that says “MIXXX”. I’m running nixos, xmonad, pipewire. Output at the terminal:
[nix-shell:~]$ mixxx
ConfigObject: Could not read "/home/pr06lefs/.mixxx/mixxx.cfg"
Loading resources from "/nix/store/q9y3q43nq50wwx7zvq9wz3bj1hlji7w6-mixxx-2.4.0/share/mixxx/"
ConfigObject: Could not read "/home/pr06lefs/.mixxx/mixxx.cfg"
ConfigObject: Could not read "/home/pr06lefs/.mixxx/mixxx.cfg"
No version number in configuration file. Setting to "2.4.0"
BroadcastSettings - Profiles folder doesn't exist. Creating it.
BroadcastSettings - No profiles found. Creating default profile.
warning [Main] faad2::LibLoader - Failed to load ("libfaad.so.2", "libfaad.so") , "Cannot load library libfaad.so: (libfaad.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)"
warning [Main] SoundSourceProviderRegistry - SoundSource provider "Nero FAAD2" does not support any file extensions
warning [Main] SoundSourceProxy - Failed to register SoundSource provider "Nero FAAD2"
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1000:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
ALSA lib pcm.c:2792:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.rear
ALSA lib pcm.c:2792:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.center_lfe
ALSA lib pcm.c:2792:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM cards.pcm.side
ALSA lib pcm_route.c:878:(find_matching_chmap) Found no matching channel map
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1000:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
Hmm, it looks like the first few messages there are doing initial setup. After that, it looks like it’s having trouble loading some of its libraries. Then it isn’t able to read your sound devices. I haven’t run Mixxx with nixos or pipewire, but maybe try the flatpak? Sorry it isn’t running out of the box for you.
Got it working. The problem was really dumb: I use xmonad. When I run mixx, it opens a modal dialog where you have to select a file, or cancel. I didn’t notice the dialog, maybe too many windows or it ended up behind the main window. Dialog never returns, program never gets off the splash screen. 😅 Still get the warnings and errors, but apparently that’s normal.
Anyway, working now, definitely a lot of bells and whistles in this. Inspiring if I ever want to take up DJing.
