Content Types

Mixtikl allows the mixing together of many different audio and music files, namely “content”. This content can be in a wide range of file formats, from audio clips to MIDI files and beyond. To keep things simple, we refer to any item of content in any format simply as “content” or “content item”, but this section gives some more information on the different formats.

Mixtikl’s content flexibility allows you to be creative in ways that both suits the capabilities of your device and that match your personal preferences – namely how much memory you have on your phone, and how much space you want to set aside for storing content or recordings of mixes you might make.

Audio Content

Audio content is used where maximum sonic impact is required. The reason is that an audio sample (a short clip) contains a great deal of high quality pre-processed audio information (such as a real voice, electric guitar riff, orchestral theme etc). However, the downside is that memory usage is higher than for other content types (for both storage and operation). A typical 1 bar audio sample (in compressed Ogg Vorbis format, 48Kbps) is around 15Kb, but in order to be mixed it must first be expanded into your device RAM memory, where it might be >4 times larger!

Audio formats supported (file extensions capitalised for consistency):

Ogg Vorbis (compressed audio format) – .OGG
WAV (PCM and ADPCM) - .WAV (8 or 16 bit only at present)
AU - .AU (8 or 16 bit only at present)

Note: When using audio content, there are a number of factors that determine the size of the content item. The key ones are the tempo of the mix and how many “bars” there are in each item of content (a “bar” is a musical term which refers most commonly to 4 beats, and is the normal minimum size for a content item), and then for each item the sample rate, bit depth and whether the sample is stereo or mono.

Tempo is to do with how many beats per minute (bpm) you have in your mix, which is defined in each Pak. Tempo and the content size are closely interrelated in that a 1 bar 60bpm audio clip is 4 seconds in length (each beat is 1 second in length and there are 4 of them in a bar), and a 1 bar 120bpm audio clip a 2 seconds in length (each beat is ½ second and there are 4 of them).

MIDI Content

For reasons of memory usage, some users will wish only to use MIDI content (riffs) when mixing their ringtones. MIDI content is an electronic version of sheet music (in that it only contains note playback information), and it is played through the Mixtikl integral MIDI synthesizer. MIDI content has the advantage of small size, and so uses far less device memory, but it does not have the sonic impact and richness of the much larger audio content. A typical 1 bar MIDI riff is around 1Kb.

MIDI formats supported (file extensions capitalised for consistency):

SMF (Standard MIDI file) - .MID/.MIDI/.KAR
SP-MIDI (a specially “tagged” version of an SMF for mobile usage)

Advanced Content

Various advanced content options are available within Mixtikl, and these allow greater use of the device as a music “computer”, creating rich sounds from small components. This kind of content is typically in .partikl format, and it allows the use of real software synthesisers, FX and music engines. A 1 bar .partikl file can be just a few Kb in size, but can be set up to allow the creation of hundreds of minutes of varied and sonically rich content.

Partikl content can also include audio samples, for which the comments above related to audio content apply. Partikl files may contain any combination of DLS file data, audio data (Ogg, Au and/or WAV), Noatikl files, MIDI files and Partikl Modular Synth and FX network settings. Noatikl files are generative content, meaning that they are composed for you in real-time by the Noatikl trans-generative music engine.

Advanced formats supported (file extensions capitalised for consistency):

Noatikl - .NOATIKL or .NOA
Partikl - .PARTIKL or .PAR

Multi-bar Content

This is content in any of the above forms that plays for more than 1 bar. It can be even more effective than content of 1 bar length as it provides more continuity and variation over a longer period of time. Mixtikl is very powerful in that mixes can utilise not only 1 bar content, but also multi-bar content. Mixtikl intelligently caters for content of non-full bar length (e.g. 2 ¼ bars). When the content is not in a Tiklpak it will not simply loop the content, causing mix synching problems, but will instead pad it out with silence until it reaches the next bar boundary. Content that *is* in a Tiklpak is time- stretched/shrunk automatically to the nearest bar multiple.

The “mix file” itself

When you add content into a mix, this information is saved to a special “mix file” format called “.mixtikl”. It is an XML format that stores all the information about what content is used in the mix and where, together with sound FX used etc.

Add-on Paks and Content

There is a lot that can be used in Mixtikl. See here for what is available!