Mixvibes Cross 3 review

Mixvibes Cross 3.0 is a DJing application that lets you mix tracks and create live edits on the fly with a number of advanced tools such as hot-cues, loops and samplers. Even better, version 3 lets you mix videos as if they were ordinary tracks. You can even add video effects and transitions to the mix.

We’ve been fans of Cross for a long time because of its visual simplicity, stability, fast response to commands and advanced features. Thankfully, Mixvibes hasn’t messed with this winning formula, and Cross 3 looks much the same as Cross 2.5. The screen is organised into a track browser that occupies the lower portion of the screen, with virtual decks above that and global controls for setting preferences, volume and so on right at the very top. The mixer is located between the decks, along with the equalisation controls for each deck. If you don’t want to use video then that’s how the screen layout remains.

Whether you want to mix video or not, the DJing process is the same. You drag music or video tracks from the track browser onto the virtual decks. You can then set the tempos of the tracks so that they match, synchronise the beats and then mix the tracks in and out of each other.

To get creative, you can use hot-cues, loops, effects and sample decks. Hot-cues let you jump to a specific point in a track instantly and are great for creating live edits. You could set a hot-cue at the start of a breakdown, for instance, and then jump straight into it at any point while the track’s playing, simply by pressing the hot-cue button. You can have up to eight hot-cues and, annoyingly, Cross still insists on calling them Locators.

Loops are also great tools for creating live edits, as you can set a loop and then mix it into the same or another track playing on another deck. Cross has an autoloop function that lets you set a loop of a specific length and then increase or decrease the length of a loop while you’re in it. You can also set a loop’s start and end points manually, should you want to create a loop of an odd length.

The sample players are classed as extra decks, and get their own faders and equalisers in Cross’s mixer section. Each sample deck is comprised of eight sample slots into which you can load or record samples so that you can play them whenever you want. Samples can be looped or played once as is necessary, and each sample slot has a fader that lets you control the volume of the individual sample. Cross comes with some Loopmasters sample packs preinstalled, and these contain various sounds such as basslines and drum tracks that you can combine to create new tracks or use to backbeat or augment a track playing on another deck.

All of these tools are available to you when you mix video, so not only can you create new and exciting mixes, you can let your creativity go further with stunning visuals. You can display a preview monitor for each deck and a central ‘mix’ monitor at any time by pressing a button at the top of the screen. Conveniently, you can see the waveform of the video’s soundtrack in the virtual deck, so you can anticipate build-ups, breakdowns and the end of the video.

You can either control both the audio and video with the crossfader so that you can easily mix from one video into another, or you can have two separate crossfaders and mix between audio and video separately. This gives you many creative possibilities and a lot of flexibility.

There are many transitions you can use when you crossfade from one video to another. These transitions include horizontal wipes, pixellation effects and a rhythmic strobe effect. You can also apply effects to individual videos regardless of the crossfader’s position. You apply these effects with the regular effects controls, and you can either have an effect applied to audio, video or both together.

The effects are a combination of standard audio effects such as Echo and video effects such as Image Wall. Applying the Echo effect, for example, also applies the Video Wall video effect so that the main video becomes a pulsating wall of the same video multiplied many times. It’s a great effect.

Cross certainly isn’t the first DJing application to include video mixing. In fact, it’s pretty late to the party. Virtual DJ has had built-in video mixing for years and can do the same things as cross, but we’ve found Cross to be more responsive than Virtual DJ in the past. We also prefer Cross’s interface.

We’d say Cross 3 isn’t worth the upgrade from Mixvibes Cross 2.5 if you just want to mix audio, but if you don’t already own DJing software or if you want to dabble with video mixing, you should download Cross 3 now.