mrpayroll

Here's their explanation:

Get ready to go freestyle with the Xbox Music Mixer, the ultimate in digital entertainment for the twenty-first century. Bust out the mike for ready-made Karaoke with on-screen lyrics. Strip out the vocals from nearly any song in your collection to lay down your own rhythm and rhyme. Add power to your party with your own music play lists, set to dozens of cool 2-D and 3-D visual effects. You can even display your photos on your TV, and create a soundtrack to match.

Take Xbox's already awesome gaming and DVD capabilities, and add in Xbox Music Mixer to unleash an entirely new category of digital entertainment. Create your own playlists and soundtracks, record and playback your performances anytime, access your library of digital music and photos from your PC, and even download new songs and visual effects from Xbox Live!

PC to Xbox music and photo transfer: Take the multimedia experience from the den to the living room. Easily transfer audio files (WMA, MP3) and digital photos (JPG) from your PC to your Xbox video game system, creating the ultimate music and video library.

Karaoke: Grab the included microphone and showcase your vocal talents (or lack thereof) by singing along with more than a dozen karaoke hits from a variety of artists. Or, take it to the next level with a little free-form action. With digital vocal-stripping technology, you can remove the vocals from your favorite CDs and audio files—making nearly any karaoke request possible! Once you get it right, record your performances for playback anytime.

Xbox Media Player: Bring the club experience home with the interactive Media Player. Build your own soundtracks for hours of audio entertainment. Customize soundtracks to set the mood for any situation.

Photo album viewer: Are your photographs really doing you any good stored away in the closet or buried on your computer? Use the enhanced photo viewer to create the ultimate slide show by transferring photos from your PC to the Xbox, which can then be synched to customized soundtracks and special visual effects.

Rave mode: Enhance your audio with scores of cool 2-D and 3-D visualizers. Add real-time video and audio effects for an incredible sensory experience.

Xbox Live support: Download visualizers, get new karaoke tracks and music, know when your friends are online, and receive game invites.


Now this was supposed to be out by now and Best Buy had it in their ad yesterday. So I went to a Best Buy in Atwater Village yesterday and they did not have it in stock and had it on order. They checked 10 stores in the area and all of them were out of stock and on order. I was pissed! I know they print the ads 2 weeks in advance, but don't advertise something, if you cannot guarantee that your going to have it in stock.

I also checked Circuit City (hadn't heard of it) & Planet X and Electronics Boutique didn't have them in stock either.

It looks like a pretty cool product that will take advantage (finally) of the 8 GB HD. I can't wait to transfer songs from my computer hard drive to the XBox and play them on my home system. Plus being able to see my digital photos on my 60" should be nice.

And of course, if the vocal stripping technology works good, it will be great to try to sing along to my favorite songs, with the original (finally) music!

What does everyone else think of this product?

Chris

Groucho

It was delayed at the last minute. It won't be out until December.

mrpayroll

Really? I had heard of the conflicting release dates, but I thought that they had moved the date forward to last week. Do you have any links with this delay information?

Chris

Groucho

12/1 was the date EBGames had when I was updating my "October Releases" last week. It's still listed at that date there, for what it's worth.

mrpayroll

Ahhhhh and Amazon has this release date:

Availability: This item will be released on October 24, 2003. You may order it now and we will ship it to you when it arrives.


I'm going to keep searching until I get a definitive answer as to when this is being released. The XBox website only says Holiday 2003!

Chris

GatorDeb

GameSpot has December.

xlpanda

I was reading some review from a gaming magazine about this. They were comparing the xbox mixer versus this one for the ps2. I forgot what magazine it was from...probably EGM but they said they preferred the ps2 one because the songs included were a bit better than the xbox version.

Plus, I think the xbox version only strips the vocals. It would be awesome if it had some way of stripping the vocals while providing/displaying the lyrics as well(w/xbox live this would have been a nice feature right?). Still, the mixer sounds pretty fun if you have lots of parties and want to sing all night as long as you provide your guests with the lyrics...cuz who wants ppl singing badly as singing the wrong words

mrpayroll

I just sent an e-mail to the developer WildTangent asking what is the official release date on this. I will post their response if/when I receive it!

Chris

Drexl

It may have better songs included, but I think the XBox one has a lot more potential, thanks to its hard drive which makes additional functions possible (see, it wasn't a waste). I was mildly interested in this when I thought it was just a karaoke thing. Now I think it might be worth it just to be able to copy MP3 files directly to the hard drive without waiting for the tracks to be ripped and converted from CD's. I hope you don't have to have the game, or whatever it would be called running to listen to them.

The program attempts to remove vocals, probably by muting what's in the middle (which is where the lead vocals usually are). With a typical 2-channel sound recording, it is impossible to completely isolate the vocals. There would be no way to get lyrics either because they aren't part of the sound recording. Unless it had some kind of speech recognition built-in that would guess what words were coming from the singers' mouths, the lyrics would have to be added manually. Of course, the songs that are included will work best because the lyrics will have been entered by the developers, and the music will come from recordings that didn't have vocals to begin with.

Since MP3 files (not sure about WMA's) can contain additional information embedded in the files such as artist, song title, album, and yes, lyrics, this thing might be able to read the lyrics from the ID3 tags and display them on screen. You'd have to type them in yourself, of course, but I suppose it's possible.

FlashStash

When the songs ARE available for purchase, you'll find them at www.xboxkaraoke.com. THe site is down now, but it was up a few days ago and the selection was quite extensive.

FS

Astro44

does this come with a microphone too, or do you have to buy it seperately?

mrpayroll

No, it comes with the microphone!



Chris

mrpayroll

Welcome to Microsoft XBox Support
The XBox Chat session has been accepted

{Ricky} Welcome to the Xbox North America Presales Support! My name is Ricky.

{Ricky} Hi Chris

{Chris} Hello, did you see my original message?

{Ricky} Yes Chris, I'll be assisting you with your inquiry. Please wait while I gather the information.

{Chris} Thank you!

{Ricky} Chris, if you are unable to find the Xbox music mixer near your home, please check with other video game retail stores in your area. Shipments of Xbox music mixer will be continually supplied to major video game retailers.

{Chris} So it has been officially released to retail?

{Ricky} Chris, please check the link I’m giving you for your concern:
http://www.xbox.com/en-us/musicmixer/default.htm

{Chris} I've seen this link, but that does not answer my question directly. Has the XBox Music Mixer product been sent to retail already? The page you've given me shows Holiday 2003 as a release date. EB Games shows 12-01-03 as a release date. I'm getting different dates from different sources. So please tell me if the product has already been released. Thanx Chris

{Ricky} I'm sorry Chris, the official release date for the music mixer is Holiday 2003. So it hasn't been officially released yet.

{Chris} Okay, so no customers out there have been able to buy the product as of yet? Thanx Chris

{Ricky} As far as we know of, nobody outside of microsoft has the game yet.

{Chris} Thank you very much, I will post your response in the appropriate forums, since many of us were having a hard time finding this product. Thank you for your help, Chris

{Ricky} Is there anything else that I can assist you with today?

{Chris} No thank you, that was it. Have a great day, Chris


Notice that it took a while to get a straight answer from him.

Chris

GatorDeb

Why did you end every sentence with Chris?

JPRaup

lol, it kind of sounded like a machine talking to you. Anyways, I'm really looking forward to the Music Mixer. I reall want to give as a gift for my sister because she enjoys singing very much and i also want to take all of my mp3s to make my xbox. Walmart has it for 11/21

goLUCKY

I bet it's the Chris key is stuck on his keyboard.

mrpayroll

I guess I thought that I was posting here!

Chris

But in my defense, I thought I was done posting with the 2nd to last Chris and then he responded.

Chris

But hey Deb, thanx for bringing it to my attention.

Chris