Summer news (#358)

Co-authored-by: Evelynne <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: ronso0 <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Daniel Schürmann <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Swiftb0y <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Daniel Fernandes <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Owen Williams <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Antoine Colombier <[email protected]>

content/news/XXXX-XX-XX-Midsummer-Mixxx.md

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+title: Midsummer Mixxx
+authors: Evelynne Veys
+tags: summer, info, news, update, harmonic, key, stem
+comments: yes
+status: draft
+
+#### Let the Mixxx shine
+
+Summertime, partytime. In the middle of the festival season you are maybe playing a sunny vibes gig somewhere.
+Or you are relaxing on the beach or at the pool with a cocktail in the hand checking the long list of music you had to discover.
+Both ways will give you inspiration and energy.
+Who thinks Mixxx-devs are laying in the sun can't be more wrong, we're having a crowded github-festival ourselves.
+
+#### Let the Mixxx in
+
+A lot of new contributors found their way to our mapping parties on the discourse forum, our coding raves at github, 
+and the development zulip dancehall. You are all welcome and we'd like to thank you for all kind of input.
+With your feedback on the 2.5 beta version the coding team is on track for gold, the bugs and errors teams are already defeated.
+
+#### I'm going on a holiday and …
+
+While you're enjoying a well deserved vacation the Mixxx team is preparing new features.
+Not all new features are already for bundling in an official release but you can find everything about them in the partie venues. 
+
+The new visual aids for key and bpm will be astonishing, it needed quite some adaptations but the project is in pole position for gold.
+
+The color integration will give you intuitive directions of matching tracks for harmonic mixing, also for people who suffer off color-blindness.
+Soon you wil be able to discover a 'heat column' in the library which will give you hints on tracks that are compatible with the current playing track,
+based on the Key and BPM. And BPM coloring will be added to show tracks with a BPM close to the current tempo.
+This will be our first step in Intelligent Assistance, it can inspire you to make surprising Mixxx-es with tracks that slipped your mind.
+And these features will later be used later for some QOL features, like an improved suggestions algorithm, search ranking based on similarity,
+and adding key color ticks on the rate sliders.
+Fill the floors!
+
+Our marathon stem project is fantastic, a peek behind the curtain:
+Playing with stems changes the whole idea of DJ-ing. If stems are new for you I would like to invite you to do some research. 
+In brief: stems are regular music files that are separated in 4 stem-tracks by the original producer or with the aid of AI.
+Mostly those tracks are drums, bass, melody and vocals. Together with the original track are those 4 new tracks
+combined in a new container, a *.Stem.MP4 or *.Stem.M4A file, lossy or lossless (depends also on source).
+While other DJ software will only support lossy stem files, we choose to support both.
+These combined files can be 'remixed' on the fly, with other words: the volume of the tracks can be individual controlled,
+a track can also be muted e.g. if you mute all tracks except the vocals you are actually playing an a capella.
+
+Without stems you need the beats to be synced, even if the intermediate beat would fit better to cover bass/drum sounds,
+you need to work hard with the eq's to camouflage bass left-overs. With stems you can just completely hide the unwanted tracks.
+
+Remark: The quality of the stems is of course very important, a lot of stem creators are showing up everywhere. 
+Some need you to upload your original file, some can use your GPU, some use well trained AI models, others don't.
+On Zulip I wrote a report about my quest for stems.
+
+In development Mixxx is already at the point that lossy and lossless stems can be played and controlled as stems, stem controls are already 
+working an can be experimental mapped in controller mappings. 
+
+DJ-ing with stems is a gamechanger, it takes away limitations, gives your creativity a boost.
+A hint: controlling stems with the mouse is rather difficult, some controllers are already stems-ready which means they incormporated
+volume encoders and mute buttons for the different stem tracks. But don't throw away you're valuable controller. 
+I have experimented successfull creating a OSC midi controller to control stems (and samplers) from a tablet, when finished the files will be available.
+Or you can start looking for an extra midi-controller that has enough encoders to control the volume and mute buttons of the stems (advice: 4 encoders, 4 mute buttons maybe encoders for the effect on the stem-track and buttons to select the deck).
+
+If you're waiting for an official release with stem support, you'll have to be more patient.
+
+#### Ceremonie protocollaire
+
+A golden medal will be awarded to everyone who contributes to Mixxx.
+Have a crazy Mixxxy summer.