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MixMeister Express 5

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Reviews
June 1, 2004 • Vol.2 Issue 6 Page(s) 36 in print issue
MixMeister Express 5

MixMeister
Express 5
$49.95
www.mixmeister.com

Digital media players organize your music and let you create playlists, but most lack even basic mixing features. The average player is more than enough technology for most users. They can add their songs to a playlist, hit Shuffle, and kick back. But if you hate the brief seconds of dead air that separate tracks or want to meld your existing songs into entirely new tunes, you'll need to invest in mixing software. MixMeister Technology targets MixMeister Express 5 at new and casual users.

We're glad to see that you can resize the GUI's (graphical user interface) three main windows because the detailed Timeline window cascades your mix's songs. If you plan to mix more than a few songs, you'll need to expand the Timeline. The other two windows include Catalog, which acts as a bullpen for your songs, and Playlists, which houses the songs that make up your current mix. MixMeister automatically displays the Playlists window's songs in the Timeline and overlaps them, which eliminates dead air.

You can use the Timeline to reverse tracks, adjust the tempo, and set Treble and Bass Volume markers. Thankfully, the Tempo markers sit at the bottom of the Timeline instead of cluttering the song segments. MixMeister assigns different colors to each type of marker, but if you don't recognize a marker, you can roll the cursor over it to display the item's label.

MixMeister uses its own rhythm algorithm to match multiple tracks' beats. If you want to fade the end of one song into the beginning of the next, you can switch to Standard Mixing mode. You can save the mix as a WAV or WMA (Windows Media Audio) file or use MixMeister to burn it to an audio CD.

MixMeister supports MP3, WAV, and WMA music files and MMP and M3U playlist files. You won't need a souped-up computer to use MixMeister; it supports 400MHz Pentium II and newer PCs. If you deejay by night at local clubs, you'll want to take advantage of MixMeister Pro 5's on-screen VU (Volume Unit) meters and other extras, but if you deejay by day in your pajamas, you'll find everything you need in the streamlined version.

by Joshua Gulick

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