Mixxx for Mac

Feeding the budding DJ in just about everyone, Mixxx is a software-based mixing console that lets you use your iTunes library to rock the club, your house, or anywhere else. The Mixxx interface is straight-forward and will be familiar if you've used any other software DJ apps. The bottom of the interface is a list of songs (with appropriate information such as artist, title, year of release, duration, genre and more), and the top has two displays, one for each of two source tracks, showing the audio schematic of the file. Beneath are the playback controls. Between the two schematics are the usual DJ controls for adjusting tone, the volume of the two sources, and so on. Mixxx supports most file formats you'll run across on a Mac, including MP3, FLAC, OGG, M4A and WAV files.

In use, Mixxx is easy and intuitive. There are some advanced features such as beat matching and looping, as well as on-the-fly remixing. If you have access to one, there's full support for several external MIDI controllers (we tested with a Roland external mixer and it worked fine). Using the simple interface you can create playlists for later replay, and it includes the capabilities to push out to Shoutcast and Icecast.

The neatest feature of Mixxx is that this isn't a hobbled trial version, but a full-blown DJ mixing tool with all the features both amateur and professional DJs want. To test it in real-world use we tried it at a couple of wedding gigs this summer, feeding files from an external hard drive, and it performed as well as any other DJ software package we've tried. Mixxx is a sleeper: this is a wonderful app, for free, and you can't go wrong with it.