Digital vinyl solved a real problem — your whole collection on two turntables — and introduced another one. A laptop on the booth, its screen, its updates, its dongles, and the quiet worry that something will ask to restart mid-set.
Waxcode DVS is an attempt to keep the first part and drop the second. The DVS engine runs on a Raspberry Pi in a small box next to the mixer. Your music sits on a USB stick plugged into it. The phone in your pocket is the screen, and it talks to the box over Bluetooth rather than over the venue’s network.
Once you are paired, nothing in the signal path depends on the phone. The records drive the audio; the app shows you what is happening and lets you load, cue and loop.
How it is built
Timecode tracking is a fork of xwax, the open-source DVS engine, with changes for this hardware and a control protocol the box speaks to. That fork is GPL and stays open.
Around it sits a small server handling the library, waveform and beat grid analysis, recording and the Bluetooth link. Audio runs through HiFiBerry DAC8x and ADC8x boards rather than the Pi’s own output, which is what makes the latency and the noise floor acceptable for actual use.
The box software is a free download. The iOS app is the part that is sold, and it is the only interface — the box runs headless by design.
Who
waxcode is a one-person project in the UK, built by a DJ who wanted this to exist and could not buy it. It is developed in the open and improves in small steps.
If you are building one, or thinking about it, get in touch — early builders shape what gets fixed first.