NAME

       dbmixer - Mixer application for the DBMix sound system

SYNOPSIS

       dbmixer

DESCRIPTION

       dbmixer is an advanced mixer application to control various audio channels.  It is part of
       the DBMix sound system and requires a running dbfsd.  The user interface is  devided  into
       four  parts:  the channel boxes, one for each channel, on the top left, the crossfader box
       below, the sample editor box right of the channel boxes, and the controls box to  the  far
       right.  Each of them is described in detail below.

CHANNEL BOX COMPONENTS

       The  list  box  on  top assigns each channel to a particular input device.  Pause and Mute
       buttons below are pretty self-descriptive.  Cue redirects the channel to the cueing device
       and  is  only  enabled if dbfsd has been started with the -c option.  The buttons labelled
       Once and Loop act in conjunction with the sample editor (see 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.  (The number on top of the slider is  a  bit
       misleading--100  means  absolute  silence  while  it  shows  0  when  the volume is at its
       maximum.)  A horizontal slider controls the pitch of the sound output.  The row of buttons
       below  resets  the  speed to 100 per cent (middle button), or alters the speed by five per
       cent in either direction (left and right buttons).  The bottom row, finally, comprises  of
       the  Pitch  Sync  buttons.   While  being  pressed, they temporarily slow down (-S), pause
       (.]S[.), or speed up (S+) the sound.  The purpose of these three buttons is to  assist  in
       beat matching:  First use the pitch control to adjust two songs to the same speed, the use
       the sync buttons to match the beats.

CROSSFADING BOX COMPONENTS

       The crossfader comprises of three parts, the fader slider  itself,  and  the  two  channel
       selectors, one on each side of the fader.  To crossfade, first select the channels to fade
       between in the channel selectors.  Then 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,
       and > fades to the right.  A slider labelled Autofade Spd. controls  the  autofade  speed.
       It  is  actually  located in the controls box, but 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.
       Doing  so 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  usefull  for
       quickly overlaying soundbytes from one stream over another.

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

       One  can  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.

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 is the Mic Talkover button.  It cuts all regular
       output channels to one third of their volume to allow microphone input to be  heard.   See
       dbin  (1)  to  learn  how  to enable microphone input.  Cue Split places 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  allow  to adjust the soundcard volume for the master and cue
       devices, respectively.  Autofade Spd. actually belongs to the crossfader and is  described
       above.

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.

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.

                                          August 8, 2002                               DBMIXER(1)